By Jacob Coleman
The first time I saw Truth Value live, it was at Destination Okahumpka. Not Okeechobee. Okahumpka. As in, the rest stop on Florida’s Turnpike about halfway between Ocala and Orlando. When Truth Value took the stage, lead singer and songwriter Cooper O’Kuhn donned a shirt displaying the poster for the 2008 Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly classic, Step Brothers. Nobody else in the band was wearing a shirt for Talladega Nights, but none of them gave the impression of taking themselves too seriously, either.
Despite all this, if you went into their set expecting it to be a farce, you would’ve been immediately proven wrong. Their set ripped. Their music was angular and complex, yet raw and propulsive. The lyrics, as rapid-fire as they could be at points, were artful and poetic, yet they still felt like a stream of consciousness, containing fragments of conversations and echoes of inner monologues. Truth Value had only been around for about a year by that point, yet their sound already felt fully formed.
The cohesion and chemistry heard in Truth Value’s music also come through in their background as a band. Frontman Cooper O’Kuhn had started Truth Value as a solo venture but came to meet his bandmates through various facets of his life. Guitarist Matt Joseph, bassist Ryan Tribble and drummer Eddie Beck all came into the fold via dorm hall conversations and connections at parties and live shows. They quickly came to discover that beyond their musical talents and wide variety of influences, they all had one crucial thing in common: in their own words, they were all severe nerds. Some of that shines through in the idiosyncrasies of their music and the band’s quirky sense of humor, but it also comes in the breadth of conversations they have with each other and the community. Just in my first moments of meeting the band, we were already talking about upper-level statistics courses and the specifics of their recording equipment.
Destination Okahumpka was an event put on by Truth Value themselves in January of this year where they “competed” with local bands like Saturn Lights, Chasing Trends, and Southbound 441 for the tongue-in-cheek prize of playing at the Okahumpka rest stop. In the months after that event, the band has been no less busy. They went on a small tour of Central Florida in early March, played sets at Dance Marathon and Indie Live in early April, and have been preparing for the release of their debut EP False on April 28th. I sat down with Truth Value to discuss their upcoming music, their experiences in the Gainesville music scene, and the plausibility of “Salamander Courtship” as a band name.
Thank you for sitting down with Bonkers! Magazine. You guys recently did a weekend tour around Florida. Could you tell us a bit about it?
Cooper: St Pete was cool. We were there with some of the bands we were with in Gainesville. It was really a way to break into the St. Pete scene since I know they have a really big DIY scene there. We might have a show lined up there.
Could you tell us a bit about the St. Pete DIY scene?
Cooper: I don’t know much about it. I know they have a bunch of house shows around the city. That’s what we want to have here, I mean, we have a few DIY venues, but nothing really substantive. The scene is also just bigger here, you know? Like, if there are two shows on a night here, it really just splits the scene
Matt: That’s kind of what happened on Friday night.
Cooper: We didn’t have quite the turnout we expected, since one of our friends was having a free show and ours was paid. Still, the show went well and the bands were good. We actually sold a bunch of merch. Like, we made probably 10 times the amount we got paid for the show just by selling merch.
Eddie: We have a really cool new t-shirt design out now, by the way.
Could you share any stand-out concert stories?
Cooper: I don’t know if you’ve heard of Pike’s Hawaiian party, but I think it’s one of their biggest parties of the year. A year or two ago, they were having their first one since COVID, and since they traditionally have a band and didn’t have one lined up yet, we got a chance to play the party. My friend from summer camp a few years ago was their finance chair and when he was at our show, he asked if we wanted to play at their party in two days. I said “Sure” without knowing what to expect, but it was mostly white girls asking us to play “Alabama Roll Tide.”
Matt: Yeah, I think we played “Mr. Brightside” three times. It wasn’t really people who were there to enjoy live music.
Cooper: Also, we were lucky that we didn’t have to compete sonically with the DJs. There were DJs in the front yard and the house while we were in the backyard. While we couldn’t hear the DJ in the front yard, every time someone opened the door to the house, we could tell how loud the DJ was. Like, there’s only so loud we can turn up our amps.
Matt: Those are excuses.
Eddie: I wasn’t even mic'd up, so I could barely hear my snare over how loud it was, so I was slamming as hard as I could.
Cooper: If those are excuses, then what’s the truth?
Matt: We were playing right next to the alcohol.
About a month ago, you guys hosted Destination Okahumpka. Could you tell us a little bit about how that came to be?
