Banff is one of those bands that’s been playing together since before some of its members could drive. Tom Cascone, Xander Schnegelberger, James Colone, and drummer John Fleischer came up through their local School of Rock and a run of backyard cover sets. Together, they’ve made the slow pivot from covers to originals, with over 2 years of stage-testing their material before recording.
That patient approach shows up on Flood, the debut EP they cut with producer Max Gowan at Found After Dark and released in May 2026. The songs span roughly three years of writing, prog rock instincts inherited from that shared School of Rock adolescence, and a studio process that, by the band’s own account, got easier every time out. It’s an impressively groovy, prog-influenced rock record that’s gotten regular spins on WKNC and enough outside attention to draw interest from well past the Triangle.
I chatted with three-fourths of the band (John couldn’t make the call) to dig into the years-long gap between those first riffs and the final studio product, and what it actually costs to make your own CDs, DIY-style.
What have y’all been listening to lately?
Tom (guitar/vocals): The new Tracey Nelson album [Hercules] is really good. I saw him play about three weeks ago. The Beatles are always a mainstay; I feel like I go through a weekly Beatles album phase. The newest Lifeguard album [Ripped and Torn] has been on repeat too. I just got back from Europe, and when I was on the Tube in London, that was the only album I listened to.
James (bass/vocals): Los Amigos Invisibles. Great stuff. And specifically “The World Is a Ghetto” by George Benson. It’s a huge variety here in my world.
Xander (guitar): Jamiroquai, always. “The World Is a Ghetto” — I was listening to that with James. This band called Parcels, I’ve been on a lot lately. Always a little Led Zeppelin and the Police. And Blind Melon‘s self-titled album, you can’t go wrong. I listen to that a lot.
Who was the first musician or band you remember thinking, “This is mine, this is part of my identity now”?
Tom: The Beatles were an early one, I’ve been listening to them my whole life. Then in middle school and early high school I got really obsessed with prog rock. Rush, Yes, King Crimson, Camel, all these obscure bands. You just fall down this rabbit hole of needlessly complex music.
At the time, me, John, and Xander were all in the School of Rock program, and I feel like that place manufactures prog rock fans. So the first thing I really obsessed over with them was Rush and the Beatles too.
James: For me it’d probably have to be Frank Zappa. I started playing my instrument around COVID, and Zappa was hard, so I listened to Apostrophe probably 200 times a week just trying to learn it. That album’s drilled into my head. That’s the golden age of music for me.
Xander: The first songs I ever learned on guitar were Led Zeppelin songs, so that’s always been a big one. The Police was my first School of Rock season, and I’ve loved them ever since. A little Phish in high school too.
It’s cool that you’ve each got these big anchor bands — Beatles, Zeppelin, Zappa — but you’re also coming from a similar place, given the School of Rock overlap.
Xander: Yeah, I’d say it definitely made our tastes combine a bit. Like Rush, me and Tom were both into that at the same time. I think also just playing together at that age, when you’re a sponge for weird music, we were all discovering it together, right around COVID. Like I’d hear “James just learned an entire Rush album, he just sat down and did it” from John, and I’m like, “What?!”
What was the transition like, going from playing together at School of Rock to starting your own band and writing original songs?
Tom: Me, Xander, and John were in School of Rock together, and around the same time we started to feel like we wanted to do something else. Write our own songs, play our own gigs. Around then, James had expressed interest in jamming with John. I knew James; we were friendly but not super close. John was like, “Just come over, James is coming too, we’ll jam.”
After a few months of that, we played our first show for James’s mom’s birthday. We kept playing cover shows for a while until we decided we should get serious about writing our own stuff, which had been the goal from the start, just delayed.
That’s when we brought Xander in. We’d been playing songs with two guitar parts or a keyboard and a guitar, and I thought I could handle it solo. I could not. Once Xander joined, we really started wanting to write more, and that’s when the shift happened. No more covers, let’s just write. That was late 2022, early 2023.
James: Same story for me, more or less. I wasn’t in School of Rock; it was just jamming, then cover bands, then originals mixed into the cover sets, and sure enough we’re at the Pinhook playing a fully original set. Pretty classic pipeline, I’d imagine.
But we did start really young. We’ve been playing together for about seven years now. The chemistry’s there, and we’ve been friends a long time. I’ve known Xander since grade school. John and I have known each other since preschool, as long as I can remember, honestly.
When it came time to put together Flood, what was the process like compared to when you first started writing originals back in 2023?
Tom: Some of the songs on Flood are actually some of the first ones we wrote. We’d been playing original shows since late ’23, early ’24, and Flood was really just, “Okay, let’s take the best five songs we’ve got and finally record and release them.”
We hadn’t put anything real out. We had a couple of singles, but they were made at home and didn’t feel real to us. It was more like, “oh, it’s something.” We were chaining together, what, three Focusrites and two interfaces —
Xander: Yeah, we had a home studio setup, but we’d had a couple of home-recorded songs that were good, but only as good as we could get from our loft. We were all like, “When are we actually going to release something real?” If you go to a show and see someone and they don’t have anything recorded, you’re probably going to forget about them. We wanted something real, something people would come back to.
James: In terms of how we wrote each song, that definitely changed over time. From the first song we wrote to the newest, probably “Throw Me Around LIke a Doll”, there’s about a three-year gap. So it’s in some ways a compilation record.
