Northern Son describes their sound as pop rock with an American heartland feel. Although they’re based in Northern California,  you can catch Tyler Florence (Vocals/Bass), Jeff Carmassi (Vocals/Guitar), Sean Ghavi (Keys/Percussion), Brent Nunn (Percussion), and Justin Florence (Guitar/Vocals) in LA on February 26th at USC’s Ground Zero. THEPOPFIX.com had a chance to catch up with Tyler Florence to talk about the band and their upcoming endeavors.

THEPOPFIX: How did you guys all meet?

TYLER: Justin is my brother and due to heavy influence from our father, we grew up playing music together. I met Brent in high school through mutual friends and the three of us (Brent, Justin, and I), started up a band and played together for about 7 years. After awhile, things ended up not working out and that band broke up. I was at a party one day about 3 years ago and met Jeff. We started talking about music that we liked and the alcohol that we also enjoyed so we decided to meet up and jam a bit. I had mentioned to him that I knew a drummer and that my brother who played lead guitar was moving back from LA and looking for a band. So we had the 4 pieces together, but it didn’t seem complete. We knew we wanted a piano player in our band. Justin and I had known Sean since we were kids because our parents were best friends. We knew he had been classically trained as a pianist and I thought that would crossover well with the type of music we were trying create, so we asked him to be apart of Northern Son. So, in a nutshell, that is basically how we all came together to form this band.

THEPOPFIX: Who are your musical influences?

TYLER: One of the things I love about this band is how diverse each of our influences are. For me I love 90’s rock like Third Eye Blind and Oasis. Jeff is heavily influenced by classic rock and folk such as Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. Brent is influenced by progressive drum beats and instrumentals. Justin has a big pop and R & B influence and Sean has a classical and hip hop influence. But I think when we come together we all embrace each others styles and make it work. We all really love classic rock and lot so you can definitely hear that peak through in our sound. I think we all influence each other with all the music we listen to. As Jeff pointed out in a recent interview, we are big fans of great songwriting.

THEPOPFIX: What’s next for you guys?

TYLER: We have a lot of great things in the works right now. We are playing a HUGE show at USC in Los Angeles at the amazing Ground Zero cafe on Friday, Feb 26. We are really looking forward to getting back down to LA. We always have a great time and people are always very nice to us. We have also just released our first music video for “Love Will Find A Way” the single of our debut record “Wider Skies” (available on itunes) which was shot by a great company called Element 151 out of San Jose. In the mean time we are playing local in the bay area, mostly San Francisco, but look for us by the end of summer/fall for a Northern Son tour coming to your town.

Love Will Find A Way from Northern Son on Vimeo.

THEPOPFIX: What’s the significance of the name Northern Son?

TYLER: Northern Son is just a really honest, maybe even boring, band name. It has no hidden meaning and just flat out means being a product of Northern California. We’re from San Jose, California and are all males so Northern Son is what we came up with and have gotten used to hearing.

THEPOPFIX: What do you guys do when you’re not playing shows, practicing, recording?

TYLER: What do we do when we’re not doing anything band related? Thats hard to say because usually every day we are doing something band related. We are all best friends so we’re always with each other. We’ve gotten really in to the HBO show The Life and Times of Tim and are excited for the new season to start. We try to go out and meet up with friends a couple of times a week and just do normal boring stuff. We’re not too exciting off the stage.

Don’t forget to catch Northern Son Feb. 26th at Ground Zero at 6:30 PM.