By Matthew Diaz
Finding a lead singer at a dining hall is not usually on the menu for UC Santa Barbara students. But for Andrew Adorno, who minors in Music and majors in mechanical engineering, a trip to a dormitory salad bar last year changed the course of his and his future band members lives. While getting some croutons, Adorno overheard someone singing to themselves. Desperate to form a band and with nothing to lose, he quickly approached the singer and asked if he would be interested in joining a band.
“Who’s in the band you ask? Well right now it would just be me and you,” he said.
The two-person band grew into a four-person band, and they would eventually call themselves Wahoo. They got the name from the drummer, who loves scuba diving and named off a bunch of fish, including ‘wahoo.’ The entire band liked the ring.
By the end of their first school year together Wahoo was performing for small UCSB and Isla Vista gatherings, including outside their dorms and even outside of a dining hall. Then, at the start of their second year as students, Wahoo found itself performing its biggest gig yet.
Wahoo logo designed by the band’s Cajon percussion player, Carlo Lapayese-Caldero.
Out of 20 university band applicants, Wahoo was selected to play this past September at The Rose Bowl’s Bruin Fest for Hispanic Heritage Month, a festival held during the tail-gating of a football game at the Rose Bowl. Lead guitarist Andrew Adorno, sat down for an interview to talk about Wahoo’s Rose Bowl performance, how UCSB fostered the creation of Wahoo, and his personal journey with music. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How was it to go from performing outside of your dorm to performing outside Rose Bowl, one of the most historic stadiums in the nation?
A: The difference between performing at the Rose Bowl compared to outside of our dorms, felt like our music was going somewhere finally and it was reaching more audiences. It felt like progress in the band and everyone in the band was more focused on putting more effort to do well, because it was actually going somewhere. And at the Rose Bowl it was very welcoming. I was super grateful because of how great of an opportunity it was. At the Rose Bowl we had an actual audio team to help us out with our audio levels and amplifications, which was way better than anything we had done before. We were very surprised by the quality. It just felt so professional.
Q: What about UCSB fostered the creation of your band and helped it overcome any struggles?
A: When I visited campus for the first time, I felt that that at other colleges everyone was more independent and on their own but people at UCSB were so much more collaborative. I could tell immediately that at UCSB there was a sense of a close-knit community. For example, we used to practice in our singer’s room, but he used to be too shy to sing so our practices were really quiet. But one night with the song Creep, he really let it out — I mean in complete full form — and with that we had the RA [Resident Assistant] banging on the door trying to shut us down. We had to find some place to practice, other than his room. We eventually came across this very welcoming building and community called the College of Creative Studies. They had a little red theater where we would set up our amps, our mics, and we would just jam out. All the students in there would just let us in, and they wouldn’t mind us practicing. So our biggest struggle was finding a place to practice, but we did.
UCSB Music student Andrew Adorno holding his hand-built replica of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar under, the lights of Pardall Tunnel between UCSB and Isla Vista.
Q: Out of any instrument, what made you pick up the guitar? And tell us about what inspired the design of the guitar you built.
A: After graduating high school, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to play in an organized marching band anymore. But I knew I needed to keep music in my life somehow, and I realized I still had the guitar that was passed down from my grandpa. I started listening to music that had a lot of guitar in it and the more I listened to it, I began gravitating to guitar in order to replicate it. One of the guitarists I gravitated towards the most was Eddie Van Halen. The guitar I had was a really cheap guitar but I wanted to make it look like it was worth a lot of money. So over one holiday break I decided to take apart my guitar and spray paint it. I ended up building a replica of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar, from the 1980s. I had always liked the design of it, and the way Eddie played his guitar.
Q: How does a mechanical engineer find himself doing a Minor in Music?
A: So in my journey in music and engineering I have found connections. Just in building the guitar, you have to follow engineering principles to make a musical instrument, which is what I did with the replica of the guitar I built and the other guitars that I’ve repaired. I think you can connect music and engineering. Although I always enjoyed music, I always found myself at a roadblock when I’d attempt to write my own songs. I wanted to compose, analyze and create music so I thought taking classes and minoring in music would help my exploration into my music career, and allow me to not only understand music better but create better music.
Q: What does the future hold for Wahoo after the Rose Bowl performance?
A: After our performance at the Rose Bowl we learned a lot about what each of us need going forward to create a better performance and to enjoy it more. For example, like actual drums. We use a Cajon. we definitely want to add more back-up vocals to help out our singer, perfect our instruments to be in the right key and tempo. But moving forward, we want to keep improving and keep performing, I hope, because we all enjoy it. After the show, we just realized how much the band means to us.
Matthew Diaz is a second-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Communication. He conducted this interview for his Digital Journalism class in the Writing Program.