Tom: The process was different for each one. Not that older songs are worse; we just got better at writing, and it started coming easier. Songs like “Flood” and “Doll”, by the time I brought those sections to the guys, they were pretty much done. “New Moon” was different; I just had the first riff, and the rest of the song came from everybody else.
James: Both approaches are valid, but we just got faster at the process. It’s like working out a muscle.
Having played these songs live for 2+ years before recording, did the older ones change much once you got into the studio version people could actually take home, or did they stay close to how they started?
James: I know for a fact my basslines have changed.
Tom: For the most part it’s pretty similar. The parts are mostly the same, but the vibe and sound of each part definitely shifted. I changed guitar tones on some songs three or four times just to see what worked. “Flood” actually started out in 6/8 instead of 4/4. That was a demo that floated around for a while until John said it sounded stupid and we should rearrange it into 4/4. He was right. John makes calls that I’m not always thrilled about, but they turn out to be the right choice.
I recently listened to an old show recording and realized “Stay” is definitely the oldest song on the EP, without a doubt. The vibe’s completely different now even though it’s technically the same song. We play it way slower, and the trippy back half got stretched out more. These songs, especially “Stay,” got incubated for a long time in the live set, so they got everyone’s individual input before we ever recorded them.
Xander: “Stay” for sure. That one’s been around a while and changed a lot. Like Tom said, we kept switching up tones and trying things in the studio. The last section changed too; there’s a pause in my solo now, more stuff filling the space and making it sound weirder. All the songs, honestly, we’ve played together so long we can just jam a little and change things up on the floor.
What was it like working with Max Gowan? He’s such a prolific producer; it seems like I’ve talked to so many artists over the last few months who’ve recorded with him.
Tom: A lot of fun; I had a great time. We were really lucky to find him through Yvonne and Travis from Truth Club, since they both work at Kings. When we played there, they told us we needed to record with their friend. John and I went down one day, and Max was ready to do it almost immediately.
He was great to work with, especially since he was practically working with children, but he made something really awesome out of it. He’s been a great friend and a great producer, though it barely felt like being produced. It was more just a back-and-forth conversation about the song, him making calls, us figuring out what we wanted versus what he thought would work.
James: I was only there for two or three sessions, since I was in college and don’t live close. But hearing actual demos come together, I was like, “Holy cow, this is real.” Like something I could show my friends without saying “Don’t judge the mix, it’s just the home studio.” It was a great time, and I’m really happy with what came out of it.
Xander: We got so lucky with Max. It felt like we had a friend just hanging out with us who happened to be recording. He’d mess around and make dumb jokes, but he’s so good at what he does. He made it so chill. Even if something sounded a little rough, he never made you feel that way, just kept giving suggestions without pushing. And obviously it sounds amazing.
Tom: It really does. And I think we put him through hell a little. The first day we got to the studio at 4 PM and didn’t leave until 2:30 in the morning. Long sessions, but he never cracked, never dropped the hammer and told us to get out. He’d just say, “Alright, maybe one more take and then you can go home.”
We were probably pushing him more than we should have. Mixing took a while too, a lot of back-and-forth, just me and him at the studio. He was incredibly generous with his time and energy.
In terms of putting the EP out, obviously there’s Bandcamp and streaming, but you also did homemade cassettes and CDs. What was that process like?
Tom: The cassettes I did myself with a label maker and old cassette stock. Five or so of the twelve or fifteen I made were blank tapes I found in my attic. I’ve had a stereo with a cassette deck my whole life, so I just used that.
For the CDs, I burned all of them, and then Xander came over, we put on a Lego Star Wars video on YouTube, and ran an assembly line. Burn the CD, print the label, number it, sleeve it. We were at it for two or three hours, but it was fun. We’re definitely not the only band doing it this way, but professional runs cost real money, and I wasn’t about to spend that.
A bonus of being a younger band is that a lot of our fans are just our friends, high school and college kids with old beater cars that still have CD players. So now our CD just lives in people’s cars, which is kind of fun.
How’s the response to the EP been from your side?
Xander: Great. I’ve only heard good things, though there’s probably some bias since most of the people telling us anything are our friends. But people like it, people enjoy it. I still hear it on the radio; WKNC’s had us in fairly heavy rotation, which is nice. Even people more embedded in the scene have said good things.
Tom: We did get one review from a guy in New York named Chris, which was really nice. He DM’d us out of nowhere and said he wanted to do an interview, and I said sure. We haven’t had a lot of press, but between the people we’ve sold it to and the crowds at shows, the reaction’s been positive, which is gratifying. It still feels like a small circle though, and I’d love to know what the bigger circle thinks. Not sure how to actually reach that, but we’ll see.
James: Put up an Instagram poll: “Hey guys, is our EP good or bad?”
Who are some of your favorite local or North Carolina musicians and bands you’d want to shout out?
James: My Sister Maura. RIP.
Tom: I love Truth Club, they’re so good and I’ve seen them six times. That new Dreamscent record lives in my car now. The i26connector record is really great too; they’re not super vocal about it, but I love them.
One more from the Triangle is Verity Den. First time I saw them was opening for Wednesday, and I’m glad I caught them on such a good sound system, because they smacked me in the face, in a great way.
Xander: Got to be Jupiter 2. One of my favorites, always fun to play with, super cool guys, their music’s awesome.
Tom: Both of them actually taught John and James, way back when we were wee lads. I think they were still in elementary school.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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