Since forming Chanpan, members Grace, Lance, and Matthew have been building something that feels entirely their own.
Their music doesn’t fit neatly into one genre, and neither does the energy they bring to everything they do. Between their creative instincts, close friendship and a shared sense of humor, there’s a natural chaos to Chanpan that makes them just as fun to talk to as they are to listen to.
That same energy carries into their music. From autogratis to the new material they’re already excited about, Chanpan continues to figure things out as they go, allowing their sound to grow without getting too caught up in what they’re supposed to be doing. At the center of it all is a genuine connection between the three of them—and, apparently, a fictional fourth member named Greg.
We had the pleasure of catching up with Chanpan to talk about their creative process, finding their sound, performing live, staying true to themselves and what they hope to explore next. Along the way, we learned a lot about what keeps the trio grounded, how they approach making music together and exactly how much trouble Greg seems to cause.
Read our full interview with Chanpan below.
(Photo credit: Bishop Elegino)
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Sweety High: Before we talk about the music, I want to discussthe three of you. What is something about Chanpan that could only exist because it’s Grace, Lance and Matthew making music together?
Grace: Wow, that’s a good question.
Lance: I feel like probably the jokes. What’s the phrase?
Grace: Like our twisted, deviant sense of humor.
Lance: We say horrible things, but we don’t punch down.
SH: There are three very distinct personalities inside Chanpan, but somehow the band has its own personality too. If Chanpan were a fourth person in the room, what would they be like?
Grace: Oh, we have a guy named Greg who is kind of the fourth person in our room. He’s kind of the fall guy for us. Yeah, Greg’s a piece of crap [laughs].
Greg punches down. I think Greg is kind of our id character that we’ve created in our heads.
Lance: Greg has male-pattern baldness. He’s white, he wears glasses and he wears a green sweater vest. His pronouns are he/they, and he used to work at a GameStop. I think those were his prime years. But, yeah, Greg is the fourth member of Chanpan.
SH: Wait, I love that. Does Greg have, like, an origin story or something?
Lance: I think it was an Apple emoji, you know? What do you call it? The human-like characters.
Grace: Yeah, I think Matthew was making an Instagram post early on where we introduced the members of Chanpan. I think he just invented this guy named Greg and made an emoji of him where he’s, you know, bald and wearing a green sweater vest. And now he’s just part of our band. He just exists.
SH: A lot of what makes Chanpan exciting is that your music doesn’t seem overly concerned with being “cool.” Has that always come naturally to you, or was there a point where you consciously stopped caring about how you were supposed to look as a band?
Grace: I feel like we try to be ourselves at the end of the day, and I think being yourself is a transcendent and liberated form of cool. So I think we’re just ourselves and we’re accidentally uncool. I feel like being grown—I think we started Chanpan a little bit later in our 20s, so we had already realized we don’t fit in with the cool, Opium-adjacent early-20s youth now.
And I guess that’s a lot of freedom because I feel like we can just be ourselves and we don’t have to try to be what’s in the mainstream youth cool. I think we’re just unc now.
Lance: I feel like we don’t belong to anyone specific. We didn’t enter any specific music scene. I feel like I spent a lot of my youth comparing myself to other people. So, to be truly original, you have to be yourself. You have to choose to be yourself.
I think that people can recognize that most people they think are very cool and unique, you know, they definitely don’t care. It’s like true nonchalance because they’ve accepted themselves.
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SH: I love that you guys don’t fall into any specific genre and don’t mold yourselves into one.
Grace: I think the realization was that all these iconic rock stars who stood out in their own eras, whenever they were really big, stuck out like a sore thumb because they were just doing them and not really worried about the other cool trends going on.
SH: You started by playing on the streets, where you had no control over who stopped to listen. Now people are buying tickets specifically to see Chanpan. Do you miss anything about having absolutely no idea who was going to hear you that day?
Lance: I honestly don’t miss anything, and in that way, I feel really grateful. When I think about our tour, I’m really excited because I feel like our fans are very cool, smart, sweet and they have a conscience.
Hill told us early on that your fan base and your audience are a reflection of the artist and the artist’s values and everything. So over time, it’s been the most rewarding thing getting to meet these people and see them. I think we feel very comfortable.
So yeah, it’s tough going out and being in front of unknown audiences. But the funny thing is, when you open for other people on tour, as we will in the future, you actually keep running into that over and over again. So it’s kind of good training and a good inoculation for that feeling—to remember to have the right expectations and the right attitude.
SH: You went from busking in Chinatown to playing major festivals and now announcing your first headline tour. What part of your original reason for making music together has stayed exactly the same?
