For those who are just learning about you, could you tell me a little more about yourselves and your band?
For sure! Our band is called WD-HAN, and we’re a rock trio based in Tampa Bay. It’s Cal on guitar, Lea on drums and I’m (Spence) the lead singer. We’ve been writing and performing together since high school, and have played all over the South East, and toured to Asia three times. Our songwriting is dictated less by sticking to a genre and more by what we find compelling, which means our sound ranges from blues driven rock to more acoustic and pop…and everything in between.
Is there a story behind the name WD-HAN?
We were sitting around joking with some friends about what to call the band, and actually one of our friend’s dad jokingly suggested, “What about ‘WD-HAN’ for ‘We Don’t Have a Name'”. Everyone cracked up and it stuck. For us, having this band name is a little bit of a reminder that no matter how much music means to us, to never take ourselves too seriously.
What’s your favorite thing about creating music?
The magic, lightning in a bottle moments. The times when one of us says, “Hey, what about…” and all of a sudden we’re off into this whole new, amazing direction on a song that wasn’t there until a few seconds ago.
On your website, it said that the aim of this band was to bring blues back into popular music. How has that mission been so far?
A whole lot of fun! That idea is not something we’re trying to shoehorn into every song for no reason other than a gimmick. Blues licks are cool, but for us it’s about looking for places where adding that element adds to the song. Cal has always been a huge fan of guitarists like Hendrix, Knopfler, Mayer – all of whom have such incredible blues influence in their playing. I think that comes out in our writing in a way that’s organic and natural.
I’ve been listening to your latest song, “Spaceman”, on repeat and absolutely love how powerful the introduction is. What was the writing process like?
Thank you! That vocal run was written on a voice memo while driving along the highway. For me writing the melody, I was just trying to think of something that wold shake things up. Every song has a little intro, then verse, then chorus, and that’s great! But my thought was what if I just slapped everyone upside the head with the hook first up? I did it and it sounded cool, but then I was like, “What if I turn that to 11?” And the intro to Spaceman was born.
The rest of the song is built around Cal’s riff. That’s something he brought into band practice and we pieces together the song that way. Lea wrote her amazing drum parts, but she also has an incredible ear for arrangement and so we worked together to put it in place. The final touches were with our producer, Alex Arias, in pre-production before recording earlier this year.
What was the inspiration behind this song?
I don’t really watch the mainstream news, and we had someone staying with us who did. He would put it on the TV and it was 98% doom and gloom. It made me think, “I wish I could just skip all this and go to space”. It got me thinking and the lyrics came from there.
“Spaceman” is completely different from your other recent single “Summertime Star Sign” which takes on a more mellow tone. Could you tell me a little more about “Summertime Star Sign?”
Absolutely. Summertime Star Sign is about losing a loved one, after thinking I had more time to say goodbye and missing my chance. That actually happened to me and so the inspiration was pretty on the nose. I wanted to write a song about Cancer without ever saying the word “Cancer”, and that’s how the lyrics came about. It was all the ways I could describe it without giving it a name.
What can we expect from you in the future?
A whole lot more music! We’ll be back in the studio in January of 2020 and plan to keep the releases going. We hope you’ll get a chance to check those out as well when they drop!
You can find WD-HAN’s music on Spotify and Soundcloud. Make sure to check out their latest single, “Spaceman”!
Cover image by: Laia Gore
Article by: Michelle Castillo