Cooper: The year prior was the first year I went to Destination Okeechobee, which is a battle of the bands' competition where the winning bands get to play a smaller stage as the actual Okeechobee fest. They made it seem like a fan vote would have some impact on the final decision, but that’s not the vibe we were getting from the event. As in, the bands that were getting the best crowd reaction were not the bands that were placing. While none of this is officially known, from what we saw and from what I’ve heard about other years, the fan vote aspect was mostly just a way to sell tickets. The point being, we thought the actual event was kind of messed up, and I had the idea to hold a rival event the following year. As the date came up, I realized we already had a show booked for that weekend at the How Bazar. It was originally going to be a release party for a single, but the single wasn’t shaping, so I decided to market it as Destination Okahumpka. I figured that Okahumpka would be a good parody of Okeechobee just because I’ve passed that rest stop so many times.
It’s a nice rest stop.
Cooper: Yeah, definitely want to give an ode to Okahumpka.
Your Instagram bio says you're the "indie band equivalent of an ironic t-shirt." How ironic are we talking?
Cooper: I would say my sense of fashion is as ironic of a t-shirt as possible. But, I would say it’s a microcosm of how I try to write songs.
Matt: Our lyrics definitely have this pointy, abrasive, ironic sense to them.
Cooper: It’s definitely a bit on the edgy side.
Eddie: That said, I also like to think that we don’t take ourselves too seriously with the songwriting.
Cooper: I mean, I take the music itself seriously, but I think you have to take the stick out of the ass of the song.
Your website gives a bit of background on how you all met, but what was it like getting to know and work with each other as musicians and artists?
Cooper: The first time I met Eddie, it was just me and him. And, I’ve been meaning to ask Eddie, when we first met, did you have the impression that I already had the band together or did you know that you were starting it from scratch?
Eddie: I was a little suspicious, yeah. I was basically roped into it slightly against my will. But no, obviously it was my choice to join and I’m so glad I did.
Cooper: Save for the handcuffs, it was basically his choice.
Matt: Blink twice if you need help.
Eddie: [laughs] So anyway, I met Cooper because he was in another band called Haunches. My friend from high school, Derek, was their drummer and he was going off to art school, so they wanted someone to come in and fill his shoes. I went to their final show -
Cooper: It was our only show.
Eddie: Yeah, true. I thought what they were doing was really cool, so I talked to Cooper after the show and showed him what I had to offer, and I became the drummer for both bands simultaneously.
And Haunches is still around?
Eddie: Yep, I’m still their drummer, though Cooper’s no longer doing it.
Cooper: I made that decision because I wanted to focus on one thing. Haunches was a bit more democratic than Truth Value is, so I only had a fourth of the creative control in that band while I have a lot more creative control here. It was just too much to do both since I wanted to just do one thing really well, you know?
Matt: As for me, we were in a short-lived, never-played-any-shows, never-learned-a-whole-song-together band. I met Cooper through a mutual friend that I was starting a band with. The band started getting together but started falling apart just as quickly, and while that was happening, Cooper asked if I would be interested in working with his songs in the future. I said, “Let me know,” and he did.
Cooper: And as for Ryan, who couldn’t make it today, he lived on my floor in freshman year and I always knew he played bass. Honestly, I think I only saw him play bass 2 or 3 times that year. He’s pre-med, so he’s a very busy guy. But anyways, I was playing a solo set as Truth Value at the Driptones Halloween party that year, and Ryan very drunkenly came up to me and said he’d like to play with me. To this day, I don’t know how serious he was at the time since he was pretty sloshed that night, and maybe he just joined because I kept bothering him afterward [laughs]. Matt came with his boyfriend that night and said the same thing, and I knew that once I found a drummer, it was go time. Then I found Eddie and things just came together.
Does that happen all that often in the Gainesville scene?
Cooper: Honestly it was pretty miraculous. I had been trying to start a band since high school, but I had never had all the pieces and luck at one time before.
Matt: Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
That’s a good quote. That’s going in the article.
Matt: [laughs] It’s not original, I think I heard Ed Sheeran say it.
Could you walk us through what the process typically looks like for writing and recording a Truth Value song?
Cooper: We have yet to sit together as a band and develop a jam into a song. Most of the time, it’s just me writing alone on an acoustic guitar. Some of the time, they don’t really shape up into a band song but more of a guitar and vocal type thing. Still, I usually have a strong vision of what they could sound like with the band, especially with my earliest songs. I’m more or less directing, although with Matt, sometimes it’s me directly writing a part since I can play guitar, and the same thing with bass. I would say about half the time, I give Matt roughly the confines of what I want and then he takes the reins.
