“Why Limit Yourself to One Way?”: The Riko and Whaler Collective’s mantra to songwriting, performances, life, and Wawa hoagies.
- Nell Duesler
- Jun 19
- 7 min read
Your Next Phavorite Artist: Article 02
Written by Nell Duesler | Photography by Big Eric's Bootlegs, Colin Tierney, and @Hamm3r.png
The Riko and Whaler Collective (RWC), originating in West Chester, PA, debuted their jam band into the Philly house show circuit when two members, Riko and Raven, started their college education at The University of the Arts. The band consists of Riko and Whaler, who share the role of lead singer and guitarist, and their ever-growing “Collective,” which, during this interview, included Tabel, who plays both drums and bass, and Raven, also a drummer. Raven also proudly takes on the vast role of doing “a lot of organizational stuff for the band,” as he describes it.
When we sat down for a virtual interview late Tuesday night, I was met, at first, with only Riko, Raven, and Tabel. They joined me from a basement filled with instruments and their dog. Whaler mistakenly went to the wrong house at first, but I was assured that he would arrive in his own way in order to be as prompt as possible. Sure enough, a knock at the basement window marked his entrance. By Whaler climbing through, he confirmed that RWC’s improvisation and creativity extend past their musicianship and into every aspect of their beings.
Though Riko and Whaler grew up with the Grateful Dead playing in their homes due to each of their parents being Deadheads, Tabel started to be a lover of music because of his dad’s love for Billy Joel and Elton John. He watched his dad interact differently with music through dissecting every song and melody, and now Tabel finds himself doing the same thing today. Raven grew up with a guitarist as a father who got him into playing instruments–first the drums and then guitar and bass. What began as casual exposure to their parents’ record collections turned into the foundation for their own musical bond, and eventually, the formation of RWC itself.
The origins of the band date way back to Riko and Whaler’s elementary school days. Riko had just worked on an art project where he was instructed to make a papier-mâché mask. Naturally, Riko decided that he would create an Ace Frehley Kiss mask, which his teacher displayed outside of his classroom at the time. Whaler, being a lover of classic rock, walked by the display and immediately wanted to find out who made that mask. Their friendship started that day, and their bond grew through their shared love for music, specifically Kiss and The Beatles.
In middle school, they all attended the same School of Rock in Downingtown, PA, where they would spend any moment they could in practice rooms jamming and improvising together for hours. They started as a Grateful Dead cover band under the name Brand New Crescent Moon at 16 years old. Through that, they found that trying different things out musically gave them an incredible sense of freedom that listeners will find in their music today. They even explicitly stated it in their newest record, Collective, which came out earlier this month. The first line on “Now is Today” is “Why limit yourself to one way?” This not only felt like a recurring theme throughout the record but a recurring theme throughout their discography, performances, and everyday lifestyle. Riko, the writer of that song, said that this line came to him while he was in college. He finds that this mantra relates to his whole life, saying, “There are so many perspectives and there are so many ways to do things.” He especially feels that this lyric relates to releasing any expectation on oneself. He describes the result of that release by saying, “You usually discover things you couldn't even have known would happen or could be creative in the first place.”
Their creativity is evident from the start of their discography. Their first release was an EP in 2018 titled Walkie Talkie Eyes. Riko and Whaler describe it as “nonsense music” recorded in a van with one microphone and some acoustic guitars. From each release since then, the listener could almost believe that each piece is from a different artist. Even in a single song, RWC creatively flips through so many moods, which makes listening not only magical but like you are being taken to an extremely uncertain and captivating place. They feel like that freedom, discussed before, was intentional in the way that they wanted to try as many different things as possible. At the same time, it was a natural progression of the people that they surrounded themselves with. Tabel said that when he and Raven joined the group, their love of jazz played a role in infusing different genres into the band’s sound. While some of their frequent sounds include “Jam Band, Psychedelic Rock, Jazz, Funk, and Experimental,” they do want to explore even more genres like Afrobeat or even a genre that they describe as “noise-centric.” That type of genre can usually be discovered through their live shows.
