We were lucky to catch up with Ghost Beach recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ghost, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Growing up in Idaho Falls, I (Kaleb), decided to move to Boise to move closer to a creative and lively music scene that wasn’t around in my hometown. I was in a band, but we weren’t going anywhere and so me and our bass player, Ethan, decided to move to Boise Idaho in hopes of moving closer to fellow creatives. This move was terrifying, as I had family here but almost no friends and had to adjust to a new lifestyle of college that I wasn’t ready for. After a year of working and attending school, Ghost Beach was finally created in late 2022 with some of the most talented musicians I had met while living in Boise. While that lineup has since changed, Ghost Beach wouldn’t exist without Mykel, Ethan, or Ryan and none of that would have happened if I stayed in my hometown. Moving to a more art centered city was one of the best things I have ever done. While I had to start from square one, I have learned so much about not only creating music but playing music live that I would not have learned otherwise.

Ghost, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I fell in love with music when I was first in middle school, listening to bands like Green Day and Cage the Elephant. These bands opened my eyes to the fact that music could be used to express emotions and create whole soundscapes that are unique and comforting. From there, I taught myself how to play guitar by reading tabs and eventually when I was 15 I began trying to start a band. The first attempt was a small project called ‘beachfade’, which had and endlessly rotating lineup consisting of whichever of my closest friends in high school were available on Friday nights for jam sessions. After graduation high school and never playing anything other than house shows, eventually ‘The Lakes’ was created alongside Ethan Barkow, Porter O’neal, and Brady Robertson. This was an indie rock fever dream heavily inspired by bands like Peach Pit and the Orwells, and took us all over the place, including a trip to Boise and multiple to Utah. After a few years of playing and eventually recording at a local studio, we stagnated and realized we all wanted different things and we parted ways, with Ethan and I heading to Boise to start from scratch with all of our new knowledge we gained. A new, raw garage rock sound inspired by bands like Coachwhips and Beach Goons, Ghost Beach now includes AJ Nobles, Drake Savage-Cotton, and Mykel Hodges alongside myself. Now, we play at numerous venues around Boise as well as two appearances at Treefort Music Fest, the local music festival hosted on our own soil! Now that we’ve had so many lineup changes, we’ve started to hunker down and create new music for the first time in a year. One of our key inspirations as a group is writing about one of the only things we know about : growing up. We bond over our love of video games, cheap beer, and power chords loaded with spring reverb to tell stories of our lives.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

For me, music (and by extension, art) isn’t something I choose to do. I can’t live without it. Whether it be listening to new music that excites me, reading my favorite novels like the Edge Chronicles or Hellboy, or watching the Acadamy Award winning film Rango. Life is boring without art, and now if I stop consuming or creating art I think I’d be a shark who stopped swimming. Life is so short, why not enjoy the journey? Being an artist isn’t easy, and if it was everybody would do it. Sometimes life kicks your ass, and you’ve gotta kick right back. Sometimes people don’t like what you make. They say ‘Don’t quit your day job” or “Turn the reverb down”, but where’s the fun in that? At the end of the day, it’s the creation of the art to me that is more important than the final product. Sure, playing at Treefort was one of my favorite experiences I’ve ever had as a human. The joy that someone thought that the music my friends and I were making was good enough to share is something that cannot be conveyed by words, but more important to me is the memories I made on the way there. Not everyone gets to drive at 2 in the morning to their next show with some of their best friends along for the ride only to hitch back home in less than 24 hours. It’s tough, you get in trouble at work for taking too much time off, you sacrifice other hobbies and events for the sake of perfecting your craft, and sometimes if you’re lucky you create something beautiful that you can share. That’s what I love about the music we make, the shared sense of community that can be created from personal experiences. Sure, I only have 200 dollars in my savings account and rent is due next week but man it was one hell of a ride wasn’t it? Dance like you mean it. Buy that stupid shirt that made you laugh. Drink that cheap beer with your friends, just make sure you get home safe. That’s what life is all about.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, it’s the people I meet. I wouldn’t even be in a band alongside Drake or Mykel if music hadn’t brought me to Boise where I ended up meeting them through work. Humans are inherently social, and music has brought not only some of my best memories to date but some of the kindest people I know. Music is special to me in the way that it is one of the rare forms of art that can be participated in. You sing along, you dance, yell, stomp around and make a scene because that’s what music is meant to do. A universal language that brings people together. One of the most rewarding things for me I have ever achieved is having all of my friends together after one of our shows where we passed around a 30 rack of PBR in Isaac’s basement singing our favorite songs, participating in the songs until the early hours of the morning . The people you meet through art can change your life forever and they certainly have changed mine. Making my friends and family proud and able to share those experiences is something I hold very special and is one of the main reasons I continue to do what we do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghostbeach.id/
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/wQftynn7aew?si=e4PYq6_c8M6vic_4
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1iOI26TMNxAHBKd8DM2JIP?si=DI9DE6W9ToCmd6QZ8Q91Zg