Posh Coat is one of the hardest-working bands in Victoria, British Columbia. With their diverse, full of style, packing a bold, energizing trio sound, they’ve become a staple of festival line-ups around Vancouver Island and beyond.
The Zone @ 91-3’s July 2024 Band of the Month is indie rock trio, Posh Coat. Made up of guitarist and lead vocalist, Andrew Whitney, bassist Tricia True, and drummer Luke Hanna. When this band isn’t hustling or rocking the local music scene, you can find them haunting local vintage stores and thrift shops for the next great Posh Coat fit.
Rocktographers’ Tyson Elder had a chance to catch up with the band shortly after their Laketown Shakedown set on the eve of their turn at The Zone’s Band of the Month.
A special shout out to our friends at Wheelies Motorcycles for letting us use their space to create these images and making some of the best damn sandwiches in town. You’ll find most of Rocktographers every weekend having brunch, talking about shows and drinking Miller High Life.
Tyson Elder: Posh Coat – congratulations on being the penultimate Band of the Month for 2024! It’s pretty exciting to see your name on the roster this year.
Posh Coat: Thank you very much! This is so exciting, we’re riding a huge high!
TE: Earlier this year we worked together on a Rocktographers Sessions together at Upcycle in the heart of downtown Victoria. We’re pretty proud of how those turned out. Personally, I was pretty excited when I heard we’d be working together again for Band of the Month.
Posh Coat: That was our first time working with Rocktographers (Tyson Elder / Adam Lee) on any type of project. Although filming and recording a live-off-the-floor session can be stressful and tiring for all parties involved, the environment at the Upcycle session was calm and relaxing. We had such a blast from start to end; could not have planned it any better. We are also very proud of how the two live videos turned out. That session on February 1st 2024, marked the start of a great year for us!
We knew that Tyson would gladly take to the direction that we wanted to go in for the Band of the Month photo shoot and were excited to discuss our ideas with him and how we’d bring them to life. As much as we had planned, we had equal amounts unplanned and were looking forward to discussing fresh ideas with Tyson on the day of the shoot, once we’d arrived at Wheelies Motorcycles.
TE: The Zone @ 91-3 is going to be featuring your song, POWDERCAKE, as your Band of the Month single. It’s captures everything that’s great about Posh Coat: clever lyricism, a driving rhythm section, fun harmonies, and one heck of a guitar solo. POWDERCAKE is a great introduction to the band for newcomers. How did the song come about?
Posh Coat: In December 2021/January 2022 Andrew had written a few songs and began to record demos. Amidst recording, the idea for POWDERCAKE struck. He wrote POWDERCAKE in its entirety within a span of about 30 minutes (the guitar solo came later when it was time to record the track). By the next day, POWDERCAKE was too catchy that Andrew couldn’t get it out of his own head. A demo was created, and the rest is history. POWDERCAKE was one of the four original tracks that we debuted at our first gig in June 2022.
POWDERCAKE’s melody and lyrics came to Andrew in a state of flow, and even he doesn’t know how the opening lyrics “striped pyjamas, dioramas, television set’s on fire” arose. Listen closely, and you’ll hear a lot of correlation between Andrew’s love of the early Arctic Monkeys records and the writing of POWDERCAKE.
TE: From what I’ve gathered the band has a pretty DIY take on recording your music – I have to say it doesn’t sound that way. Everything you’ve put out has sounded extremely polished. What’s your secret?
Posh Coat: No special secrets by any means. By not relying on others during our recording process, we’re able to spend/take as much time on any given part or operation. Andrew enjoys trial and error, experimentation, and finding the guitar sound and style that best serve the song at hand.
We start with a solid drum track, and then bass is added next. After Andrew is finished recording guitars and both lead and backing vocals have been laid, Ben Erikson steps in as our glorious mixing engineer.
TE: Posh Coat’s debut EP Windowsill Caffeine just hit the world wide web. Can we expect more new music from the band in the near future?
Posh Coat: Absolutely, we’ll be releasing a new single this summer. We are excited to put out one of our numbers that’s blues rock inspired. We play this one live at almost every show, so it’s about time people have it at their fingertips.
TE: You just played Laketown Shakedown yesterday on The Flats stage, right? How was it? I’m sad to have missed it but I sort of broke my foot last week and can’t hobble around too much right now.
Posh Coat: It was surreal to see our name on that poster! After only 2 years of Posh Coat, we are so proud of ourselves and what we have achieved up to this point. There was so much excitement amongst the band leading up to the weekend, and Laketown Shakedown did not disappoint. Camping was a blast, seeing so many other artists perform was so refreshing, and meeting new people was so inspiring.
A highlight for all three of us was hanging out and conversing with other artists. Whether talking music or just shooting the shit, it was incredibly gratifying. Regarding our performance, we loved the Flats stage, and our set went very well. Hopefully, we’re able to return to Laketown Shakedown in the future.
TE: Speaking of live shows, you’ve got a packed summer. You’ve just played Laketown, FernFest, Vic West Fest, the Cook Street Block Party, and Victoria’s Canada Day. Ahead of you there’s the Eventide Music Series and Phillips Backyard’s Reverb. What should people expect from a Posh Coat live show?
Posh Coat: Raw energy, raw emotion, and hair flips. We’ll bust you wide open with fuzz and guitar solos, but build you back up with poetic lyrics and a love song. We love to captivate audiences with our genre-bending jams and transitions, our outfits, and our three-piece power. Oh, and if Luke doesn’t drop a drum stick then he wasn’t playing hard enough.
TE: One of the takeaways I find is that you are a band with a defined vision and aesthetic. You’ve embraced that late 70s vintage style which pairs well with Posh Coat’s sound. With so many people throwing their style back to late ’90s and early 2000s these days, I’m curious if this was a conscious decision or did it just happen organically?
Posh Coat: Our style decisions happen both consciously and organically. We take all three of our individual styles and spin them in a way that makes the three of us as cohesive as possible while still maintaining unique individuality. We always discuss and coordinate our on-stage, photo shoot, and content filming attire.
It just so happens that Andrew loves and is inspired by ’60s and ’70s rock n roll, and the fashion that came with it. This unsurprisingly influences the way he dresses and continues to push his fashion limits. We released a song called The 70s and wanted to lean into promo in a ’70s way. Andrew’s look and our outfit coordination seamlessly fit into that setting, and thus the ’70s vintage style bloomed.
TE: After leaving the photo shoot at our friends Wheelies Motorcycles, I was left wondering where your dream location would be for a band photo shoot? You’ve crossed a lot of the vintage spaces around the city off already.
Posh Coat: Tricia would love a photoshoot at the Hollywood sign, Luke has hopes of touring down to Arizona so we could shoot at Red Rock and the Grand Canyon, and Andrew is more of a city guy. The endless possibilities of London, New York, or Paris greatly intrigue him.
TE: Posh Coat, it has been lovely chatting with you and I sincerely wish you the best summer as July’s Zone Band of the Month.
Posh Coat: Thank you, Tyson!
July 2024’s Band of the Month, Posh Coat, will be rocking the airwaves of The Zone @ 91-3 with their single, POWDERCAKE, all month long. The song is available for download, along two other songs, and more photos from this session, on their Band of the Month microsite.
Rocktographers is a proud supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.