A&E

Indie-rock band The Mowgli’s will open the Dillo Day main stage this year. The California-based band is known for its upbeat music, including singles “I’m Good” and “San Francisco.” The Daily spoke with band member Katie Jayne Earl about her experience leading up to Dillo Day.

The Daily: What most excites you about performing at Dillo Day?
Earl: Honestly, just the show. We’ve been working on so much new material and it’s going to be one of the first times that we get to really try some of these new songs and see how people like them and see what the reaction is like and that’s one of our favorite things to do, just to play shows and get the crowd excited.

The Daily: What is it like performing at student music festivals compared to other events? Is there a different vibe?
Earl: Students just work a little extra hard for that fun. They’re in the middle of school so they’ve been taking tests and studying and dealing with all of that college life stuff and they really feel like they’ve earned themselves a good time when they get to a festival.

The Daily: The Mowgli’s are known for having a very positive, happy, upbeat vibe with positive messages. Where does this come from and where do those messages originate?
Earl: A lot of us grew up listening to a lot of emo music. It’s all we listened to in high school, bands like Saves the Day and Dashboard Confessional and these bands that express themselves in kind of a sad way. I think a lot of the boys grew up playing music like that. And then it became this thing where it was more challenging to express ourselves in a meaningful way using joyful art, rather than making sad art. And that just became a challenge.

Sometimes it’s a little easier to write out your sad feelings and talk about your sad feelings. … It’s a little more of a challenge to do that all with a joyful message and with a joyful sound. We opted to take that challenge and to express ourselves in a more positive way. And that doesn’t mean that we’ll never make music that is sad; it’s just that we use this project to channel those positive emotions and those positive things that we’re feeling.

The Daily: How does your music in general relate to college students specifically?
Earl: We’re all different ages in the band, and you’re getting a lot of perspective about people going through some of those things that you’re going through at that age: finding yourself, figuring out who you are, falling in love with yourself, falling out of love with yourself, falling in and out of love with other people. I think with The Mowgli’s you get that perspective — you get a woman’s perspective, you get a 20-something-year-old’s perspective, you get an older person who’s been through it’s perspective because there’s so many of us and we’ve had so many different experiences. We come together when we write those songs and we share our experiences. I think that college students who are currently going through that can listen to the music and relate to it because you’re … listening to somebody who’s been through it.

The Daily: What’s your favorite part about making music? Why do you choose to do this as a career?
Earl: I have a passion for entertainment. I love putting on a show. I love performing live. I love playing this character that even though it’s ourselves on stage, it’s this enhanced version of ourselves. That’s really what I live for. It’s my favorite thing to do, whether it’s music or comedy or any kind of physical performance, that’s really what I’m passionate about. If you ask the same question to some of the other Mowgli’s, they’re passionate about writing, they’re passionate about playing, for me it’s really all about entertainment. I love being an entertainer and I wouldn’t want any other job in the world.

The Daily: How do you engage people in your live performances and how do you plan on engaging students at Dillo Day?
Earl: I think what we do to engage people is we just make sure we put on the very best show we can. If every single person on stage is giving it 100 percent and putting out all of their energy and putting out everything that they have inside of them, then I believe that kind of thing is contagious. So if we go out there and we give 125 percent of our energy, people pick up on it and then they start putting out all of their energy and the people around them start putting out all of theirs.

The Daily: If you could ask for one thing on Dillo Day what would it be?
Earl: I hope in particular for this show that everyone who comes to the performance leaves feeling better than they came. If everybody who shows up to that performance leaves and walks away feeling five, 10 times better than they did when they got there, our job is done.

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Twitter: @emchin24