Grace: I think, straight up, just to have fun. Anytime we stray away from having fun while making music, it feels really bad, and we kind of have to recalibrate and be like, “All right, what do we need to change? What are we doing? How do we get that fun spark back?”
Especially with music becoming a career and being part of the industry, that was pretty shocking. I don’t think any of us ever expected or wanted music to be a full-time career, so it was really shocking at first. But I think we do a good job of communicating with each other and our team to keep it fun.
Lance: Yeah, fun, and remembering it’s always a choice. We get to be here, and we can always say no to things. I feel like remembering that is so important. So yes, we’re excited for the tour!
SH: Again, congrats again on the tour! Do you have any rituals before you guys go on stage or anything you guys like to do before performing?
Grace: Our ritual is to make the day as low-cortisol as possible, keep our heart rates down, and just stay calm so we don’t burn ourselves out before we even start performing.
Lance: It’s kind of sad because Greg will go to the bathroom. I don’t know if you’ve seen 8 Mile, the bathroom scene, but Greg does an eerily similar thing. He looks in the mirror and he’s like, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. You’re worthless.” He says all these mean things to himself because he’s really high on nerves. So we usually have to go in there and calm him down. We’re like, “You’re going to kill it. It’s going to be good. They want to see you here. Remember, your job is to have fun.” Then he slowly comes out, and it gets better.
But besides Greg, we meditate, like Grace was saying, and remind ourselves to have fun. That’s the point of going on stage. You are setting the stage and setting the tone for the entire room. So I think when we have fun and we’re there to enjoy ourselves on stage, the audience really feels the same.
SH:I love that I get Greg, though. I am Greg, so I understand him. But I’m glad that you guys understand that, like, it’s important to breathe, relax.
Now that autogratis has had time to exist outside of you, has your relationship with the EP changed at all? Is there anything you hear differently now?
Grace: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that while we were about to put it out, I was really excited to put it out. And now that it’s out and we already have new stuff, I should care more about it and give it more attention.
But I’m already thinking about how good the new music is, so it’s interesting to work on something and love it so much, and then when it’s finally out and everyone else can get it, you’re already like, “Oh, pretty interesting.” It feels like a time capsule almost already.
I’m sure as time goes on and we put more and more music out, I’ll look back at autogratis and think of it as a project we put out when we were still very, very green, still figuring out what felt good for us. It still feels like us becoming.
Lance: I feel that when I listen back now and look at the track list and the songs. I suddenly become conscious that it’s the sound of us still finding our own voice, finding ourselves and finding our sound. I feel like the journey has been happening so fast for us.
We put something down, and then it goes out into the world and it’s the thing. Then suddenly people are listening and singing along. It’s a bit faster than our minds can keep pace with, comprehend, and process.
So now that it’s out in the world and I listen back, I hear my own voice and I’m like, “That’s funny that I did that.” And listening to the new music, writing and everything, I can hear development. I can hear change. I can hear my tastes changing and evolving, growing.
I think that’s really exciting because we say we’re just getting started, but I think musically it’s true. I think we’re growing a lot and we’re learning a lot. It’s really cool to have, like Grace said, these time capsules. When I listen to autogratis, I can kind of see where our personalities and preferences are coming out.
So, yeah, it’s a long way of saying I can kind of appreciate it and look at ourselves from a distance. And I think that’s pretty cool in a sonic way.
Grace: I think the people who are drawn to autogratis at this point, it really tells me a lot about where they are in their lives. And I think that’s really wonderful for me to just know that people relate to where I was maybe like a year ago.
(Photo credit: Bishop Elegino)
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SH: I think that’s honestly the beautiful thing about music. You can make something that someone else relates to, or that correlates to them in a certain way. But then, let’s say you guys make a really happy song, and someone can take that and be like, “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Grace: That’s literally our song, “air ride.”
SH: That’s so true, though. I feel like that’s a beautiful thing because you guys are like, “That’s actually one of the saddest songs ever,” but you’re glad they took it that way.
Grace: Yeah. And I don’t like performing that song because I’m just not there anymore. I’m like, “I’m better now.” But whoever says that’s their favorite song, like, all right, nice. I’m going to pray for you [laughs]. Like, we’re going to get through this, buddy.
SH: You’ve said that you want Chanpan to stay difficult to tie down because your tastes will keep changing. What’s a version of Chanpan you can imagine making five years from now that would completely surprise the people listening to you today?
Grace: I still want to make folk music. I really love a simple guitar folk song. I’ve always been saying this, and I guess where Chanpan is right now, we’re not really, as a group, drawn to that, but I really do want to do that still.
