A lot has changed for Garb since we caught up with them in June 2022—but the band is still crafting genre-spanning, emotional rock jams that straddle the line between reflective and vague. Coachella Valley Independent’s award-winning journalism is available to all, free of charge. Help keep it that way. Although three-quarters of the band lives […]
A lot has changed for Garb since we caught up with them in June 2022—but the band is still crafting genre-spanning, emotional rock jams that straddle the line between reflective and vague.
Coachella Valley Independent’s award-winning journalism is available to all, free of charge. Help keep it that way.
Although three-quarters of the band lives in Los Angeles, vocalist/guitarist Carrick O’Dowd remains in the desert, and has been working on the band’s latest release, TKO. The seven-track heater, slated for release on Feb. 15, is filled with moments that will satisfy the most diverse of music fans, from the emotive rock and anthemic drive of “credential,” to the soft, lo-fi groove of “jack melrose,” and the punk aggression mixed with somber vibes of “the heel.”
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“It’s about my great grandfather, who was a professional boxer in the 1920s,” O’Dowd said. “All the songs are told from his perspective—not necessarily that I had the resources to know exactly what was going on in his life, but I had to imagine it for myself. The interesting part about his boxing career is that he had more losses than wins, but wasn’t necessarily a bad boxer.”
Track 6, “the heel,” explains this phenomenon. In professional wrestling, a heel is defined as the villain, meaning they generally lose to the hero.
“My great-grandfather, we deduced, was like the chosen loser of boxing matches,” O’Dowd said. “The whole record is a self-reflection, (on whether) you want to keep going when you’re getting beaten down, but you’re still getting the paycheck. Track two is ‘credential,’ and it’s him contemplating: Do I just keep doing what I do, or do I go back to school to get my teaching credential? (This) is something that I’m actually facing in my life right now. It’s like a combination of looking through the lens of my great-grandfather as a professional boxer, and looking through my own life, and (figuring out) what I want to do.”
O’Dowd said he had help and support from his family while crafting TKO.
“I tried to put myself in his shoes and write from his perspective,” O’Dowd said. “… It’s my dad’s grandfather. For Christmas this year, (my dad) actually found archives. … He found a public stock image of him being interviewed for some boxing publication in the 1960s. It’s kind of cool how my family rallied around—even though it might be fabricated—this story that I’ve been trying to tell, even though it’s only a 17-minute record.”
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Using his great grandfather as both a muse and a vehicle for his own emotions has helped O’Dowd find therapeutic moments in songwriting.
“I think that there are other people who are struggling way more than I am, but writing the story of TKO was definitely a therapeutic process, and it took two years to write,” he said.
While O’Dowd was hard at work on TKO, Garb has experienced both lineup and location changes.
“Our bassist, Lindsay (Clark), moved to New York, and we got a new bassist,” O’Dowd said. “Her name is Brooke Tannehill, and she’s fantastic. Another thing is Nick Sacro—who is my best friend besides being the drummer in my band—he and I lived together for a little over a year in the desert, and then our rent went up, and we made a decision to move to L.A. He had a job lined up and a place lined up, and I wasn’t able to (move); I didn’t have those resources. The whole band, including Nic Lara, who was already out there, all moved to L.A., and I was left behind. It’s been, like, a transition period of being sort of in a long-distance relationship with my own band. I do intend to move out there at some point.”
Garb has been relatively quiet over the past year, appearing only in a small number of shows, as the other members of the band pursued other projects.
“Brooke’s involved in two other projects, including her own solo material, which is popping off,” O’Dowd said. “Nick Sacro plays drums for this artist named Jane Remover, who’s quite big, and Nic Lara has his own project called Marni. Over the past, like, year and a half, everyone’s been focusing on their own stuff, and I’ve just been cooking in the kitchen working on TKO. … In 2023, we played a lot of shows, and we did a small tour with a band called Cryogeyser. This year, we are back, and we are doing more shows, because we’ve got a record to support.”
O’Dowd said the desert will never leave the members, even if all the members leave the desert.
“If you look in our Instagram bio, it says Coachella Valley/Los Angeles, California,” O’Dowd said. “I view us as a hybrid band. I still view this as a desert band, because three of our members are from the desert. Brooke is from Virginia, but I met her in the desert, so the desert is ingrained in Garb. We can’t shake that, and we still love the desert. It’s not that we’ve pushed the desert away; it’s that we’re very involved in the L.A. music scene.”
Garb will be celebrating the release of TKO in L.A., but fear not: The band is set to make their first desert appearance in two years in May.
“If anybody wants to make the trek out (to L.A.), we’re actually doing a record-release show the day the album comes out,” O’Dowd said. “It’s going to be at Non Plus Ultra in L.A. … We are playing in the desert in May, which is very exciting. We’re excited to come back and play some more shows. The record comes out Feb. 15, and I hope everyone enjoys it.”
For more information, visit garb.bandcamp.com or instagram.com/ggaarrbb.
