C of Cortez

Band: C of Cortez

Members: Michael Tyson (guitar, lead vocals), Travis Harris (guitar, vocals)

Who we talked to: Harris, 27

Where'd the name come from? "Sea of Cortez" is a song name from The Promise Ring, a band we liked. We liked it as a name, but kept trying to think of other things. One night, we were just like, "Why don't we change it to a 'C'? That's kind of clever." That's it. It just came from us sitting around and having a few beers.

Describe your sound/style: We're considered indie rock, but it could also be considered emo. I don't really care about what people consider us as long as they're listening.

Do you get irritated that people automatically associate emo with being whiny these days? I think we embrace being called emo to a certain extent. It's what we listen to, but I don't want to sound like those bands, so we try and do some other things. If people are going to call us emo, people are going to call us emo. . . . I'm not scared of it.

Who are your influences? As far as the two of us, we listen to Death Cab for Cutie, The Get Up Kids, The Promise Ring, Jimmy Eat World, Coldplay. Mike is really big into the new Killers album ("Sam's Town"), and he loves the new Modest Mouse ("We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank"). I'm dating myself, but I love the bands Braid and Hey Mercedes.

Who is your biggest musical guilty pleasure? I'll listen to pretty much anything. . . . You can put down Justin Timberlake, but, yeah, I listen to anything.

If you could share the stage with any band or artist, who would it be and why? It'd have to be Nirvana. That band was a big influence on me back in the day. In the early '90s, that was just the craziest stuff out there. It revolutionized music at that time.

List a few songs that would be on the soundtrack to your life: There aren't specific songs. . . . It's more like artists for moods, feelings or times. There's The Get Up Kids when you're excited to get out there. And then there's Owen, just a guy and a guitar, when you want to chill out. It's good stuff. And then you've got Death Cab, which is always a good one for nighttime drives in the spring, when it's a little colder than it should be, but it just doesn't matter.

Plug one other local band: Espenshade. We played with them, and they're from Camp Hill. They've just got a cool style. They've got a good beat and lyrics.

What do you guys need to work on as a band? Not to pigeonhole ourselves. We both played in a band before and stuck to what we knew, and a lot of songs sounded the same. With this project, we try to stretch ourselves and take ourselves out of our comfort zones.

Shoutouts: There's this new venue at Bob Hoffman Stadium. This guy, Jason, is running it and trying to get bands in and trying to help out bands. He's a great guy.

- JASON COX, FLIPSIDE STAFF