What's Your Deal?: Orange Guava Passion
I first heard about Orange Guava Passion this past Sunday afternoon. I had been away for the weekend, and when I came back to campus I found myself with a few friends in someone’s room, watching football and having lunch from the Ratty in take-away boxes.“Could you pass me the OGP?” someone asked.“Could I pass you the what?” I replied.“The Orange Guava Passion.”“The juice? On your table?” I was confused.“Yeah,” he said. “Well, it’s also a band. They’re amazing. You missed them Saturday night.”Orange Guava Passion, I thought to myself. What a good name.So I did a little research and arranged to meet the nine members of Orange Guava Passion, the hottest new band on Brown’s campus, on a rainy Monday in October in the Barus and Holley lobby. It was three days after their breakout performance at Gigs on the Grass and four days before their next show at ANOCH (A Night on College Hill) this Saturday the 20th at 11 p.m. The whole band turned up with their instruments—they had rehearsal right after—and we sat down on some steps to chat. First, I asked them to say their names before speaking, but they let me know that they’d rather be known as a collective. Fair enough. 
Logo by Sohum Gupta '22, courtesy of Jackson Jones '22
So does anyone have a story about how the band started?“Well, I think Maya [Polsky ‘22] was the first one to invite us.”“Well, it started before that.”[Maya]: “I knew Ben [West ‘22] just through the music spheres of being guitarist-composers, and then I ran into Nat [Hardy ‘22] at the V-Dub, and he was wearing a Vulfpeck t-shirt, and I was like, ‘This kid has got to be a musician,’ and it turned out he was a bass player. Then Nat texted me saying that he knew this drummer Dhruv, and we all got together and jammed and it went really well. And I had met Danny [Silverston ‘22], Eliot [Laidlaw ‘22], and Peter [Theodores ‘22] at a jazz thing, like an opening event.”“Wait, was there a jam session before the first one that I went to?”*General Laughter*“Yes.”“Cause I went before Jackson [Jones ‘22]...I didn’t even know this!”“Yeah, it all came together very loosely.”“It was right about a month ago. September 13th was our audition, right? So we sat down and were like, ‘Let’s all write music together.’”So that audition was for Gigs on the Grass?“That was a good story. Jackson, you want to tell that one?”“Well, Danny was the one who sort of roped me into it, because we were in the same dorm. Somehow we had started talking about our music tastes and ended up sitting for five hours playing each other music and singing. So when the group was looking for a singer, he said I should come along. They had a few ideas for the songs, and we all came together one day and thought of melodies. But the day before the audition we had zero lyrics, so 30 minutes before the audition we all get together and we’re like ‘What’s this song going to be about?’ That’s when I said ‘Trader fucking Joe’s.’”“We weren’t even in a room. We were sitting outside on the grass.”“We were waiting for our audition and we hadn’t even written lyrics.”“Like literally 30 minutes before.”“We had a melody!”*Laughter*So Trader Joe’s was what that song at Gigs was about? The one on your Instagram?“Yeah.”“Well, it started as a love song.”“And we’re not a band that writes cheesy love songs—not yet. Right? We wanted to do something more interesting with that.”“And we said to ourselves, ‘What if we turn our generic, placeholder love lyrics into something about Trader Joe’s?’”That’s pretty great. What about the name? Is it a reference to the drink at the Ratty and V-Dub?“Yes.”“100%”“Absolutely.”“Eliot [Laidlaw ‘22] is like our connoisseur. He does taste tests of OGP. He can pick them out from each other.”[Eliot]: “Yeah. Well, in the Ratty there are obviously two machines, and the one closer to the door is better. I can tell the difference. And both are better than the V-Dub OGP.”*Laughter*“On the same day as the audition, we didn’t know what to call ourselves, so we’re thinking, ‘What are some things we all like?’ And then we all thought, ‘Orange Guava Passion Fruit.’”“We were thinking about something that would unify Brown students but wasn’t too generic. Everyone knows what a ‘Spicy With’ is. But Orange Guava Passionfruit Juice is obscure enough that it’s relatively niche and groovy.” 
What would you describe your sound as?“Only the funkiest and freshest of jams.”*Laughter*“Who even came up with that?”*More laughter*“I guess neo-soul, funk. We’d add R&B to that.”How did you land the ANOCH gig?“The Gigs people, when they heard our audition, were like, ‘You guys should do ANOCH!’”Right at the audition?“Yeah. We were just hoping to get into Gigs on the Grass.”“We were thinking, ‘Well, we had fun anyway. It was still cool.’”“But I guess they liked it. They had a lot of nice things to say.”“We didn’t even really know what ANOCH was.”*Laughter*So the show. When and where?“This Saturday night on the Ruth J. Simmons Quad.”“We’re playing 2 sets, roughly 11-12 and 1-2.”“It’s been a pretty crazy last two weeks, trying to get like 30 songs together.” Anything else? “We encourage people to bring OGP to our show!”“We’re really grateful for all the support from the first-years at Gigs on the Grass.”“Yeah. Maximum thankful.”“And a special shout out to the people who follow us at @orangeguavapassion.”*Laughter* There you have it: Orange Guava Passion, a group of easy-going first years. When the interview ended, they shouted out the first-year support one more time, we said goodbye, and they headed off to practice for the ANOCH gig, instruments in hand.Orange Guava Passion is Ben West (guitar), Danny Silverston (keys/melodica/background vocals), Maya Polsky (guitar/background vocals), Nat Hardy (electric bass), Dhruv Bhatia (drums/percussion), Wills Guggenheim (drums/percussion), Eliot Laidlaw (alto sax), Peter Theodores (tenor sax), and Jackson Jones (lead vocals). They occasionally feature Yale Friend (trumpet, harmonica). They play at ANOCH this Saturday at 11 p.m. on the Ruth J. Simmons Quad.Their Instagram is @orangeguavapassion and their Facebook is @OrangeGuavaPassion. Like and follow! (And while you’re at it, you can sauce us an Insta follow at @Blognonian.) Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Images via Jackson Jones '22.