EXTRA: The Origin Of CLIFFDIVER & Finding Liberation Through Music

The punk-rock, emo-pop band CLIFFDIVER joined the Arca Continental Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages Porch this week to talk about their journey so far.

After Thursday morning's interview, the group stayed to talk more about how the band got started, the "love" they share on the road, and how the music has saved them.

Tess: Okay, so you guys are a really fun group. And I'm thinking like, touring must be like a ton of fun. Is it all? Are you always getting along like this?

Joey: (Smiling) All the time! We never fought, never, never disagreed. Even we thought about it once. And we're like, you know what, guys? Our love is more important than us not sleeping for three days and not being able to decide where to eat because there are eight of us.

Tess: Bri, I feel like you have something to say about that.

Bri: Revisionist history is a funny thing. No, we do we have a blast. And it is, it is very much like having roommates in the smallest house you can possibly imagine. With none of the comforts of home except what you can bring with you. And it is a very unique experience to go through together for sure.

Tess: So, how did you all meet? You're all from the Tulsa area. How'd you meet? How'd you form the band?

Matt: Oh, yeah, I played in bands with most of these guys growing up over the past like 10 years. I'd say me and Gil started a thing back in 2014. And then yeah, kind of. Yeah, I kind of met the rest of these guys playing in bands around Tulsa. So I kind of put together the ones that I liked the most. And, and yeah, did that in 2018.

Tess: So these are your favorites.

Matt: These are my favorite people. This is the all-star team right here.

Tess: So, talk about the name CLIFFDIVER. What does it mean? Is there a deeper meaning to it?

Bri: So, Casa Bonita, you know, has the "cliff divers" and if I remember the story, right, Joey was weeping and writing his memoir in a Casa Bonita and saw the cliff diver come down. I've only ever heard the story, But it was very moving, shall we? Can you?

Tess: Are we talking about the restaurant, that's no longer here in Tulsa?

Joey: Yeah, Yeah. And they didn't even have cliff divers there. It was just a random guy cliff-diving in there. And that's what we decided to name it after that

Tess: RIP.

Joey: That's not it, I mean it's named after a Plus 44 song called "Cliffdiving."

Bri: Okay. Okay, no, it is the Casa Bonita thing, is my revisionist history. When I joined the band. That's what I thought it was named after. But actually, there is a song by a band that features two of the members of Blink 182. And it is called cliffdiving. And so that was the original inspiration for the name of the group, but we kind of just make it up now. So sometimes it's from Catcher in the Rye. Sometimes it's from Casa Bonita, it has become a lot of things. It's evolved into it. I believe, a lot of meaing for all of us.

Tess: I like it. A lot of fun all the time. I feel like maybe you guys don't take yourselves too seriously.

Bri: Except, I mean, in our songs. And I think that's kind of the funny thing is people meet us. And it's like, oh, they're fun. They're happy people. And then they put on the album. And it's, it's, you know, it's that we laugh, so we don't cry sometimes.

Tess: So speaking of that, Brianna, and Joey, you both have really been open about mental health struggles, and you put that into your music. Can you talk about how that's been therapeutic? Not only to you all, but also to your fans who listen to the music? Oh,

Joey: Oh, for sure. I think one reason why we are so goofy and silly is we have serious conversations about mental health. And we don't want to scare off people who've never really dealt with these things. So we presented as this funny kind of fun thing before they know it. They're discussing deep, emotional things.

For me personally, you know, the band saved my life. I quit drinking two and a half years ago. And, a large part of it was writing our first album and looking at the band and going how many songs about being an alcoholic Can I write before I have to quit drinking, and we realized that was the limit of them. So I think by us being able to talk about these things openly be able to talk about mental health, depression, suicide, substance abuse, all these kinds of things.

It not only liberates us a bit by being able to put it out and not hold it in but other people. I think that's probably the thing that keeps us going the most is even when we have hard days on the road where everything's gone wrong. After the show, some will come up and say, you know, this meant something to me like this meant something to me, we I remember one We were in San Antonio and it was a rough day. We were like, "We don't want to be here."

And afterward, somebody told us that one of our songs helped him get through cancer treatment and that there was a year since they had any cancer and they've been in remission for a year. And it was the song they listened to every day. And so little things like that show that the music's bigger than what we do. I mean, it's something that gets to help bring life instead of destroy that life. And I think that's important for all of us from the music we grew up listening to, which didn't have a lot of hope at the end of it, but ours is well the story doesn't end there.