It didn’t take long talking with local musicians about their favorite North Carolina artists to start hearing some familiar names. Fifth Floor, a pop rock group from Greensboro, was the first to catch my attention, thanks to Seth from blankstate. gushing about them and hyping me up. The excitement intensified about 15 seconds into their debut EP, It’s Not That Serious. I was instantly sold by the crooning vocals — which bring Bad Rabbits vocalist Fredua Boakye to mind — and the impressive band behind them, from the riffing guitars to the bouncy rhythm duo.
I reached out to talk over the phone, but the lack of face-to-face interaction did little to keep the guys from being their true selves. They rattled off their unique musical histories and thanked everyone who has boosted their music so far. It was as light-hearted as it was filled with insights on their upcoming debut album, which they hope to release later this year.
Fifth Floor has become one of those bands I instinctively call out as a local group for artists and music fans to check out. Not just because they’re phenomenal musicians but because they’re even better people. I hope our conversation below conveys as much as possible to you.
Can y’all introduce yourselves with your name, your role in the band, and something you’ve been jamming to recently?
Trey: My name is Trey, and I play drums. I’ve been listening to some heavier stuff lately, like Deafheaven, who just released their new single. I’ve been bumping that and the new Rosary EP [ROSARY IS THE NEXT BIG THING] a lot; they’re both really good. One of my favorite modern hip-hop artists, JPEGMafia, released a director’s cut of his latest album [I Lay Down My Life for You], and I’ve also been listening to that.
Joshua: I’m Joshua Wilson, or J Will, and I play bass. I’ve been listening to oldies like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and stuff like that. Also a lot of J-pop because their instrumentation is so interesting.
PJ: My name is PJ, and I play guitar and violin. I’ve been listening to Bad Bunny‘s new album [DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS]; it’s a good album that speaks to me and speaks to home.
Elijah: I’m Eli, and I play guitar and sing. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Story So Far‘s first album [Under Soil and Dirt], blankstate.’s new EP [LOTUS], and Rosary‘s new EP. Other than that, just some low-key white girl music. But I love white girl music, I’m gonna be so for real. One song I’ve had on repeat is called “The Edge” by Sydney Ross Mitchell and that’s super fire.
Damn, I love the variety that y’all have in your music tastes! How did each of you first get introduced to music? Was it playing an instrument or getting obsessed with a specific artist?
Trey: At a very young age, my dad put me on to 70s prog bands like Rush and Yes. All those bands have incredible drummers, and listening to that type of music basically made me want to play like that. So I’ve been playing drums since I was about 10 years old, and I’ve been playing in gigs since I was 15, so I’ve been playing for nearly seven years now.
Joshua: I’m nowhere near Trey. I started off dancing because my mom was a dancer. I would dance a lot to hip hop, and that was just like my introduction to music. I didn’t start playing an instrument until I was about 6 years old; I started on drums, then switched to guitar, and later, I learned piano. Around my sophomore and junior years, I finally picked up the bass and found that the instrument came naturally to me. I’ve been doing that for the past 2-3 years.
PJ: My first instrument was guitar, but I quit guitar to play violin because that was cooler. The only thing I’ve been in my whole life is the school orchestra; this is my first band experience of playing with people who aren’t robots. That’s pretty cool.
Elijah: I also started dancing, but I started dancing and playing the drums when I was 2.
PJ: You were doing both at the same time?
Elijah: Not at the same time, I just couldn’t make up my mind and shit. My mom listened to everything and put me on 90% of the stuff I knew as my music baseline. My dad listened to a whole bunch of hip hop like Nas and Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, stuff like that. He was really big on early ‘90s hip hop.
I picked up the guitar in 5th or 6th grade because of 5 Seconds of Summer. That’s when they started doing stuff and started making their really big headway, which inspired me to pick up the guitar. This is also my first experience gigging with a band. I played one or two acoustic sets by myself, and then I asked the guys to play with me. Like, “let’s just make this shit a band.”
Image credit: nick_wood14
What led you to start that acoustic solo project, and when did you start working together as a four-piece?
Elijah: I’ve been releasing music by myself ever since my sophomore year of high school. Then, in my senior year of high school, Josh and I were in a band class together. We would always talk about being in a band together one day. And then, lo and behold, here we are.
I was doing acoustic sets because I wanted to start playing more. And then I met Trey in a parking lot. He was leaving, and I said, “Trey, I know you play drums. I got a gig coming up soon in Winston-Salem. Do you want to play drums for me?” And he said yeah. So we just needed to find the rest of the pieces.
PJ and I met at Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC). I had written our song “Sorry” a few years before it came out as Fifth Floor, and it always had violin in it. And once I found out that PJ played violin, I was like, “Yo, it would be super sick if you played this song with me and played the violin.” And through him doing that one acoustic set with me, we started getting together and practicing for more of my sets. Those practices turned into group practices, which turned into Fifth Floor and what we are now.
We were going to be called Odd Butterfly, but that shit was ass. Or Bandsaw, I was considering that too. I couldn’t think of anything else. I was going to be like, “Man, we’re going to have to introduce ourselves as Bandsaw.”
Instead you’ve got that sweet alliteration. People are suckers for that.
Elijah: You know it! We were in the practice room at GTCC, and I was throwing around band names. I suggested Seventh Floor, and then our old bandmate Ryan said, “Let’s be called Fifth Floor because the five ball in the pool is orange, and that is my favorite color.” Orange is also my favorite color, so that just stuck. It made sense at the time, too, because there were five of us, but now there are four.
Trey: The fifth floor is the audience.
Elijah: Ooooooooh, damn! That’s my boy!
PJ: That one came right off the dome!
Elijah: We gotta say that at a show. “As you see, there’s four of us, so the fifth floor must be you all.” That is so fire.
