Music is where the heart is and for Rainbow City Park, that's home. The 5 piece NorCal Indie band is local to the city of trees, Sacramento. This week I interviewed some of the members about the bands fast-paced growth and where they see Rainbow City Park going in the future. They currently have shows coming up in Northern and Central California to end off the year, you can find more info on these shows here https://rainbowcitypark.com. The band consists of front-woman Dani Judith providing vocals/guitar, Chris O'Keefe and Nick Nassab also on guitar, Ryan Williams on drums, and Dwight Struthers on bass.
Photo by @acasualdreamer
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How did the process go of forming the band?
"I found everyone on Craigslist, Bandmix, or social media. It took probabaly hundreds of hours of looking through ads and auditioning people, all that fun stuff to find the right group of people." - Chris
Dwight and Ryan were both found on Craigslist, and Dani was found through Facebook.
How did the name "Rainbow City Park" come about?
"We're named Rainbow City Park because there's a park in Davis, California called Rainbow City Playground. But it's also referred to as Rainbow City Park. When we were forming the band, like every time I heard a saying or something I would always think, 'Oh that sounds like a cool band name'. Then I would add it to a spreadsheet that I had started, we ended up having like 20-30 band names." - Chris
"We even at one point had a bracket of like the top 10 or 12 band names and voted to pick one, and we still didn't like that name. Then one day..." - Dwight
"Wait, when was that? I didn't participate in no bracket. " - Dani
"That was before you were in the band. But yeah, one day we were like 'How is Rainbow City Park? It has a nice ring to it', and it didn't make any of us mad. So we stuck with it." - Dwight
"Yeah there were some other ones that we thought were definitely it, but then would get vetoed by one band member and we'd move on. Do you remember any of the other band names?" - Chris
"I remember Shallow Dive." - Dwight
"Walter-Walter is what I remember." - Dani
Who are your biggest musical inspirations?
"Probably my top 3 would be Thrice, that was my favorite band growing up so I think they have a lot of influence on terms of my guitar playing. Recently the band Turnover, I really like their tones and guitar riffs, and another one would probably be Taylor Swift." - Chris
"While Taylor Swift is absolutely number one, I also like Phoebe Bridgers, and Paramore a lot." - Dani
"The band Pinegrove has been a big influence for me, as well as Interpol, and Frightened Rabbit." - Dwight
"Dwight loves Taylor Swift!" - Dani
"Taylor Swift is okay." - Dwight
"I guess the shared influence that brought me here was probably Third Eye Blind. Otherwise the top 2 for me would be Mastodon and maybe like Led Zeppelin." - Ryan
"I would like to speak for our guitarist Nick, who is not here right now, but I think he'd like us to say Radiohead, definitely for him and... I don't know... Jeff Buckley, Phoebe Bridgers." - Dwight
"Definitely Phoebe and Radiohead!" - Chris
"Jeff Buckley is his number 1!" - Dani
What does the songwriting process look like for the band?
"I feel like there are two ways that we've written songs. One of which is I come to the table with 2-4 riffs that all kind of loosely fit together in one way or another, then we piece them together, and layer things on top of them. The other way is Dani or Nick will come to us with a song idea, kind of more singer/songwriter and then we'll kind of revamp it. Add some cool textures and stuff like that." - Chris
"My favorite way to write songs is by singing drumbeats to Ryan and hope he can figure them out from that, but yeah it's pretty collaborative which is really nice. I think the final product ends up being very heavily influenced by each of us individually on one way or another." - Dwight
Can you guys talk about your soon to be released single "Convince You" ?
"We wrote this song so fast! We wrote this song in like a week." - Chris
"That's true. We went to the studio like two weeks after that to record it, so like the song hadn't even existed for a month and we laid it down. The song "Convince You" is about when you desire something so bad but there's the secondary party that's not in with that. And it feels like you are stretching out a hand that is never taken, but you just keep trying to stretch it out further." - Dani
How long have you guys been playing live shows for? What are some of your bucket-list venues to play?
