Today we’d like to introduce you to Diego N, Diego “Bakudan” R, and Jarobi W.
Hi Diego N, Diego “Bakudan” R, and Jarobi W, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Oh man, where do I begin. We started playing shows back in 2019, back when Jarobi and I were playin’ with some other peoples. Eventually, covid hit and our other members parted ways, so we were in a rut on gigs for about a year or so. We didn’t pick back up until 2021 when we managed to convince D to join the group. I also had made the decision to not rehire a rhythm guitarist, I told myself that I needed to be good enough to “be enough” so that’s what I became.
Jarobi and I had known Diego for about 2 years by that point, and we had always played around with the idea of him joining the group. He played on our first demo recordings when our then drummer wasn’t capable, and we loved his playing so we thought it was a no brainer considering the situation, but man, he was a pain to convince.
Took about the entirety of 2020 while we were on break figuring stuff out to convince him to play a show with us in 2021. He blew our expectations away and we pretty much from that point on wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was so concerned that his chops weren’t where they should be, unaware that he passed the “audition” with flying colors at least two times over.
Either way, it’s been pretty much just the three of us on the grind since then. Shortly after D joined Jarobi and I started college, with D not that far behind, and we dropped our first real single “Bee” in 2023. We just kept the ball rolling and have been releasing more and more music each year, and we’re currently aiming to get signed/start touring for our upcoming EP release.
– Diego N
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road. We are three very different people who have to figure out how to communicate effectively between us. We also live pretty far from one another, me being an hour away from both Big and Lil D.
-Jarobi W
It’s been smooth in the creative process, but not with marketing/releasing said music. Creating music is the easy part, but every other aspect that comes with the band hasn’t been the smoothest.
Biggest issue is finding time. Rehearsals, gigging, recording, it’s all hard to balance between work/school and we’re all just very busy people. To have a better pace in all of it you sometimes have to sacrifice stuff which isn’t always reasonable or even feasible.
Another unexpected obstacle is how late shows run sometimes. You sometimes have to turn down a show if it saves you from work in the morning, haha.
– Diego “Bakudan” R
It has definitely not been easy. Marketing’s always been a bit of a pain in the butt for us, trying to handle the social media and all that takes up more of our time than actually writing the music or gigging. It can be quite daunting, and there’s only three of us, so we’re doubling up on a lot of things most of the time. I would say another thing that you quickly realize is hard to manage is resources.
The amount of money that we have in the band fund can quickly determine how productive each month is. Merch sales, streams, pay from shows can really be the fundamental difference between a week delay on recording vs a 2 month delay. We try to be really meticulous with how we invest our money in the band because of it.
-Diego N
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
“What do I do” is a bit of loaded question. I’m the bassist for Jupiter Storm. For work specifically I coordinate events at the Museum of Art in Deland, as well as work as an assistant to the curator there. Aside from that, I perform with various orchestras in Florida (OPHO,BSO,GSO,OSO, to name a few) as well as perform in various jazz groups across the state.
I specialize in pretty much all things bass related and love researching the history of it and diversity of the acoustic bass.
– Jarobi W
I’m the drummer of Jupiter Storm, and I’m super proud of the music we create. We’re always fusing different genres together, and always going for something unique.
I’d say at least personally, I try to play any genre I can get my hands on, and blend that into whatever we make. In all situations, particularly with us, I try to take the different influences and apply them to each song instead of going with more traditional drum ideas.
– Diego “Bakudan” R
All three of us are jazz musicians, and grew up playing jazz, and now all gig in that scene around Florida, when we aren’t playing together at least.
I’m the guitarist and vocalist for Jupiter Storm, and I would say we are known in the scene for our crazy live performances and how well our music is mixed and composed. It’s something we all take a lot of pride in, and we put in an extreme amount of effort to achieve the best of our technical capabilities, and then surpass that.
Honestly, I think the thing that separates us from other bands in the area is just that no one sounds like us, and honestly, no one could even if they wanted to.
I’m super proud of that, although I don’t mean that to make me sound like I’ve got a big head about it, haha. But the matter of it is that we all have very unique playing styles. We intentionally built that reputation up for ourselves both as a band and as ourselves. We’ve tried our best to use those skills and they’ve gotten us a lot of really close friends in the scene, and I see no reason to not be proud of that.
-Diego N
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I guess one thing surprising about me is that I study jazz and don’t really practice my metal chops all that much. If you listen carefully to any of my drum parts you can pretty clearly hear the latin/jazz influence.
Another thing is that I’m a writer, Well- a composer I mean. I compose jazz-influenced music and even the stuff I’ve written for JS is heavily jazz influenced. I’m really hoping we can play a standard at one of our shows at one point.
– Diego “Bakudan” R
What’s something people don’t know?… I was almost struck by lightning as a kid. Super sensitive to electricity after that. Touched a telephone pole and it shocked my whole body. I was pretty scared at the time, haha.
– Jarobi W
Uhhhh… sheesh, this is tricky.
I have a lot of hobbies? I don’t know if that counts, haha. It’s a pretty big list, but just off the top of my head theres: Reading Manga/Comics, I’m super into MMA and Jiujitsu, any sort of beach sports…. Painting has been a new one for me. Also a huge video game and tabletop game nerd, huge into the DS series and Devil May Cry. I’m an active Dungeons and Dragons DM, haha.
I think out of all of them though, my absolute favorite hobby is cooking! I love having “Family Dinners” for my friends, I’ll invite them over and cook for everyone. I love to make usually more elaborate dishes when I do that, and I’ve been hosting Friendsgiving for about three years now at my place. If I didn’t do music, I probably would’ve gone into Culinary.
– Diego N.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/JupiterStorm
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_D8SSHFGM6QUmrt5qyg1w
- Other: https://tr.ee/rEKRLKSShZ
Image Credits
@telesonico (Instagram Handle)
@oliver_sulla (Instagram Handle)
