The Coachella Valley music scene became smoother and more soulful when The Divines entered our midst.
Crafting a soft-rock sound with beautiful melodies, dancehall vibes and indie-movie party feels, The Divines have captivated local audiences with hypnotizingly-sweet sounds. Jose Antonio Martinez (aka Toño), Jeronimo Castro, Angel Alvarez and Jacob Ramirez have pulled from their respective musical backgrounds to each add to a delightfully diverse sound, resulting in the sad party vibes of “Swan Dive,” the romantically funky “Candy to My Ears” and the somber, vampire love tale “Rosie.”
During a recent in person interview, Jose Antonio Martinez, Castro and Alvarez explained how The Divines were born out of the ashes of their former band, Gateway. (Jacob Martinez was not available for the interview). After a few shows, the group truly became The Divines when adding Jacob Martinez, a keyboard player.
“We had a very indie sound when we just had guitar players, because that’s the basis of most indie bands nowadays,” Martinez said. “It changed a lot when we added Jacob. It adds a warmth, and it’s definitely calming in a way. It just fills up like a void, an emptiness. … We love it.”
The softer sounds of The Divines stem from the band’s adoration of oldies and smooth jams.
“Whenever I approach music and stuff, I always look back on what I like, because I listen to a lot of oldies,” Castro said. “My background of listening to music is a lot of R&B, jazz, old country music—just that kind of stuff, and I always try to bring a nice sound that people could remember back.”
Said Martinez: “That’s what our sound really is—a combination of a lot of our influences. With me, I have a huge background of listening to a diverse amount of music, like R&B, soul and the Beatles with my dad growing up, but also Spanish rock.”
The band members said they were initially intimated by the desert’s large hardcore and metal music scenes.
“The only thing I thought was like, ‘I don’t know how we fit into this lineup of bands,’” Martinez said. “There was a show that we played with Gateway in (Desert Hot Springs) with three hardcore bands. It was just so random. It was two indie bands and one alternative band, and these hardcore, random-ass bands, and it made no sense to us. When that happened again, when we formed The Divines, and we played at The Lab for the first time, it felt the same way—but people still liked us, and that was really comforting. We thought it was a problem, but then it was kinda not.”
The band now feels fully welcomed. The Divines have shared stages with similar, softer desert bands like Burgundy Blues, and intense, heavy bands like Destroy Nothing.
“Even though there are different scenes of different genres, they still come together, because we’re all kind of the same community anyways,” Martinez said. “The scenes blend a lot here, and it’s nice.”
Castro is a big fan of the desert’s mixed-bill shows, which unite diverse sounds.
“The way I see it is, if people are listening to Apple Music or Spotify, they don’t just have one genre specifically,” Castro said. “It’s nice to have a mix of things and just be open to all music, because music is music. If it’s good, it’s good. If it’s not, it’s not. It’s great to be exposed to all of it.”
The band members graduated from high school earlier this year, but while they were still in school, they got the word out to their classmates about the growing underground music scene.
“Last year, when the shows started popping off more, I brought a lot of my friends to the shows, and they started going to the shows more,” Martinez said. “I noticed a lot of people from my school started going even more. It all started happening after we played our first show at The Lab. That was really cool. My friends started going, and then it kind of sparked something within the high schools.”
“I started music in seventh-grade in middle school, playing trumpet, and all through high school, I played brass instruments—baritone and tuba mainly.”
Jeronimo Castro
All of the members of The Divines come from a music-education background.
“I started music in seventh-grade in middle school, playing trumpet, and all through high school, I played brass instruments—baritone and tuba mainly,” Castro said. “I had a friend throw me into the jazz band, because he knew I played bass, so then I played bass for all four years, which is how I learned how to play good, in my opinion. I can sight read very well on bass; I can listen by ear to learn songs pretty well, and it just really got me playing every day—practice, practice, practice. … With tuba, it took me all over the country. I do drum corps, and this past summer, I was up in Sacramento with a group from there, the Sacramento Mandarins. I was there every day for three months playing on tuba, pushing myself to be the best.”
Castro said his experience touring the country motivated him to contribute as much as he can to The Divines.
“It gave me the mindset that there’s always something more to learn from music; there’s always more to listen to and more to experience,” Castro said. “That’s what’s always pushing me to become a better musician, and these guys push me to figure out new things, like when Toño comes up with a new song. He’s actually trying to push me, to push all of us, to make songs, because he’s the one who usually makes them.”
Martinez grew up in awe of his sister’s role as president of the choir club at Coachella Valley High School.
“I always loved singing when I was little, so that was my first instrument, and it was always my dream to join the choir when I got to high school, and I eventually did,” Martinez said. “During middle school was when I started playing instruments, and I was randomly put in beginning band percussion. I started on drums before anything, and at the same time, I was teaching myself piano and the guitar. Mr. (Gino) Martini from Cahuilla Desert Academy taught me my major chords and how to play them, and Jacob, our keyboard player, was the one who taught me the notes on the piano, and then I was able to translate that to the guitar eventually and figure that out myself.”
Each member of The Divines plays a crucial role in crafting their expressive works of musical art.
“People do say, ‘Your songs sound like they’re well thought of,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, they are,’” Martinez said. “It’s also because they come out naturally that way, with that knowledge … because we have that vocabulary of music, of theory, and that helps a lot.”
Learn more at www.instagram.com/the.divines.