Matt: It definitely depends on the part. Sometimes he’ll give me a part and it’ll be a keeper, sometimes I’ll start with what he writes and change parts of it over time.
Cooper: A lot of times I’ll know that I want a certain lick in a certain section, and we’ll develop what goes into it and what comes out of it. With the drums, [laughs] it’s a lot of bad beatboxing. I’m usually a lot pickier about the drums and it usually takes more time to get those down since it takes more time for me to explain what I want.
Eddie: Yeah, I have to do a bit of translating sometimes. Usually, Cooper comes in with a really good idea of the sound and rhythmic feel of a song and I take that and write my own fills and create my drum patterns around that idea. Sometimes there’s a reference track or suggestion that the drumming should be like Dave Grohl or someone like that, but most of the time it starts with that idea.
Cooper: The songwriting has honestly gotten a bit more challenging since as the band has developed, I’ve gotten more ideas of what the band sounds like and what the band should sound like. The project we have now is probably the summation of our most aggressive output. It’s not super aggressive overall, but definitely more so that what we’ll have going forward. I always had this idea in my head that since I’m always sweaty when I’m on stage, if the audience isn’t sweaty, they aren’t getting any enjoyment. Thinking about it now, I’d say that was pretty misguided since I get plenty of enjoyment at shows from just standing and nodding my head. If you write good songs that people can do that too, that’s also pretty cool.
Going back to the new EP. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Cooper: It’s going to be called False, as in Truth Value, and it’s coming out on April 28th. I guess the concept of it is that it’s just a screenshot of what our sound is at the moment. The album art is pretty red, so I would say we’re in our red period right now, à la Taylor Swift or something.
Matt: Yeah, just Taylor Swift.
Cooper: I would say it’s me putting a bow on the aggressive songwriting style. While there might be a few more aggressive songs later on, I think it’s going to be a lot more mid-tempo stuff from here on out since that’s what comes more naturally to me in my songwriting. So, in a color, I would say this EP is red.
On this EP or just in general, are there any Truth Value songs that particularly stand out to you?
Cooper: I think “Ingrained” is the one that people gravitate towards the most, which I think is funny because it’s a bit lackluster lyrically compared to some of our other songs. Sonically, though, I think it’s very sure of itself and it’s a good mission statement for what we sound our sound to be.
So would you say that “Ingrained” would be a good introduction for someone unfamiliar with Truth Value?
Matt: Yeah, I would say it’s our most accessible.
Cooper: If I was looking at our songs without any knowledge or feedback on what people thought about them, I would not guess that “Ingrained” would be the one that people gravitate towards. But, we started playing it at shows and people were saying, “Ooh, that one,” so I guess that one should be coming soon. To that extent, there was a workshop that John Mayer did at Berkeley, and he asked the audience, “Who here thinks the general public in America is mostly stupid?” He followed that up with, “Let me tell you something: the general public is about 300 million times smarter than you are.” Which is true! The point being, listen to what people are saying. It’s good to act on your own instincts but still listen to people. Sometimes they know more than you.
Gainesville has a pretty vibrant and rich music scene and history. Has the connection you’ve made in this scene had any influence on your music?
Cooper: The music scene in Gainesville has had multiple periods, with the biggest being the punk scene in the late 80s and early 90s. The punk in our music doesn’t really come from that, more just from the punk influences in our music that we all disparately share. I would say whatever indie-isms we have in our music are more of a Gainesville thing, though. Our songwriting is more or less me sitting on a guitar and writing a song, but in bringing that to a band, you definitely have to put that into some sort of sound palette. Just for the sake of focus, you probably want to pick one and stick to it. Not that we chose it because that’s what’s popular here, but I did get into it because that’s what was around. I guess I also got into it in high school with the indie rock buzz that was happening in 2016 and 2017, although I would say that’s dying off now and entering a phase. Because of that, I would say our songwriting style is a bit different than the typical indie thing. I think taking the Gainesville indie sound and adding a bit more aggression and lip-biting irony is a good way to define our sound.
If you got stranded on a desert island but were somehow still able to play 3 albums, what would they be and why?
Eddie: Oh, I made a list of that once but I think I lost it.
Cooper: I think I’m close to an answer. I’ll go with Room for Squares by John Mayer. He has a lot of good albums, but I think that one has the most songs on it that I enjoy the most. Nevermind by Nirvana and Cardinal by Pinegrove. There are 8 songs on that album and all of them are great.
