A R I Z O N A is currently in the midst of a month-long tour with Panic! At The Disco, and when CL catches up with keyboardist David Labuguen, he’s enjoying an off day back home in Glen Rock, a suburb of New Jersey. In a few days, the band he started with friends Zachary Charles and Nate Esquite just three years ago, is playing one of the biggest shows of its young career at Madison Square Garden.
“That’s a huge moment for me,” Labuguen, 27, says before throwing this curveball out there: “But the day that I can take my parents to the Philippines and be like, ‘We’re playing Araneta Coliseum’ — that’ll be the day where it gets so full circle that I won’t be able to really handle myself.”
The venue he’s talking about is in Manila — the capital of the Philippines — and it’s one of the largest multi-use arenas in Asia. Built in 1958, Araneta is home to college and pro basketball games, professional boxing and even cockfighting; it’s also about 200 kilometers away from the Ilocos region where Labuguen’s dad grew up. For concerts, the arena can pack in just under 10,000 people. There’ll be more folks than that crammed into a sold-out Amalie Arena when A R I Z O N A hits Tampa (Paul McCartney’s sold-out show brought in around 17,000 last year), but Labuguen is hoping that young Filipino kids in the crowd can take something away from seeing his band warm up the crowd for one of the biggest pop-punk bands in history.
Aye – super excited that this is spinning in the Philippines! 🇵🇭 🙌 https://t.co/9rkyCTFZJK
— D L A B U G U E N ! (@dlabuguen) July 13, 2018
“You know, what’s really important to me is representation,” Labuguen says, adding that his idols growing up where N.E.R.D.’s Chad Hugo and the Black Eyed Peas’ apl.de.ap. There are a lot of entertainers with a Filipino heritage, but not all of them necessarily flaunt it. They’re not obligated to, according to Labuguen, but he wants to fill that void. “[Chad and apl.de.ap], those are the dudes that I had. I feel like as a Filipino occupying the space, I want people to know, ‘Hey, we’re out here, and we’re doing these things. We’re out here amongst all that pressure that your parents are gonna put on you. You can do this.’”
In some part of their heads, Labuguen, who is classically trained, says his parents might’ve thought he’d be a classical pianist. “I think I could’ve done it if I wanted to, but at some point I was like, ‘This is not for me,’” he says.
Instead, Labuguen, whose pastor was Kevin Jonas Sr., the dad of the Jonas Brothers, leaned into pop music, production and visual media. PJ Bianco — who co-wrote the Jonas Brothers’ 2007 hit “When You Look Me in the Eyes” after working on projects with SUNY Conservatory of Music classmates Regina Spektor and Langhorne Slim — took notice of a 13-year-old Labuguen and took him, along with A R I Z O N A bandmate Zachary Charles, under his wing. Now Bianco, 37, is a mainstay in the band’s songwriting circle, which includes musicians from back home as well as new collaborators introduced to the band by Atlantic Records, the label that released its debut LP, GALLERY, just over a year ago.
“He’s like a fourth member, if you will,” Labuguen says of Bianco. “He’s A R I Z O N A family.” That family is spending days off working on music that’ll presumably be on A R I Z O N A’s sophomore release. Sometimes the work gets done within the polish of a West Hollywood studio co-owned by Artist Partner Group, Atlantic and Warner Music Group, and other times it happens closer to home at Times Square’s Quad Studios or even at home in Glen Rock.
“I think even nowadays, when we have access to big studios, we still work in our ninja, ‘I don’t have the right gear’ kind of way,” Labuguen says about adapting the creative process to his band’s rapid growth. Getting ideas out for demos is all about speed, and A R I Z O N A — which has been listening to a lot of alt-'80s bands like Fine Young Cannibals, Eurythmics and The Outfield of late — can worry about living up to its rigorous internal standards as the new music evolves closer to its final state. The commitment to only producing aesthetically excellent product has spilled into the live show, too. Lighting for the band’s live set was created in collaboration with one of Labuguen’s friends, Kirk J Miller, whose company Earlybird Visual has designed lights for Taylor Swift, P!nk, Adele, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry to name a few. The attention to detail also produced a level of anxiety which A R I Z O N A addresses in a new song, “Freaking Out.”
Labuguen said that everyone in the band has experienced a kind of disquietude as more eyes and ears land on their music, and he’s only recently come to terms with the feeling. Talking about the uneasiness openly led the group — whose members have known each other nearly half as long as they haven’t — to initially acknowledge that it was happening.
“As a band of best friends for so many years, we’re connecting at this level, kind of for the first time. We keep finding new depths of our friendship as the band thing happens — it’s like you almost have to,” Labuguen says. And in a day and age when simply telling your friends that you’re “there for them” isn’t as good as actually taking the time to truly check in and reach out, A R I Z O N A also wants to remind fans that feeling like everything’s not alright is actually OK.
“We want people to know that we deal with this. We want to put it out there, so people know they’re not alone and so they know it’s not abnormal to feel that way,” Labuguen says. And that makes sense, because A R I Z O N A, its friends and and fans are all just starting to grow into one big family right now anyway.
Panic! At the Disco w/A R I Z O N A/Hayley Kiyoko. Wed. Aug 1, 7 p.m. Sold out. Amalie Arena, 401 Channelside Dr., Tampa. amaliearena.com.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 2, 2018.