A relatively new group of indie rock stars has entered the scene, and they don’t plan on exiting any time soon. The four-man machine of Manifest West celebrated its one-year anniversary this month with several significant milestones under its belt, from winning Battle of the Bands at the Canopy Club to releasing two albums and finding their sound.
To celebrate their first anniversary, the Prospectus will be diving into the members’ paths to finding their passion, their long haul to ongoing success, and their plans to expand their sound and influence. This is the comprehensive feature of the homegrown indie band. This is Manifest West.
Manifest West consists of four students: Coggan Banerian, attending UIUC; Cade Whitt and Nick Riley, attending Parkland; and Roan O’Brien, looking to come to Parkland next semester.
In response to describing their music, each member had different ideas that centered around similar themes:
“Indie, alternative, experimental,” said Whitt.
“Fun, creative, and personal,” added O’Brien.
“Wait, I have to say three words now?!” Banerian threw his hands into the air, sending all four of them into something between a hysterical laughing and coughing fit. “Well, I would say exciting…expiring. Well, wait, inspiring, not expiring.”
“Our time is short.” Roan interrupted, sending everyone into another round of laughter.
“… And thorough,” finished Banerian.
“Hype, rock, and energy!” Riley said in between the laughs of his bandmates.
After getting their descriptions into the atmosphere, the four took a minute to compose themselves before the next round of questions, where Roan explained that their cohesiveness as a band was to blame for such moments. However, it was also why they could quickly make collective decisions about the direction of songs, wearing cowboy hats, or consensus on when to smash guitars — if anyone is counting at home, it’s been two so far. So, how exactly did the chemistry between Manifest West start?
Provided by: Cade Whitt
“Well, I was the one who reached out to Roan first to try to get him to join the band because our bassist, Hadee, was moving to Chicago,” Whitt said. “So I hit up Roan because we kind of dabbled in a former band [Samsara] together, and he was a cool guy I had never gotten to know that well. I was like, ‘This guy is a great musician and might be able to contribute to what we’re doing.’”
Roan said he didn’t hesitate when he received the message. After having a friend visit him from the East Coast and seeing them spend most of their time talking to venues and booking shows, he was ready to try out the band life for himself.
Before Manifest West became the group of four we know today; ideas were brewing back in middle school between Riley and Whitt. “Me and Nick started writing songs… I want to say eighth grade or seventh grade,” Whitt said. He then detailed how they made many ‘crappy songs’ on Spotify before landing on a sound they liked.
“We released Wiser, which was the opening track to my debut album, People In Places, and from there, I was like, ‘dang, we have something!’”
The name Manifest West was decided before anything else. From there, it took a year for them to find a bassist and drummer to round up the group.
“I saw a post on Reddit from Cade in February being like, ‘Hey, I need a drummer,’” Banerian explained how he got lassoed into the situation. They had their first official practice as a band on Superbowl Sunday in 2023.
The band went months before Roan was officially added to the team, just two months before they went on to win the Battle of the Bands hosted at the Canopy Club last October. They clawed to the top of stiff competition against other local bands such as Haunted x Humans, Josh Spinner, Sitrus Sol, and more, who they have played shows with in the past and maintain close relations in the present.
So, what does a typical show look like for these champions?
The atmosphere is one of the first attributes crowds notice when walking into a Manifest West show. Whether crowds are yelling along to “The City Sleeps Alone” or swaying their way through “It Seems You’ve Found the Door,” all of their songs hold an emotional weight that doesn’t leave you when you exit the venue.
They aren’t strangers to crowd work, either. Not only are they experts in the traditional call-and-response style found in their songs, but they have actively partied with fans in their shows. They’ve been in mosh pits, on top of amplifiers, and recently added crowd surfing at The Barn to that list.
Before they became the collective powerhouse they are today, they were individuals with passions that waxed and waned before coming into full bloom. They were happy to share some of this with us.
“I’ll start because I think I’m kind of a little interesting,” Banerian said. “I’m a mechanical engineering student, and I sort of got into the band because I really like engineering, but I got burned out really fast.” While working towards a degree at UIUC, Banerian felt he needed to balance his passions. “At the beginning stages of the band, I was definitely more in it because I just wanted to be in it. I really like performing, and… performing on stage has always been the highlight of my night.”