I would agree. For Pinegrove, I’d also say their style is not necessarily aggressive but definitely a bit complex musically. Would you say that influences your songwriting?
Cooper: Yeah, I love Evan Stephens Hall’s songwriting style. I’ve been accused of being wordy before, which I think is a valid accusation [laughs], but I think he’s the same way. I probably get a lot of my wordiness from his music, although I also do a lot of it on my own anyway because I’m an asshole. Various people have done that wordiness well and I think he’s one of them. There are a lot more ways to do it in a bad way than in a good way, but he’s one of the few who have figured that out.
Matt: Aw man, this one’s hard for one.
Cooper: Just think of albums that you like all the songs on. I don’t like all the songs on Room for Squares, but I like enough of them. [under his breath] Aw wait, I forgot Frank Ocean’s Blonde.
Eddie: I might sound like a music elitist here, but I’m gonna go with Abbey Road by the Beatles, Outlandos d’Amour by the Police, and To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar. It was really hard to cut out jazz because I love jazz.
Matt: That’s where I thought you were going with the whole “music elitist” thing.
Eddie: Yeah, I might have to trade one of those out. Let’s trade Abbey Road with Kind of Blue by Miles Davis.
Do Stewart Copeland and Jimmy Cobb, who played on Kind of Blue, influence your drumming?
Eddie: Stewart Copeland is for sure an influence, like maybe my biggest influence overall. Dave Grohl is also a big one since we pull a lot from alternative rock and 90s rock. Larnell Lewis, who drums with a really talented jazz fusion band called Snarky Puppy, is also one of my favorite drummers of all time. But yeah, I would say I pull from all of those influences.
Matt: I happen to be wearing this album on my shirt, but this is Downtown Battle Mountain by Dance Gavin Dance. That’s definitely one, and they’re probably my favorite band. The others would be Hot Pink by Doja Cat and These Two Windows by Alec Benjamin.
Cooper: Oh my God, I don’t even know what to call that. It’s like the candy-fication of every sound possible.
Eddie: I wanna throw a Pink Floyd album in there, too. Let’s trade Abbey Road-
Cooper: You already traded Abbey Road [laughs].
Eddie: Oh yeah, trade Kind of Blue for, uh - ok, never mind.
Matt: Ok, what would your fourth album be?
Eddie: Maybe Dark Side of the Moon.
Matt: Oh my gosh [laughs].
Eddie: Look, I know, I know. It’s a good album, ok?
Cooper: I gotta be real, I like covers of Beatles songs and I like them as written, but I don’t like the production. It could just be because they’re older, but for a band as big as the Beatles, I don’t like putting on my “ok, this is from the 1960s” ears. Like, there are albums from the ‘60s that hold up a lot better, sound-wise, than the Beatles. Using the logic of your question, where I’m listening to the exact recordings, I wouldn’t touch the Beatles with a 10-foot pole.
Just out of curiosity, what ‘60s albums would you say surpass them, sound-wise?
Cooper: I’d say In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson. Honestly, Pink Floyd. There are a lot of good-sounding Pink Floyd records. Dark Side of the Moon came out in 1973, and it sounds as good as anything that’s ever coming out.
Matt: Also a lot of ‘60s jazz has really clean production. Most of it sounds modern.
Eddie: I’d personally say the Beatles sound a lot better than most of the bands from that era.
Cooper: I mean yeah, but-
Matt: Ok, we probably shouldn’t go down this rabbit hole.
That’s fair, let’s go back to Truth Value. The band played at Dance Marathon on April 1st. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Matt: It’s an elaborate April Fools Day joke [laughs].
Cooper: That’s honestly a good segue to how that came to be. We’re playing a good slot, since we’re playing at 9 rather than, like, 3 AM. Honestly, I don’t know how we’d do that. I probably have the highest energy on stage, but in general, I’m also the sleepiest boy. Anyways, we got the contract from Dance Marathon and it said “The artist heretofore known as The Driptones.” I was freaking out about this for a couple of hours thinking there was a big mix-up. This was around the time of the Heartwood Festival, so I went to the Driptones and asked them about the contract. Long story short, I read the file name of the contract and it said “Truth Value Contract,” so I asked for a replacement. and we got everything squared away.
