Soda Pants

"The festival opened with a performance by UC San Diego's own Soda Pants, who won the Battle of the Bands competition this year. Their unique folk-rock sound is produced by an energetic melody of vocals mixed with sounds from a diverse range of instruments, including harmonica, violin, banjo and mandolin. The band was formed a little over a year ago by alumni Erin Bower and Will Chapman and current seniors Mike Sierks and Grady Kestler, each multi-talented musicians and songwriters. Their music is recorded and mastered by Kestler, who is enrolled in the ICAM (Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major) program at UC San Diego.

“We pride ourselves on being non-pretentious, approachable, friendly people. It is just an all-out fun fest when we play on stage,” Bower said. “We are honored to be able to share the stage with these amazing artists at Sun God Festival this year. It is quite surreal and very exciting as we gain momentum as a band.”

Soda Pants has already gained a large following, both at UC San Diego and in the local community. Last summer, the band hopped in a truck and traveled up the coast of California to tour the state and play in as many venues as possible, from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo. Locally, they have played at The Casbah, Soda Bar and House of Blues and will be opening this June at the SPF FM 94.9 (Sandy Parts Festival), where they will perform alongside indie rock bands Matt & Kim, Capital Cities, The Mowgli's and more.

"We hope to be making music for a very long time," said Bower. "We'd like to professionally record an EP or album in the near future and hopefully continue to grow by wowing crowds!" - - UCSD News Center by Erika Johnson

“This folk-rocky group demonstrates how good friends make great music.” Putting Soda Pants into some coherent musical narrative is tough - without the reader actually listening to them, folk-rock will have to suffice. The band, made up of Erin Bower, Will Chapman, Grady Kestler, and Mike Sierks, has only been playing together for a year, and while they’ve already had an “It’s a Small World” tour this past summer, their recorded output has been limited. “We recorded a bunch of stuff on a computer… and put it on a CD. And then decorated them all,” Sierks says. Of course, this paucity of music is normal for a new band. What makes this band so hard to contextualize is their lack of a definitive style. Their fluidity is immediately evident at their shows. All four musicians trade instruments throughout the show, never sticking to their original for more than a couple of songs. Even in the studio, they trade roles, sometimes writing songs and sometimes backing their bandmates’ songs. “We all write songs, and because of that I think we’re confused as a band as to what our style is… [it] is all over the place,” Bower says. Given their instrumentation - guitar, banjo, violin, percussion and sometimes even clarinet - it’s easiest to compare them to The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, and The Avett Brothers. But even within this genre, Soda Pants remains fluid. Their songs range from the upbeat to the almost elegiac. “If you listen to a song about crying or cheating, you know it’s me and Erin writing,” Chapman said. ”If it’s happy and fun, it’s Mike and Grady.” But what’s so remarkable about Soda Pants is how the musicians’ obvious chemistry makes their undefined quality so damn fun. When they trade instruments on stage between songs, it doesn’t slow the show down [all of them chat amiably to the fans during lulls]. More importantly, it doesn’t feel chaotic, but organic. Soda Pants will be displaying this organic style at Muirstock tomorrow night. By virtue of winning an on-campus battle of the bands, they’ll be playing Sun God Festival in May as well. What comes after that is unclear, but hopefully the future brings more music from Soda Pants. (Thank you Sebastian for writing such an awesome piece on us!!) - UCSD Guardian by Sebastian Brady

"Armed with guitars, harmonica, violin, bass, drums, and the mesmerizing vocals of lead singer Erin Bower, Soda Pants Climbs up the coast from San Diego to Santa Cruz this weekend, for an Abbey showcase that's bound to restore your faith in the next generation of folk musicians. In the same vein as Barry Louis Polisar's "All I Want is You" off the Juno soundtrack, Soda Pants' songs have a back porch jig feel with group harmonizing akin to Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' "Home." Feel good music to put you in the smiling mood."
- -The Goodtimes (Santa Cruz Newspaper)