On Monday, just a few days before Battle of the Bands, I hopped on Zoom for a chat with Rayan Ali (CC’27), lead vocalist and guitarist of RAYAN, and a few of his bandmates, Karl Schulz (CC ’27), Terry Foley (GS ’24), and Marino Bubba (CC ’24). We spoke about RAYAN’s sound, their origins playing together as a band, and their thoughts on Bacchanal.
How would you describe RAYAN’s sound & ethos?
Rayan: Well, personally, I would just say that I don’t think of it as one sound. I think there aren’t really many limitations to what you can do, and so if there’s something that makes you feel a certain way, and it tends to be part of a genre, then I would say there’s plenty of time and there’s no reason to stick within one realm. And there’s sort of no need to keep yourself in one box.
What genre/style would you consider yourself, if you had to identify with some general category?
Rayan: I would probably say alternative, really. Yeah, I mean we go from playing anything from blues to just simple acoustic melodies based on what the song style is.
Biggest musical inspiration? Whether or not it’s relevant to the music you make, who are some of the artists who have defined your relationship with music?
Karl: For me, I’m a jazz pianist, I do mostly jazz stuff. So I would say personally my biggest influences are Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, those guys. I think that kind of goes to show we really do play across genres. We try to do a little bit of everything; we hope the crowd enjoys that, I guess.
Rayan: Yeah, I agree with that. I’d say for me, a lot of what I wrote was inspired by a lot of new stuff. So a lot of John Mayer and Jacob Collier, and also a lot of Robert Johnson and BB King.
Marino: And for me, it’s probably Limp Bizkit and Nat King Cole.
Karl: For me it’s Staind and Puddle of Mudd; 90’s nu metal.
How do you guys all know each other? How did you all come together as a band?
Karl: Well, Rayan, I think I heard about your album from Jeff—right—who’s our other guitarist. So he kind of brought me in, and we did a little showcase of his album in the middle of last semester, just to kind of get ourselves out there. And now we’re doing it again. So it’s exciting.
Rayan: Yeah. I think originally, I did want to release this album, and put up a live viewing as well. And I didn’t really know who to go to, because like I said before, you do need a band for it to really be projected and kind of show the full potential of everything in the music. So I approached the other guitarist, Jeff, and I asked him if he knew anyone. He introduced me to Karl, who I didn’t know before that; I met Marino for the second time, and we also got Christina, who was previously part of the band, and now we’ve got Terry.
And how long have you been making music, even before the current form RAYAN takes on?
Rayan: I’ve been writing for the past two and a half years, and I’ve been putting out music for the past year and a half.
Where do you see this project going after Battle of the Bands and graduation? Do you plan on continuing to do this?
Rayan: Well, I always say it’s better to hope and better to not limit your options. So I’m completely open to the idea of continuing this after school, because at the end of the day, it’s one of the things I’m really passionate about. And so, where I see it going after Battle of the Bands, hopefully just onwards and upwards. And hopefully with the same guys, doing the same thing and having the same sort of fun. And where I see it going after school—I don’t have a direct line of vision yet, but hopefully somewhere where we can definitely make a career out of this.
Karl: Yeah, I’m kind of the same way. Music has always been a huge passion of mine; it’s always been a part of my life, and I like to hope that it’ll always continue to be a part of my life.
Do you guys have a pre-show routine?
Rayan: We definitely have a pre-show routine. Our pre-show routine is quite simple, really. We get a pretty big raw fish. We slap some salsa on there. And then we kind of dress it up in a little party costume. And we give it a proper burial. And then we go play our show.
So you’ve played live before? How long have you been performing live?
Rayan: Well each of us have been performing live for a different amount of years, I think. I’ve been performing since I was, I want to say, twelve or thirteen. But obviously it was kind of a different genre of music back then; it was more showcases and stuff like that.
Dream Bacchanal headliner? If you could have anyone headline Bacchanal, who would it be?
Rayan: Karl; It would be Karl.
Karl: I really don’t listen to a lot of new music…
Rayan: Maybe Ice Spice?
Karl: No, um… maybe Snarky Puppy?
What is your favorite song, or album, or artist right now?
Karl: You know, I just saw a band, Alfred McGee, who I like a lot. I listen to them a lot; I can’t really name any songs, I like all the music.
Rayan: If I had to choose any, I would say “Once You” by Jacob Collier. Second to that, there’s this album called Crossroads that’s pretty good.