Banerian — who mainly drives Manifest West to their gigs — started his journey in music with his family. He began performing when playing accompaniment for his sister. “We played, like, local jazz venues and stuff in Atlanta, and my sister sang a few national anthems at Braves games and stuff like that. So she got decently big.”
While she performed all over their original home in Georgia, he followed in her footsteps, becoming skilled at the drums and the saxophone – an instrument Manifest West guarantees will appear on future projects. However, after entering high school, he felt that the luster faded. He didn’t find his passion again until COVID hit.
“I basically got bored. So, I started messing around on drums. And I would say that is when I actually started learning how to play drums well and not just, like, enough to get so that my sister could sing on top of them.”
Banerian found his passion for music in high school. There, he formed a band named Limerence, dropped an EP called Papa B — in reference to his father, who is on the cover— and played at a singular grad party. Finally, Banerian was prioritizing the fun he found in the creative process. However, he didn’t feel entirely sold on it until the opportunity to join Manifest West popped up, where the creative energy was infectious.
“But that also left kind of an itch… it created an itch that had to be scratched where I really wanted to like… I actually wanted to perform for people. Then I joined Manifest West.” They all shared smiles and audible cheers as Banerian finished.
Next, Whitt spoke up to share his evolving relationship with music.
For Whitt, it was a match lit in his childhood that turned into a roaring flame. He doesn’t think it’ll go out anytime soon.
Whitt started playing on his family’s drum kit at eight. He called himself a dabbler, learning basic patterns but not going much further. It wasn’t until around sixth grade, when he found bands like the Killers and Blink-182, that he discovered a true passion for music. “I just started to fall in love with what you could do musically,” Whitt said.
“I fell in love with guitar so much that we took my drum kit–which, in hindsight, this was probably an error–but took my drum kit and we traded it in at a pawn shop for my first ever guitar and my first amp,” Whitt says that it’s his signature guitar and he still plays it to this day. It’s been lovingly adorned with countless stickers since he first acquired it.
After writing “a couple words” with the guitar, he immediately realized that he needed to get his drum kit back. “I kind of started toying around with what you could do musically, and at this point, I don’t think I had the drive that I do now. I think I was just kind of finding my way. But man, did I fall in love with it, and it took off from there… and fast-forward me and Riley started making songs, and the rest is history.”
A large part of that history has been producing music. For the past seven years, Whitt has been honing his craft. This culminated in the birth of McNasty Records, a label he started in 2022 when releasing his album, “People In Places.” Eventually, he wants to move the studio out of his apartment and sign more up-and-coming artists to help them achieve their goals. “I’ve worked extensively with the bands Sitrus Sol, S’appelle, and Riggsy and the Remainders” and produced for a few others.
His bold vision has led Manifest West on its warpath: “I want to change the shape of music as we know it,” Whitt acknowledged that the statement left large shoes to fill, but he was willing to shoot for the stars and find artists with a similar goal on their way to figuring themselves out.
“I just want artists who have a clear vision and passion for what they create,” he said. He is a fan of all music genres and is currently looking for a rapper to work with. The thrill of working with other musicians is a large part of his passion, similar to his bandmate, Roan.
Roan began with a smile, “Crazy enough, I also started out as a drummer around then.”
Roan explained that his family loved him as a drummer, but he was never content with it. “I started taking lessons when I was like eight, and it just fizzled out. … So I’m glad we have this guy,” he patted Coggan on the shoulder as they all laughed. Roan explained that he shifted to bass as a kid because it had fewer strings and no chords. As he continued paving his way through music, he picked up acoustic guitar.
“My dad said, ‘If you play this every day for a year, I’ll get you an electric guitar.’” When quarantine caused his parents to have Zoom meetings and stopped him from playing drums, he took the challenge head-on. “As soon as I got the acoustic, I just started writing songs. I played in some kid bands, like Waiting For Saturday,” with the name drop causing them all to chuckle.
Cade cut in between their collective laughter, shouting, “Their digital footprint still exists! You can look them up on YouTube. Keep this in the article.” So I will
“When’s the Waiting For Saturday update video?” Banerian asked, sending them into a second wave of laughter.