Cooper: One slight concern we have going in is that we need to keep everything G-rated and we’re not the most G-rated band. It’s not to say that being G-rated is a bad thing. Like in comedy, it’s easy to make dirty jokes just to get a laugh. It’s definitely harder to be funny while being clean. Same thing with music. You could probably lob that accusation at plenty of rap artists who overuse sexual innuendo for just a hook. Nevertheless, we’re selecting our songs very carefully to keep things clean. There are some songs where we can just change the lyrics, but it’s also a matter of making sure the meaning of the song isn’t lost, either.
Is there anything else coming up you’d like Truth Value fans to know?
Cooper: The first single, “The Alchemist,” came out on March 23rd. There’ll be another single, “You Make It Only Smile,” on April 13th, and the EP will be on April 28th. We’ll probably be in the studio for a while after that trying to make new stuff. We’re probably going to take a Gainesville hiatus over the summer and focus more on other cities in Florida, and I’m talking to one or two booking agents about that.
On that note, how is the experience of booking shows and tours?
Cooper: Gainesville is very unique in this regard. My first show played at the High Dive was played by myself, and all I did was email the owner and get in the show. For other cities, you have to book through an agent. It requires a lot more connections and networking for booking out of town.
What do you do as a band when you’re not making music?
Matt: We debate the human condition [laughs].
Cooper: I mean, we’re lucky in that we were just four dudes who play an instrument, but we have the common ground of-
Matt: -being complete and total nerds. Don’t let us get into anything, it’s so bad. Once we get into it, we’ll just go on and on about the most esoteric and uninteresting concepts.
Cooper: Yeah, like on the way to Orlando for our last show, we were talking about objective morality.
Truth Value is a sort of logical and philosophical term. Did your band name stem from those conversations?
Cooper: It was a name that I came up with before the band. I try to keep that in the lyrics, which are sort of linguistic, I guess, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. Point is, I try to put thought into the lyrics that evoke the name’s resonance. I also have a list of band names, and most of them are horrible. Like, objectively terrible. What’s funny is that I have lots of ideas for good band names and only some of them make me write them down, but still 95% of these are terrible.
[he shows a long notes app list of band names]
Matt: I’m the same with lyrics. I’ll write down random lyrics and 99.999% of them are horrible, although I make a new note for each of them so my app is completely cursed.
Cooper: When I have a new song I’m writing, I’m the same way. I’ll have a phrase and I want to write the song around that. That actually happened with “The Alchemist.” I had the phrase “I want to buy up old churches and turn them into strip clubs” sitting on my phone, and I wrote it around that. [reading his notes app] Oh, “Bomb Went Off,” that’s a good band name. I think Truth Value is in here somewhere.
So this long notes list is the origin of Truth Value?
Cooper: Yeah, I said it on a FaceTime call with my friend and she told me to write it down. At the time, I agreed it was a good band name.
And it turned out to be a winner.
Matt: I mean, yeah.
Cooper: I’ve had issues with it.
Matt: We should’ve been Salamander Courtship [laughs]. When we were in the other band, that was one of the two main competing ideas. I think Cooper got it from a biology textbook.
Cooper: Yeah, I was taking some blowoff class and saw Salamander Courtship, and thought, “This is a clinical term! This is a scientific term!” [laughs]
I feel like with a name like Salamander Courtship, you would have to be a prog band.
Matt: Yeah, that’s true. We were originally going to be a heavy math rock band.
Eddie: It’s a little like Jefferson Starship, just so much worse.
Cooper: With these band names, I’ve heard Michael Jackson talk about this, but ideas are in the air and you have to be receptive to them. I’ll come up with a band name, check if anyone has that name on Spotify, and if it’s free, I’ll write it down. A few months later, I’ll check again and two or three bands have that name.
Matt: That’s the problem, in some respect. If you have a half-decent band name, someone’s taking it. That’s how you know you’ve got a good name.
Cooper: I think if you’re a bit clever, you can get around that. Like Salamander Courtship, I don’t think anyone’s taking that name.
Matt: Is that clever? Does that fall under the purview of a clever idea? [laughs]
Do you think a good band name is a key part of success?
Cooper: No, like, the String Cheese Incident? There are plenty of terrible band names out there. Honestly, The Beatles and the Arctic Monkeys aren’t great band names. What I’ve come to realize is that a good band name is just a string of syllables that can just be reduced to that and nothing more. You never think through the letters in names like Matthew or anything, they just become the name. If something sounds good enough to the point where it can become a name and it doesn’t already mean something off-putting or troubling, then might as well go for it.
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