The Namesake
What’s in a name anyway?... A song by any other name still sounds about right!
Right?
Whether that’s the case or not, a whole band is certainly not one song–you hope, anyway. And if the world’s a stage, with all these people on it playing their hearts out, the name of your band is certainly the first hurdle in distinguishing yourself from the crowd.
It should be catchy. But also evocative of your sound. Fun to say, but not eye-rolling in its silliness. Bonus points for cleverness, but don’t alienate everyone with a heap of jargon. (Is this how parents feel when they name their children?)
Easy!
Right?
When I set out to turn my handful of tunes into something legitimate, I figured it’d be a bit challenging–2023 and all. What I hadn’t anticipated was just how many bands are out there! I wish I had kept my notes from that month or two banging my head against the wall of names already taken. There must have been around 30 or so different ones I had drummed up with my friends: The Sadboi Radio Hour (already a podcast. A time of night. A plethora of playlists…), the hexadecimal code for purple (i.e., #800080; talk about alienating people), and so many other names that were either already taken, unintentionally insincere, or decidedly unfun to say.
While I’d love to paint a picture of some epic moment of inspiration–Parker and I mid-scuba-dive amongst a pod of humpbacks singing ocean songs–the actual story came from a conversation with an old friend I met through my husband. One of those late-lockdown video calls where you’re just fooling around, and he tells us about this old, very large golden retriever that his family had, and her name was Trinity–after the The Matrix movies. I guess she got to where she was a… little less able to walk so far, and his dad would start calling down the stairs, “Thomas! Walk the whale!” and I know that’s horrible, but you know, this kid got out there and walked his dog! So I felt like that touched on something that I respond to. And that’s how we chose the name. Walk the Whale.
As Frank Zappa says, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” So… I think maybe that just about covers the topic. Thanks for listening!