Growing up with so much musical influence around him, Roan took claim of his former band with confidence. “My roots were Waiting For Saturday, but writing real music came from having the acoustic.” He soon went on a transformative Blink-182 journey of his own, noting their music to be magical and influential to how he approached music from then on.
He quickly learned to work in GarageBand and was eventually gifted the Logic DAW for Christmas, which he still uses today. From Samsara to Manifest West, he wanted to find other musicians who shared his passion for the process. “[I] just wanted to get together and write some good songs.”
Roan’s evolution through music was partly influenced by convenience in the lockdown, but Riley had to go out of his way to learn an instrument.
Riley detailed his relationship with music, starting with an out-of-tune guitar and a dream.
“I played it out of tune, but I was strumming it a lot, and I didn’t know what I was playing, but it was fun,” Riley said. Eventually, the guitar broke down. It wasn’t the end of the road but rather an opportunity to find a new way to play.
He bravely switched to bass for his and Whitt’s eighth-grade cover band. Their early performances included “Seven Nation Army,” “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine,” “and that’s about it,” Riley laughed.
However, he couldn’t leave the acoustic guitar alone. “I think there was like this media center in my high school, and there was a coffee place and an acoustic guitar selection. And there was not much people in there. So I would actually teach myself guitar in there after driver’s ed,” he said.
He and Whitt joined together as a duo again sometime during high school. The cover band phase was gone. This time, they wanted to stamp their signature onto the world of music.
“[We were] just creating like a big catalog so that whenever we wanted to drop.” This is one of the core tendencies of Manifest West that all members share. The band revealed a large and growing list of unreleased songs each one contributes to.
“I think we just continuously, like, want to put out music. And I’d hate to kind of pull away from this release because the new EP’s been getting traction with people listening to it and adding it to playlists, but all I can think about is getting back and making some more songs,” Roan said. Enthusiastic and understanding nods were traded around the room.
They expressed that in addition to their current Blink-182 and Modest Mouse influences, they have songs in reserve that are more heavily Red Hot Chili Peppers influenced and increasingly experimental.
Finding more tools to work with is a group effort. “[We] visited the Planetarium over the weekend and watched the Pink Floyd light show. And that was a very visceral feeling,” Whitt said, smiling. “I think we drew some inspiration from that.”
They expressed a heavy desire never to make the same song twice, expanding not only the instruments used — possibly adding a keyboardist to their live team soon — but also widening their scope of influence. Whitt put it best, “I think we want to pull a Bob Dylan, and when they think you’re going to zig, you zag.”
In the future, they see themselves focusing more on both the mundane and hellish aspects of the human experience. “I Just Feel Nothing At All” was a step in their desired direction, with the band’s personal favorites currently being “I-72” and “Cowboy Blues,” from previous albums and “Fall Damage,” which Banerian says he played 30-40 times on his drive back to Atlanta because it was the only song that could keep him awake.
The album serves as a transitional point for Manifest West. It borrows from several genres of music and doesn’t have a singular skip. The band considers “Untitled” to be the album’s end and “So Long, Mr. Zyn” to be the post-credits scene. The cinematic quality of the album cannot be understated despite only one of the songs having a video so far. Every song is an adventure through someone else’s headspace.
The last song on the album proves that although they take their art seriously, they are always looking for ways to have fun and push themselves simultaneously. They’ve promised sound will continue to grow as they move out to perform in Decatur, Bloomington, and Chicago, Illinois, and look towards Indiana and Tennessee for venues.
As it stands, they have enough songs to play a different set for every show featuring all original music. “Everything is fun to play,” Riley said while praising their lineup of both new and old songs. This is a band you won’t want to miss, whether it’s around CU or in their state-jumping journey.
If you have never seen Manifest West and would like to jump into their live shows, they will appear at the Space in downtown Champaign on March 1 and again on March 4 to support the touring band Pullstring and Aftercare. They will also be making a splash at Perimeter Road’s — Parkland’s in-house record label — music festival on May 4. Make sure to come out to see them and other local artists such as Sweetmelk, Tessa Turner, and more. Keep an eye out for the complete list coming soon.
For more information on Manifest West’s upcoming shows, booking, and merch, visit https://www.manifestwestband.com.
