By Trinity Harrison, Online Editor and Grace Sullivan, Social Media Editor
Local arts festival Artrageous is known for the variety of art forms featured each year. This year, however, the Dare County Arts Council decided to invite Sub-Radio — a band from the D.C. area — to perform for the event, which will take place Saturday (May 12) at Dowdy Park in Nags Head. We sat down with guitarist and songwriter Matt Prodanovich via FaceTime and talked to him about the band and some of the group’s biggest successes. The video was filmed by Alex Brewer of Ignite Films in a partnership between Nighthawk News, the Outer Banks Voice and the Arts Council.
Learn more about Artrageous here.
Q: What are you looking forward to about coming to the OBX?
A: I love the Outer Banks. I have been coming there since I was really young. My family and I would get together in a big house and go to the beach and have a good time.
Q: How would you describe your band?
A: We are an Indie Pop band from Washington, D.C. We play all over the East Coast. We have recently put out a new EP called “Head First.” We have performed everywhere from South Carolina to New York. We have recently played at the Firefly music festival last summer, which was pretty great. We are just a floral-print-wearing group of guys who like to rock out on stage with each other.
Q: What do you like most about performing?
A: To be honest, just playing music for people. To see their energy and to just feed off of it and just having a good time and dance with everyone. We love that energy.
Q: How did the band come to be?
A: We actually knew each other in high school and we started in high school under a different name about 10 years ago now. And now we are through college and all of us are working and we do this as much as we can and hope to go full time with this at some point as well. I don’t think any of us could think about being in this band with anyone else.
Q: What inspired you guys to start a band together?
A: I was actually just sitting in my room and my mom said, ‘You have to pick a music class’ and I was like, ‘OK, I guess I’ll do guitar’ and one of my friends decided to do guitar as well and we thought, ‘Hey, let’s start a band’ and we just collected people as we went on. We started playing smaller shows and then we decided we should take it more seriously so we changed our name, recorded an album and started playing out-of-state shows.
Q: Who is your personal biggest inspiration?
A: I love to draw from the band Walk from the Moon. They’re definitely one of my favorite bands. Another band I really like is Smallpools. We got a chance to open for them at James Madison University in Virginia and they are just the nicest guys. I had actually been a fan of them before we got to open for them, so when I found out me and a few of the other guys were kind of freaking out.
Q: Where did your love for music start?
A: Definitely as soon as I picked up guitar. Once I had a musical instrument in my hand I never wanted to put it down.
Q: As a band, what are some of your goals?
A: We want to get on the road more. We really just want to play for more people. And to show people that we have some good stuff and they should come dance with us.
Q: What would you that as a band your biggest success has been?
A: Probably Firefly. Playing that festival was insane. The headliners were The Weeknd and Chance the Rapper and Bob Dylan and being on with people that big, it’s pretty crazy. It was a great time.
Q: What is the song you’re most proud of?
A: We put a song on this most recent EP and I love it. I wrote this guitar riff that was kind of like jumpy and summery and vibey and I didn’t really know what to do with it for the longest time. It was probably sitting in my phone memos for about eight months.
Q: Where does your inspiration to write music come from?
A: Personally, it’s just how I’m feeling that day and I just start playing.
Q: If you could collab with one person, who would it be and what type of music would it be?
A: Hands down for me it would be Walk the Moon because I am just such a big fan of them. And I see it sounding something similar to what we are producing now.
Q: Who do you look up to the most in the band?
A: I look up to all the guys for different reasons. Adam (Bradley) has got great songwriting skills. His lyrics are incredible. He has this way of picking out a feeling and making you feel it just through words and I think that is very admirable. John (Fengya) is just an incredible player. He can play literally everything. Mike (Chinen) has determination. Barry (Siford) is the goofball and he is so much fun on stage. Mike (Pereira) has just always got new ideas.
Q: What are some ‘pre-gig’ rituals you guys have?
A: We have one pre-gig ritual that is a secret that people have heard from the hallways. It’s pretty fun and high energy, but I can’t say too much about it because it’s a secret.
Q: What is the greatest thing you guys as a band have done?
A: For me, it was when we released our first album. Mainly because we finally started taking things more seriously at that point and everything since then has been a result of us doing that.
Learn more about Sub-Radio at Spotify, on Instagram, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Visit their YouTube channel below by clicking on the link to Sub-Radio’s newest video!