Though their release of Collective came about because they wanted to give listeners more access to their evolving sound, they made it clear that they are always a “live band first.” When Riko and Whaler first began playing at shows, only one song had been written, titled “Throughout,” and no setlist had been prepared. That freedom allowed them to create what they described as a “spontaneous combustion of sound.” They found themselves just taking “Throughout” and jamming around those chords. That allowed them to find different things that stuck and eventually, put pen to paper.
They spent about two years recording, mixing, and mastering Collective. They recorded demos and continued to build over top of them with more people until the songs felt complete. Since they did not always originally plan to put this project out, they needed to draw inspiration from their live sets when ordering the track list. The flow in and out of each song was particularly important to them. Because of this, they often took the ending sounds of one track and would add them to the beginning of the next one for a seamless flow. Riko describes that as a journey through your mind. They also knew that the first and last songs were the most important. Raven said that when making an album, “you want the first song to be a certain vibe that hits a certain way that pulls you into the rest of it, and then, you want the last song to be like kind of epic.”
Raven’s message of drawing the listener in with the first song particularly stood out to me because Collective’s first track, “Interconnections,” begins with a strong drum beat that makes it impossible for the audience not to immediately feel immersed in their musical world. The percussion in each RWC song truly feels like it’s the backbone that generates the entire vibe of the piece. They describe themselves as a very “rhythmic band,” so it makes sense why Raven feels drawn to, in his words, “go crazy” while playing. And Raven is not alone in that feeling. The trust that each of the musicians has in each other is evident every time they perform because they embrace chaos with confidence.
For RWC, those connections and feelings of trust tend to extend past just the bandmates. Two years ago, the band was playing at The Rooftop in Philly when Tabel started to feel sick. Though he tried to play through it, he knew he needed to stop. That’s when they called in Paul, bassist of Attack Dog and good friend of the entire Collective, to come out of the audience and join them. Paul, without warning, immediately jumped in and seamlessly joined the band when he started playing the perfect notes. Not only was this an epic moment, but it really proves how tight knit the Philly music scene is. Tabel describes the scene saying, “It's not like New York where there's like too many fish in the pond. It’s just small enough to where everybody kind of gets to know each other.” That community is something they did not take for granted. Since the band is now primarily based in West Chester, they have noticed how different it feels to have a total lack of community. Back in Philly, they would constantly be frequenting shows to support and listen to other bands' music that did the same for them. There is nearly no community like it in West Chester. Tabel also describes the Philly music scene as “very diverse…There are a lot of different kinds of music being made and at a very high quality.”
Since they deeply loved their time residing in Philadelphia, they, of course, had their favorite bands, so I asked them one of my favorite questions. “What is your dream 4-band bill besides any bands that you are in?” They each had many different answers that extended past the 4-band limit, but that just continued to prove how much they love Philly musicians. Some artists included Attack Dog (of course), Wallace, Tonight!, Phil Spector’s Gun, Mojohand, The Jette Planes, Delay 77, and many more.
And finally, as a good Philadelphian, I had to ask their Wawa orders:
Riko: A warm cookie and ham and swiss on a croissant with spinach and salt
Whaler: A bag of Smartfood, 2 Double Dutch Chocolate Milks, and (if he wants to go crazy) a bag of M&Ms
Raven: A pretzel and a Shorti wheat roll with turkey, spinach, cheddar, bacon, chipotle, and mayo, but he changes it up every time.
Tabel: A breaded chicken strip hoagie with a pepper jack, bacon, barbecue sauce, pepper, and oregano, Reese's sticks, and Entenmann's
At its core, The Riko and Whaler Collective is not just a band. It is a community inspired by generations of musical influence, boundless creativity, and a promise never to limit yourself to one way. From basement jams to basement windows, the exciting and sometimes unexpected energy that these musicians bring makes every show feel like a discovery–wild, unpredictable, and always their own. And if you need a soundtrack for your next Wawa run, Collective is a pretty good place to start.
Comments