On February 4th, the day of the Inner Wave concert, I headed out with a friend of mine to Austin. We had gotten there early but it was alright as we got to the meet with the manager and the band members to introduce ourselves and so I could let them know that I would be the one doing the interview with them. Afterwards we left the venue and got some food to eat as we had time to kill. About an hour before the doors opened, another friend of mine had met up with us and we were the first ones in line waiting at the doors. We made nice small talk with the people we were waiting with and then soon enough, they opened the doors and began to let everyone in. I quickly bought some merch and planted myself right at the front of the stage with my friends and talked while we waited, as we could only express how excited we were to see Inner Wave perform.

Soon enough, 9:00 hit and the openers for the concert, Divino Nino, started their part of the show. Their performance was really good, the lead singer was really passionate over his performance, and you could tell with the effort he put into singing and hyping up the crowd. The rest of the bandmates were amazing too, I loved that they really cared about their music and overall performance for the crowd, it really got everyone excited even more to see the main event. Soon enough, Divino Ninos time was over and the crowd cheered at them as they thanked us for our time. These next twenty minutes waiting for Inner Wave were perhaps the longest twenty minutes of my life and in the back of my mind all I could think was how I am going to meet them and actually interview them once the set was over. Finally, the moment of truth arrived, and the members of Inner Wave soon entered the stage and the performance was set to go. Once their first song started, I was in such a blissful state getting to see my favorite band perform live, and I was so close to them too! Majority of their setlist was from their new album, although that is by no means a complaint, with a few old fan-favorite songs played in-between and near the end of the show. It was an amazing time singing along with other fans to the songs we so very much loved and seeing these guys just give off a great performance for us. There was a pretty great moment where they said goodbye to us and left off stage, leaving everyone in the crowd cheering for an encore, for “one more song!” or “two more songs!”. Of course, this was undoubtedly their plan all along as they did soon come back to give an amazing performance of their, arguably, two most popular songs ‘American Spirits’ and ‘1 4 2’.

But after that, the concert really was over, but I knew it wasn’t time for me to go just yet. I contacted the tour manager and he grabbed to bring me over to them so the interview could finally begin. I know we had just met hours earlier, but it was pretty nice to walk into the room and them already immediately remembering my name and having no need for a second introduction. I quickly thanked them for their time and congratulated them on their show and the interview soon started. I found myself seriously nervous at the beginning, but as we talked more and more about their music, creative processes, and just general questions of the band I found myself getting more and more comfortable with them. There was a moment where I did briefly forget what questions to ask them, but that moment quickly went away. Unfortunately, the interview did have to be cut short according to the manager because of loading up and putting things away. But before I left we all said goodbye and I managed to get a picture with all of the great guys of Inner Wave as well as get a CD of one of their albums signed by all five of them. All in all, it was an amazing concert, not only because of the atmosphere, energy, and performance of Inner Wave, but also because I got to sit down with the members of the LA band and speak to them and sort of just get to see what nice guys they are and their processes on how they get things done.

Listen to Arturo's interview with Inner Wave below: