Couch
Like fashion design, music is created in a continual cycle and recycle, with instruments and genres replacing fabric, color and texture. Couch the band has taken the age-old blend of vocals, keys, rhythm and guitar, and cut their own pattern of jazzy vocals, pop and blue-eyed funk from them.
The first thing that strikes you about the group are the vocals of lead singer Tema Siegel. While many modern singers lean on a repetitive phrase or chorus that eventually blends into the boring, Siegel plays with notes; bending pitches, scooping and dipping in a slightly jazzy style that immediately grabs your ear.
Then there are the horns. On one of the band’s trademark songs, “Saturday,” the catchy, poppy horn riffs blast the song off with a sunny groove that lures listeners in well before the ensemble of vocals, rhythm, guitar and keys follow suit. With seven members, the bands’ arrangements are often more complex than many four-piece guitar-driven bands or beat and voice hip-hop creations. Surprisingly, many of their early arrangements, and parts of the band itself, were formed not through live rehearsals but FaceTime.
“Most of us met in high school around Boston, and were all part of the music scene there, but then we all went to different colleges,” Jeffrey Pinsker-Smith, the band’s trumpet player says. “That’s when [guitar player Zach Blankstein] and Tema began doing a lot of writing—that was pre-COVID.”
Siegel grew up in the Boston area but graduated with a BFA from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. “When the pandemic hit, we were all even more motivated to create together, because the world was suddenly embracing long-distance relationships and providing the resources to maintain them,” he continues. “So we were able to write and record over FaceTime, over Zoom. I have very distinct memories of getting guitar files from our guitar-player Zach and singing over the backing track and sending that back to him. It was a very gradual process that still enabled us to put out an EP, which was also recorded remotely, much of it while sitting in my closet in Chicago.”
Siegel and Blankstein, along with saxophonist Eric Tarlin and keys player Danny Silverston, later quarantined together in a home in Vermont. During this time the band seemed to jell, even writing and naming a song, “Black Bear Lane,” after the street they temporarily resided on. The ensemble, which is rounded out by bassist Will Griffin and drummer Jared Gozinsky, released a number of singles and a self-titled EP in 2021, followed by their second EP, “Sunshower,” in 2023. The band’s first hit single, “Saturday,” was released in 2022. With a horn introduction, the song zips and bounces to a danceable beat, which actually defy the song’s lyrics, telling of a life so full of duties and chores that the day just flies by.
The band’s emphasis on horns was derived from a jazz background in school and some eighties horn bands, but also groups like Snarky Puppy and Boston-based Lake Street Dive. They also note the “business model” of first establishing an audience on social media, followed and combined with live performances and tours, including a forty-city U.S. headline tour and a series of sold-out shows in the United Kingdom.
Couch released their first full album, “Big Talk,” on October 24, and is now embarking on a major headlining tour.
“This is the biggest headline tour that we have embarked on and the first time we are headlining overseas,” Siegel says.
“It’s exciting and scary but we are so looking forward to it,” Pinsker-Smith says. “One [reason] is the venues, like the size of the venues. And places like Roadrunner in Boston and the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.—places that bands we loved and saw perform before, and now we are playing there.”
For their Chicago show on November 7, they will be performing at another storied venue, the Ramova Theatre. Opened in 1929 by entrepreneur Jokubas Maskoliunas, the word Ramova means “peaceful place” in Lithuanian. Located at 3520 South Halsted in the Bridgeport neighborhood, its neoclassical and Spanish revival design took local residents, many of whom worked at the Union Stockyards, into another world. Before the new millennium, however, it had fallen into disrepair and was closed. In 2017, investors including Chicago natives Quincy Jones, Jennifer Hudson and Chance the Rapper chipped in to begin rehabilitation, and it now features a restaurant, a brewery and other event spaces.
When Couch hits the stage on November 7, they’ll bring their blend of vocals, horns and danceable joy to the setting of another of the storied venues to which Pinsker-Smith spoke.
“Touring is always an adventure,” Pinsker-Smith says. “Sometimes it goes perfectly, sometimes not, but that is what makes it exciting, and we are really looking forward to coming to Chicago.”
Couch performs at the Ramova Theatre, 3520 South Halsted, on November 7. Show at 8pm. Tickets are $32.15 (fees included) and up, available at ramovachicago.com.