"We started the band in January of 2022, entered the studio in January, we were a band for 3 weeks before we recorded our 3 first songs that ever came out. Then first show was at the Audio Nerd in Rocklin, CA in February and we've been playing pretty actively since then." - Dani
"Where do you guys wanna perform one day? I can start, I want to play at Red Rocks." - Dwight
"Oh yeah!" - Dani
"That would be cool, I wanna play the Greek. I took a break from music for awhile and I went and saw Phoebe Bridgers at the Greek and watching her perform live- I was kinda like 'It would be cool to play here someday'. - Chris
"I agree with both of those answers but another thing I think about are bigger festivals like Lollapalooza and Coachella, things like that." - Dani
"The festivals have been fun, Farm to Fork and Concert in the Park." - Ryan
"I think my favorite show in terms of energy with the crowd was UC Davis's Picnic Day, this past April. But favorite show in terms of accomplishment and pride would be Farm to Fork festival in September last year. Getting to open for the National Parks and Japanese Breakfast was, very very cool." - Dani
"I also have loved all of our Starlet Room shows! Really cool spot." - Dwight
"Starlet Room is a great spot for the Sacramento local music community, the people that work there are incredible, the people that play there are incredible." - Dani
"Shoutout to AJ at Harlow's." - Dwight
"Shoutout to AJ, Alex, Robert, Daniel, everybody at the Starlet Room is incredible!" - Dani
Where would you like to see the band in 5 years?
"Together." - Dani
"Hopefully we'll release an album by then." - Ryan
"That's a big ask." - Dwight says laughing.
"I think in 5 years from now, I'd like to be on hiatus from my job. Be able to support myself playing music, that's my 5 year plan." - Chris
Who are some artists you'd like to work with?
"The Snares..." - Dani
"Got some good news for you Dani." - Ryan
"I know, I am so so excited that we have the opportunity to play with The Snares at the Starlet Room and at Neck of the Woods in October. They're just absolutely surreal, really looking forward to playing with them." -Dani
"Honestly another band I've wanted to play with for awhile is also on that bill, which is Purehex. They're my favorite band from San Francisco and I'm really excited to see them and get to play with them." - Chris
"I think it would be very cool to play a show with No Vacation. They have roots in the Sac scene here, and Nat has been really nice to us." - Dwight
What has being in the band taught you about life in the music scene?
"It's a huge community and everybody knows everybody, and it's a good community. I think Sacramento is an ever-growing music community. As of late there have been a few dampers on that growth but watching everybody that we know in the scene kind of gather together and play with new people and find new places to play, encourage the city to include more places to play which is really inspiring and makes me feel like I'm in a very music centric town. When there's a lot more going on in the town other than music. It's easy to fall into 'music is the only thing Sacramento has to offer', because there's so many people that care about it." - Dani
"I think in general people in the scene are sweeties. Everyone's been really nice to work with, even in San Francisco where Nick is from. They have treated us as if we were locals there even though it's just him, and that's been nice to be welcomed into that scene as well." - Dwight
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Rainbow City Park loves to play shows in California. You are most likely to see them in Northern or Central California, but they plan to cross over state lines and bring Rainbow City Park to a new avenue of people. If you need some fun Halloween plans and are local to Sacramento, you can catch their set at Old Ironsides, Halloween night. The band will be dressed up as Paramore as well as covering their songs. Don't forget to pre-save their newest single "Convince You", linked in the bands instagram bio. RCP has another single they plan to release in the new year, but if you are a longtime fan of the band you might already know this one titled, "Valentine's Day 1999". You can expect an EP coming in the near future as well, they expect it to have around 5 songs. I had an amazing time interviewing the band and hope you all found a new artist to resonate with.
Thank you to Chris, Dani, Ryan, Dwight, and Nick for this opportunity, I cannot wait to see where you go in the future. You can find Rainbow City Park's music on streaming platforms. Click here to keep following them on their musical journey.
Written by Dakota C.
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