By Amahli Vivian and Peyton K.
On June 5th, Caught in a Flood played at Subrosa in Santa Cruz during their mini-West Coast tour with Dahlia Cross. During their brief time in town Peyton K. and Amahli Vivian were lucky enough to interview Caught in a Flood and give them a tour of KZSC. Based in Chico, CA, Caught in a Flood incorporates 90s/2000s emocore and screamo into their sound. We chatted about I Hate Myself (the band), touring, the Chico music scene, and more!
Caught in a Flood is: Flynn (guitar, vocals), Ringo (guitar, vocals), Ryan (bass), Django (drums).
*Angel of Dahlia Cross was filling in on drums and was present for this interview*
Amahli: When and how did the band start?
Flynn: We formed around September-ish of last year. It was the start of college and everything and I was trying to start a band, type of thing. I remember talking to Ringo the first week of school, and we’re both like, “bro, we love I Hate Myself.” And we both wanted to at least get something started.
Ringo: My brother is our drummer [who wasn’t able to join the interview]. So we kind of played one time with him. We got our friend Jack to play bass with us, and then we kept playing. We had our first show and then we liked it, so we kept going.
Amahli: I was going to ask if your band name was a reference to I Hate Myself.
Flynn: I remember going into it like, “we have to do everything like I Hate Myself (laughs). We were literally trying to do an I Hate Myself cover band at that point.
Flynn: It’s definitely different now. I feel like Caught in a Flood was kind of a placeholder, but it kind of just stuck because we couldn’t have anything else.
Amahli: What other musical influences do you pull from?
Ryan: For me, I’m not a big emo-head; I mostly listen to Hum and Helmet. My biggest inspirations for bass playing are l Robert Deleo from Stone Temple Pilots and Rex Brown of Pantera. I can blend hardcore and alternative rock that fits into this band’s sound pretty well.
Flynn: I think starting the band, it was very [influenced by] Midwest Pen Pals, Merchant Ships sh*t, with all the alternate tunings. Recently, I feel like we’ve been doing more things like Yaphet Kotto, The Pine. Kurt King of the Pine is my top influence.
Amahli: You use a lot of pop culture references in your titles. How do you come up with that kind of stuff? Because it’s pretty silly.
Ryan: We’re kind of dumb as sh’t.
Flynn: I guess…we’re going to try to stop doing this, but we never fully confirmed a name for some of the tracks, so they had all these dumb names. We have this one song called “anything but a palm mute” because we palm mute the guitar in that song (laughs). We were like “okay, well, we gotta release all this.”
Ryan: We have another song called FAC just because that’s the tuning of it.
Ringo: And all our new songs will just be called “New Song.”
Ryan: Yeah, it’s just “New Song” for every song we don’t have a name for.
Flynn: A lot of those songs are of a certain time frame. I don’t think they have a deeper meaning to it. It’s just kind of what we were feeling.
Amahli: I know you played an unreleased song at Subrosa last night [June 5]. Is there anything else you’re working on?
Ryan: That song, for sure. We’re trying to mix and master it.
Ringo: We’re doing a split with our friends from Sacramento. Girls are heroes, shoutout. We got a lot of new stuff, but we’re just not playing it on this tour.
Amahli: How is the tour going so far?
Ryan: It’s cool.
Flynn: Good. It’s a lot of nonstop show playing, which is intense.
Angel: I think it’s such a good group of people too because we can read each other off so well.
Ringo: And we’ve known Dahlia Cross for years, before any of us were doing music.
Flynn: It’s pretty much just been all of our friends [on this tour].
Angel: This is Caught in a Cross, bro.
Amahli: So what do you think of Subrosa?
Ryan: It’s a pretty cool space.
Flynn: I always forget how tiny it is. But the community and people there are super nice. It’s super chill and always awesome.
Amahli: Kind of across the board, is there a memorable show you’ve played?
Ringo: Personally, we played a show in Arcata, and that was super fun. It was in the super early days of the band. That was the first big drive that we made. We had never been there before and it was cool.
Ryan: Mine was probably the Dayroom Show, the first one that I played back in December.
Flynn: The most valuable one for me was when we played with Camping in Alaska.
Ringo: Oh, that one was cool.
Flynn: That was the first emo band I really got into.
Amahli: Are there other bands you’ve enjoyed playing with?
Flynn: Shortstop!
Angel: Shoutout Shortstop.
Flynn: And shoutout Slinger.
Ringo: Shoutout to all the Chico bands. I think people look over Chico, but we have a really beautiful scene there.
Angel: Oh, also Exposure Therapy!
Ryan: Exposure Therapy is awesome.
Flynn: Laura’s Diary too.
Angel: Yeah, Laura’s Diary is coming up right now. They’re really good. Jonathan Richman is from Chico, so does that count?
Flynn: Yeah. Chico is very underappreciated. It’s tight and I feel like a lot of people forget that there’s sh*t going on there. But there is! I think it’s like it’s the same level as Santa Cruz or the Bay Area or anything else. Chico’s just so far away from people.
Ringo: The sound is way more diverse too.
Ryan: It’s way more tight knit as well.
Ringo: I feel like a lot of areas have certain sounds…
Ryan: But Chico’s all different and diverse music.
This interview transcript has been edited for depth and clarity.