Paulo’s Flood: the name is a cross of literary references, created by the two founders of the band, Dani Garcia, who studies jazz performance and socio-legal studies, and Isabella Ashton, who studies classical piano performance. Inspiration was taken from the author Paulo Coelho and a poem by Ted Hughes to create their unique name and identity as a band on DU’s campus.
Garcia and Ashton met last summer and started performing at open mic nights in the Denver community. Eventually, they added drummer Erik McCready, a recording production major, six months ago, and most recently Evan Farrenkopf, also studying recording, production and jazz guitar, as a guitarist for the band.
The band’s recent growth has created an environment consisting of excitement, creativity and community – a contrast to the ordinary schedule of lamont students who are in and out of practice rooms for hours at a time.
“It’s also a lot less lonely than the regular practice routine that I have. It can be isolating to be in a practice room for four hours and you’re just trying to get more and more perfect, which is impossible, and then you get to play with your friends. Everybody’s super receptive, and you’re creating music together, which I think is unique,” Ashton said.
Ashton is credited for developing and writing the band’s songs, crafting poetic and abstract lyrics that harness a personal touch. Unique to their sound, is how each song exudes harmonic progressions, incorporating the loose structure of jazz into their style of music.
“I also feel like it’s really interesting because our songwriting approach is not theory-based. When I’m thinking of a song, I know that I’m attracted to dissonance in music; and when I’m writing, I feel like we are trying to do things that are not typical. I don’t think we are trying to conform to any pop standard. For example, I like Stravinsky, right? You wouldn’t necessarily think that [his influence is] explicitly heard in the music, but it still is a significant influence,” Ashton stated.
The indie rock band consists of a hybrid of influences—from funk to jazz to folk. Trusting their intuition for each song, all the members are able to add their own styles to create unique experiences for each performance.
“It’s cool to have a creative outlet for our compositions. Isabella brings in cool material that we can build off, and I think we will have a musical conversation. I hear Isabella’s piano part, and I know Isabella wrote that. I know that Erik is playing that beat because that’s how Erik would play it. It’s cool to collaborate in that way,” Garcia said.
Garcia and Ashton discussed ethnography of women in music and how it’s difficult to create feminized spaces without sexual implications and using your body as a part of the music experience. In addition, they have tried to lean away from the pop genre, which they agreed would have been an easier genre to navigate as a female-led band.
“Historically, punk rock is male-dominated. I think that Dani and I appreciate it and I listen to punk rock and like punk rock. But I also think, like at certain house shows, when there’s moshing going on, something about the physicality of the space becomes masculine,” Ashton said.
Garcia also discussed how difficult it can be as a female bassist to navigate the DU band scene outside of classes and off campus. “When I came to DU … I did feel a lot of frustration because there are a lot of bands in the DU scene that have guitar players playing bass for them. So it was like, why? Why is there no opportunity for me to be in a band outside of school? I also thought it might be because I’m a girl. That’s why it was cool when I started to get closer with Isabella; we agreed on that sentiment about the male-dominated scene, and we wanted to pave a path for ourselves,” Garcia said.
Though the band heavily draws from punk influences, Paulo’s Flood has described themselves as a “sophisticated group of musicians” in the way that they explore their musicality through a plethora of genres. “It’s a refresher from the punk scene here for sure,” Farrenkopf said.
Despite the few challenges they’ve faced as a new band on campus, the band voiced how above all, they are here to support each other as musicians. Garcia and Ashton stated that their newest members are great allies to their goals and “always have [their] backs.” Paulo’s Flood, above all, aims to impact people with their music, and, most importantly, make people listen to what they have to say.
“Listen critically. That was a thing I said when I was forcing my roommates to listen to a song. I was just being such a dork about it. Like they didn’t care, but I want people to care,” Garcia added.
Paulo’s Flood plans to produce their songs and have them available on Spotify and Apple Music by the end of this coming summer. As for now, you can listen to them at their upcoming show at the DUPB mainstage event on May 27th at 4 p.m. They’re also opening for Lu Lagoon at Globe Hall on June 9 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12. You can find out more about the band through their Instagram.
