Interview: Catching Up With TRKRNR + Watch “No Summer Days”

Hailing from the Bay Area, duo TRKRNR are here with their pal Trailer Limon to offer a new jam for your next function. “No Summer Days” is an understated piece of funk and soul choosing to hypnotize with grooves versus overwhelm with sound, giving us all something to listen to while fading into ourselves or someone else.

To celebrate the release of “No Summer Days,” we sent TRKRNR some interview questions. Look for it all below and order your copy of the single on Bandcamp.

Hi, TRKRNR! Congrats on your new single. Can you tell us a little more on who you are and how you first got into making music?

SV: Thank you very much!

G: Yes, Thank you. Gee, where to start. I’ve been into music, guitar, and piano since I was a kid. I’ve known Saul Vallens since our high school hip hop crew days. He was more of an emcee and dancer at the time, I was more of a guitar carrying graffiti writer. Some of our friends had beat machines and were also forming turntablist crews at the time, so naturally everything kind of mixed together.

SV: I came in later in the music game, like GYRE said, I had mostly been dancing and rhyming. GYRE had been producing and touring already for a while. I was making music just as a hobby on the low, then I let some of my friends hear my beats and GYRE was like “Yo, we should work together for real.” A few years later, TRKRNR was born.

What’s your songwriting process like? Who are some of your biggest influences?

SV: Tell em bout the early parts, that’s the sexiest part. Hahaha!

G: All our parts are sexy. No, just kidding, but I think you mean our songs always start out fun, light-hearted and we often have beautiful, creative people blessing the studio with their talents and unique vibes, all contributing to this sort of rough sexy sketch. Haha! No, it is very sexy, we have the whole Philips Hue system on lock.

SV: Then the not so sexy part is where all the real work gets done. The hours and hours of refining, re-recording, uploading, downloading, sending files, mixing and exporting different versions. The car test! We listen to it in the whip, drive around the block, take notes, come back into the lab and refine some more, wash, rinse, and repeat like five more times. The hard part is we always want to just start something new! We actually have like two full house dance albums we are sitting on.

G: Yeah, It’s almost effortless to start making the music! That’s what we do.

SV: For me, my biggest influences would be my childhood crew/family, Trademark. Everyone was and is free-spirited, forward-thinking, and rooted in dance, art, music, and family.

G: Biggest influences? For me, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, Herbie Hancock, The Meters, Dilla, James Brown, LA underground rap tapes, Project Blowed, and my biggest influence too being my friends and family that I create with on the daily.

How did the video for “No Summer Days” come together?

G: The whole song and video came together ridiculously quickly for some reason. He made a quick beat on his laptop and we were actually writing to it when he said, “Yo we should get Trailer Limon on this.” (We were just bumping The Pendleton’s album that day) I called up Dan (Trailer Limon) and I think it was like the next day he came over and we wrote and recorded “No Summer Days” in a couple of hours.

SV: And I was like, “Yo, this needs a nineties sax solo.” A couple of days later Dan’s friend Dakota came by to lace up the track. Yea, the song was pretty much done in a week and the video I think we shot a couple of weeks after that!

G: The video! The question is about the video!

SV: Yea, it was our access to Bay Area creatives that were already fucking with us that made this come together. The support from the community. It was really through Pablo Circa and Amanda Beane’s creative vision and ability to assemble the squad to bring that vision into fruition.

Any new Bay Area-based artists/venues/purveyors of the arts you could turn our readers onto?

G: Of course the folks in the video, Trailer Limon & The Pendletons, ASTU, Sajda.

SV: Yes, and Wine And Bowties for holding space. UNDSCVRD, Troosoul and the People Party are constantly bringing that heat to the region. Vinroc and the Synthalist, blurring the lines between DJing and producing.

G: MVMNT Studio, providing a hub for the dance community in the Bay Area and beyond. My homie and Ableton mentor DECAP and his “Drums that Knock” drum kits for producers. LEOMALAYA, our resident hip-hop shaman who tattoos the whole tribe. Mikos Da Gawd. Teeko & Max Kane. Rey Ressureccion. Stablished Projects. There are so many talented people here in the Bay pushing the boundaries and pioneering the way.

Where can we follow you and where can our readers catch you live next?

G: Live? We’ll be live on IG tonight. JK. But we do want to start leaning heavily into video content and being more visible on social media. Truth is we’re really shy. Hahaha!

SV: We will be performing at CAAMFest on May 16th, 2019, in Oakland, CA. The best way to know where to catch us is by following us on social media, please do say hi, DM us, call us, stop by the lab, come over for dinner, get to know us.

Facebook | Instagram | Website

Any parting thoughts? Open platform!

SV: We want to continue to create music spanning multiple genres reflecting what we and our friends grew up immersed in, the hip-hop and dance culture.

G: We want to make music that elevates, music that is medicine for the times, that moves you, makes you want to move! Music that helps you rediscover your true self. Vibrate Higher.