You mentioned that “Sorry” was a song that had been in the works before the band came together. Are the rest of the songs that you put out on the EP also earlier songs or did some of those come together as a four piece?
PJ: Most of the songs on the EP were Eli’s songs, except for “Talk is Cheap”. They all have small aspects of everybody else in the band. But “Talk is Cheap” is the first collaboration. And it’s my favorite that we’ve written off the EP because it just has a lot of breakdowns. It’s cool to hear people live with crowd participation and whatnot.
Elijah: We’ll do this thing live with the bridge section where we get everyone to sing “One more night,” too. There was one show where I pulled out my in-ears and it was really, really loud. That was such a surreal moment. Stuff like that being in songs is really fun for us.
How did y’all start performing as a band?
Elijah: I want to make a very clear point to shout out the DOSE Art Collective and The Lab. That was our first gig ever. The Lab does this really cool thing where, if you’re a smaller artist, they provide a welcoming stage for any genre of music. Anyone, anywhere can perform. And the crowd that it attracts is so diverse, so someone is going to connect with your music when you perform that night. That was our first performance experience together, and we’ve gone back a couple of times since.
We became a band in 2023, and after playing that show at The Lab, we played like three-hour sets. Just longer sets, not real “music scene” sets. And then our brother band, Condado, put us on our first full, real bill at the Monstercade in Winston-Salem in early 2024. That was our last show as a five-piece.
Image credit: aaronxyoungmkii
Since y’all have had the EP out for six months, what have the shows since releasing that been like? Do you have any goals for 2025?
Joshua: Our recent shows have been very high-energy, mostly because of the new stuff that we’ve been playing within our sets. The goal is to release our first album this year and fully promote that as much as we can. The EP showed a glimpse, but most of those songs are Eli’s songs and not like all of Fifth Floor. I think with the album, we’ll be able to show who Fifth Floor is fully.
Trey: We’ve been working with SpiceHouse in Sanford. They’ve been incredible with helping because working on an album is really hard. There’s a lot of thought that needs to be put into it. We’ve been recording guitars recently, which are going at a steady pace. But there are also times in the studio when you realize, “Oh, this is not what it sounded like when we played live.” So you have to rework things with the producers to ensure everything is up to standard.
Our goal is to basically just make the best music that we can. I wouldn’t want anything to be left out of the experience or half-assed something because we’re stuck in that part. We want to get everything right with the album. So, in that aspect, we’re taking our time with it. But we just want to make sure that everyone is completely satisfied with it.
Elijah: This is the first time that we’ve sat down and created songs from scratch with the four of us. At first, the idea was to reuse some old songs that I still had. But Trey and I came to the conclusion that we want to start off on a fresh note, put our best collective foot forward, and try to make the best music that we can come up with.
I’m extremely proud of the songs we’ve written so far; now, they’re coming out in the studio. They sound fantastic. The folks at SpiceHouse are doing such a good job working with us and being patient when we haven’t been able to go as consistently as we wanted to.
Trey: A lot of 90s albums were made in an entire week. Whenever it comes to modern music that is more polished and produced, depending on how you feel about music production, it could be a better or worse thing. But for us, our music and sound needs to be perfected so that it can really shine. If you’re just playing straight-up rock music, that’s one thing because that can sound raw. But if you’re a pop rock band and want to make poppier songs, you have to put much more thought into things.
Elijah: As the songs get more complicated, we’re also taking into account how we’re going to perform these songs live, what our album rollout process is going to look like, and what our goal and mindset is with the album. Because you can release a project, but if you have no direction after you release it, you’re kind of doing nothing.
That’s what we learned from releasing our EP. We put it out, but we didn’t keep our foot on the gas as much as we could have. Or we didn’t push it as hard as I felt like we could have. But we were learning from our old process and trying to come up with a more persistent approach when releasing this album.
It makes a lot of sense, especially when you’re putting out an EP and trying to build on that momentum. It’s hard until you put it out and you start seeing people react to it to really get a sense of “how can we push the next thing that we put out and have that be better?” So I’m excited to see how y’all start to put out some new songs and promote the album.
Image credit: jakeowensmedia
Who are some of your favorite local bands, either from Greensboro or across North Carolina?
PJ: Candado!
Elijah: We just played this big festival that Mixed Signals put together in Raleigh. That’s the members of Found Footage, shout-out to them. This band from Virginia, they’re called North Bloom. Also, Chase Evers. Both of them are really sick. Shoutout to Bedroom Division, Trey loves them.
Trey: Yeah, they’re probably top 3 in my favorite local bands.
Elijah: briZB, she’s incredible. Nervous Surface. Moving Boxes. There’s also Mush, Puppy! from Chapel Hill. Rosary, of course. Weymouth is sick.
Trey: I am playing in a melodic hardcore band that’s kinda like a local supergroup. It features me, Jackson from Rosary, JT from Moving Boxes, Jacob from blankstate., and our bass player Tabitha. Keep on the lookout for that project, it’s called nevermoresincere.
Anything y’all want to add before we wrap?
Elijah: We thank everyone very much for all the support that we’ve received, especially over the past six months or so. We’ve received a big amount of support and we’ve gained a lot of followers recently, so I’m guessing we’re doing something right. All the people that we’ve interacted with in these past couple shows this year have had really kind souls and are sweet people. They all play in incredible bands and are amazing. We’re really thankful that our scene is so welcoming and accepting to new bands. And to the new people coming in, trying to make their way as well.
Joshua: If there are any bands out there thinking they’re too young or whatever, just go for it. Especially nowadays, because with social media and everything, you just never know what could happen. More than anything, just take a chance. Because you’ll never know where life will end up taking you.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Leave a Reply