We caught up with Chase Lawrence, the lead singer of rising indie act Coin, after their show at Evanston Space. Pulling from their relatively limited discography, the four piece put on an energetic live show to a surprisingly receptive Tuesday night crowd. Throughout the set, they played heaps of unreleased material including one never before played song for the encore. With more tours lined up in the fall and a debut album in the works, Coin is one to watch:

PGM: How did you meet?

Chase Lawrence: We met in Nashville at Belmont University. Joe [the guitar player] and I sat beside each other in a theory class. And then we met Ryan, who was a barista in a coffee shop, and Zach who was an audio engineer. It’s all kind of random, but we all met via Belmont in Nashville.

You guys all graduated?

Yeah, we just graduated like last week.

Daaaaamn. Last week? Congratulations.

The next one just says “Explain yourself?” I don’t know what that means.

I am, because I am.

How long have you guys been touring?

We’ve been doing COIN for about a year-and-a-half now, but this is only a four-day run. We’ll be touring really heavily, like a legitimate tour, in the fall.

How far along are you with the album?

The album we just started, it’ll come out on Columbia in the fall.

How’d you guys get signed?

I don’t know, good question. I guess it just happens. The harder we work the luckier we get.

Is there any significance to the name?

I’m from West Virginia right beside Kentucky, and horse racing is a really big deal in Kentucky. I found this book of Kentucky Derby winners and one of them was named “Lucky Coin.” It’s really stupid but I was like, “Lucky Coin’s taken, but Coin’s not taken? Alright let’s go for it.”

We tried to make it an acronym and it just didn’t work.

Is there any significance to “Cecilia?” – One of the highlights of the show was a synth-pop cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecelia” 

Have you ever been to a Dick’s Last Resort?

No.

It’s the worst restaurant in the entire world, they’re mean to you on purpose. They give you these hats and write mean things on top of them, it’s a novelty restaurant. We went there and “Cecilia” came on there, and we needed a live song for our set since we only had five songs to play.

The guy wrote “Paul Simon lovers” or something like that, and I was like, “Let’s just cover this song.” And they were like, “Dude, that’s ridiculous.” 

That was his insult, “Paul Simon lovers?”

It was really dumb, the guy was an idiot. We were really nice to him and he couldn’t be meaner.

If you were a tropical storm what would your name be?

Tropical Storm Nat King Cole.

How was Rio? – Lawrence mentioned in some on-stage banter that he had just returned from Rio.

Rio was dirty, fun and dangerous. Mostly just dangerous.

Did you get robbed, mugged?

No, but a girl I was with got mugged. She had her throat grabbed and she was pushed against the wall and they took her necklace off.

The World Cup is going to be terrifying.

If you guys all fought who would win?

Like in a fistfight?

Yeah.

Okay, so Ryan’s really scrappy, Zach’s legitimately bear-strong tough, Joe is also scrappy. I would for sure lose. It’s a toss up between them.

We played basketball this morning and I’ve got a pretty good shot, but I would definitely lose before everyone else. They’re a lot more aggressive than I am.

Is your hair permed or natural?

Naturally curly.

If you had to have one question asked of you what would it be? Then we could answer it as you.

“Why are you doing this? Why am I doing this for a career.”

To do something different. The same thing keeps happening to everyone, they get caught up in drugs, they get caught up in drinking, I’m sick of it. People don’t treat this like a career enough but it’s no different than any other career.

Also that jacket is incredible, dude. [In reference to Justin’s women’s racer jacket]