Lance: Genre-wise, I think we, in our past lives, have listened to probably a lot of R&B. I don’t feel like we’ve ever actually gone there, and I think we’d be really good at it when the time is right and it feels natural.
Now that we’re in the swing of making music and performing, I think when the time is right and we have the chance to score things—soundtracks, TV, film, movies, video games, etc.—I feel like we would put a lot of care and intention into it and all the things that we usually don’t get to put into music. That’s something I’m really excited to do.
Grace: Yeah, I agree with that. I think once we are handed the reins to score something, we go so crazy on that and become goated in a way that would go down in history.
SH: I could actually really picture you guys doing a video game intro. I’m seeing it. I see that.
Grace: Yeah, we already make video game music, kind of. So I’d love to make something extremely emotional for Interstellar 2 when they decide to make a sequel. Yeah, I think we’re all super excited for that still.
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SH: A lot of what Chanpan has become seems to have come from trusting your instincts rather than waiting for someone else to tell you what was “right.” What’s one instinct you think more artists should trust?
Grace: I think they’re conscience. A lot of this career, we’ve been presented with opportunities, and we have to really listen to ourselves. There are opportunities that are good on paper, but maybe when we examine them under a closer lens, they don’t really represent our hearts. We have to sit with that and communicate through that.
I’m grateful that I have Lance and Matthew to talk to me and steer me and guide me. I struggle with stuff like that. I think there are a lot of solo artists who don’t really have that support or people who can understand their hesitation on that, you know, not just at a purely capitalistic, industrial level.
So I would say, yeah, trust your conscience and maybe find people that you can go to, to have tough conversations about that. Not every life-changing check is going to be a good moral decision, and that’s a hard place for an artist to be, especially because it is such a struggle financially starting off.
Lance: Yeah, I feel the same. At the end of the day, I feel seen and understood by Grace and Matthew in the important ways, and I’m glad that I can trust them. We can talk through things. I think that a lot of people in the world are waiting for permission to care. They feel like they need to be given permission to have a conscience or think about certain questions and talk about certain things because they are socially off-limits.
I don’t have the answers to everything, but I do think that through communication, conversation, and deliberation between people, you can slowly find the right answers to things. Nobody knows the right answer off the bat.
And I think in the music world, there is a lot of culturally forced nonchalance and nihilism and the idea that it’s cool to not care. I think that’s something that frustrates me personally. There’s something very inherently juvenile about that. We’ve all been there. But the funny thing is seeing people in their 30s, pushing into their 40s, embody that. And I think that’s a big fat L.
So I think, same as Grace, I would encourage artists and everyone in the world to give themselves space and give themselves permission and make it safe to talk about what they care about and the good, positive things that they want to see in the world and the things they want to see change.
We live in an industry where it may seem like you need to be cutthroat and desperate to climb and step on people’s heads, and that’s normal. But at the end of the day, I know that all these people, and me and everyone else, when you embody that and you put part of your conscience and your heart on the side, the little kid in you kind of feels a little icky.
I would encourage people not to silence that part of themselves. We all have to live in this world, make concessions, and make decisions, and that’s okay. But I think to be real about it, acknowledge it, and still try to be a human at the end of the day is what I would encourage all artists to think about, and I suppose anyone in any industry.
SH: I love that you said that. I feel like the creative industry in general is really rough, and there’s this kind of format that people want you to follow, like you were saying previously. If you’re not following that, then they kind of just eat at you. Sometimes following how other people move is just not the way to go. So I really love that you spoke on a lot of that.
SH: The three of you guys have been making music together long enough that you probably know each other’s instincts pretty well. Can you tell when one of the others is about to have a good idea before they even finish explaining it?
Grace: We communicate nonverbally. We don’t even have to have conversations. The twins speak Cantonese, and I speak no Cantonese. But when they speak to each other, sometimes I respond in English because I’m like, “I kind of already know what Lance said to Matthew.” So I think we’re always having great ideas.
Lance: That’s the really funny thing about music and art: you could take a so-called bad idea and then spin it around the other way, and it can become the most incredible, amazing idea.
(Photo credit: Bishop Elegino)
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SH: Before we wrap up, what’s something you think the three of you will always be able to come back to, no matter how much Chanpan changes?
Grace: I think food, culture and our humanity—the parts of ourselves that aren’t attached to making money in the music industry, being marketable, or having value in the face of society. I think we’re close enough now that we love each other on a human level and care about each other on a human level. And that, I hope, will never change.
I think it won’t ever change unless one of us suddenly becomes extremely evil. It’ll be Greg [laughs].
You can listen to Chanpan’s EP, autogratis, in full here:
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