Adding second lead singer powers success for Oklahoma pop-punk emo band Cliffdiver

Update: Cliffdiver has postponed its Oklahoma City show planned for June 18 at 89th Street OKC after one of the members of its touring party tested positive for COVID-19. A rescheduled date is expected to be announced soon.

When the guys of Oklahoma band Cliffdiver needed some extra fuel in the tank of their 2020 song "Gas City," they found the perfect premium blend in singer and fellow Tulsan Briana Wright.

"I grew up going to DIY pop-punk emo shows since I was 10, and it's something I've always wanted to do. I thought, 'OK, they want me, so I'm absolutely going to do it.' ... That day in the studio, I understood every reference, and I feel like in that moment, they started to understand that this was my world, too," Wright recalled.

"After we got done, the guys were like, 'Listen, so the problem is we can never perform this song live without you. You know what you're doing, you've always wanted to do this, and we know you can, so you want to just want to just make the thing official?' I was like, 'Yeah. But I have some questions first.' We sat down and probably within 20, 30 minutes, we were shaking hands and saying, 'Let's do this.'"

Wright brought more than just a powerful voice to the Cliffdiver, which already boasted a full tank of musical talent, with singer Joey Duffy, guitarists/vocalists Matt Ehler and Gilbert Erickson, bassist Tyler Rogers, saxophonist Dony Nickles and drummer Eliot Cooper.

"Briana's a hard worker. Matt and I had been doing a lot of work for two, three years. Then when Bri came, she came ready to do the job, not just, 'Hey, I'm such an incredible singer,'" Duffy told The Oklahoman from the road in Connecticut. "It was like, 'I'm ready to work,' and because of that, we've been able to exceed our expectations — and hopefully, we'll continue to do so. But it's been pretty cool to see." 

Despite the ongoing difficulties of fueling a musical career during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cliffdiver have shifted into a new gear in the past year or so: The Oklahomans inked a deal with respected indie label SideOneDummy Records and released in May their first full-length album, "Exercise Your Demons."

"We worked really hard not to just be any particular genre," Duffy said. "We just want to make songs that we like, I guess, and it's been cool to have someone who isn't pushing for more of one particular sound. That's been really a blessing, in my opinion."

Despite COVID disruptions, Cliffdiver makes big plans to tour

Propelled by their debut LP, Cliffdiver made big touring plans for this year, including stints on the road with New York emo band Carpool and Pennsylvania pop-punk group Goalkeeper.

Unfortunately, the Tulsans announced earlier this week that they were canceling four scheduled shows after a member of their tour party tested positive for COVID-19.

They made the 20-hour drive from Niagara Falls back home to Tulsa without the income from those planned dates, a tough situation for an indie band powering through record-high gas prices.

Cliffdiver is still hoping to play a planned Oklahoma City show June 18 at 89th Street OKC.

Plus, the Tulsans already have an OKC return date on their calendar: Cliffdiver is scheduled to join Texas pop-punk band Bowling for Soup's "Back for the Attack Tour" next month. The trek, which also features Florida ska-punk group Less Than Jake, is slated to stop in OKC Aug. 2 for a Tower Theatre concert.

"When we heard that it was even really an option for us to get onto that package ... it made the most sense of anything we've ever heard," Wright said, adding that she and her bandmates are Bowling for Soup fans.

"When we found out about it, we actually made them some parody videos of their songs, begging them to take us, so that we could show them that we are all cut of the same (expletive) cloth. ... It was ridiculous. We did it in an afternoon, but it did the trick."

Cliffdiver's music jumps from humor to heavy with lyrics about mental illness

With their hits "1985," "Girl All the Bad Guys Want" and "High School Never Ends," Bowling for Soup has stirred up a reputation for creating catchy songs with funny lyrics. With their two EPs — 2018’s "Small Hours" and 2019's "At Your Own Risk" — and now "Exercise Your Demons," Cliffdiver is mixing up their version of a similar recipe for infectious music with uproarious words.

But the Oklahoma musicians also use their music to speak about mental health and have been forthcoming about their own struggles in that area. Both Duffy and Wright have survived suicide attempts, and Duffy, who was diagnosed as bipolar when he was 25, has described "Exercise Your Demons" as a deep dive into grief inspired by recurring dreams about his late former fiancée.

"I think that's where the humor comes from, too, is because we have seen the other side of things where it is dark and it's hard and it's scary. We have both struggled with our mental health in the past, present and probably future," said Duffy, who just celebrated a year of sobriety from alcohol.

"Being able to be open about it in a way that is just straightforward instead of real veiled, instead of trying to be cool, we're just saying, 'Hey, sometimes this sucks, sometimes the struggle is horrific, but doesn't stop there. Things do get better and bad days do end.'" 

The band's freshman LP veers confidently from wildly entertaining bangers like New Vegas Bomb (featuring Skatune Network, Florida musician Jeremy Hunter's ska cover project) to IKEA Strikes Back (with a playful music video featuring Tulsa music icons Hanson) to dramatically heartbreaking odes like "We Saw the Same Sunset" and "Death Is a Wedding (With Eternity)."

"Those are both really heavy songs ... but the story doesn't end with the sadness, with the disillusionment, with the real pull of the the void. It ends with hope and with resilience and showing that you can you can persevere even when you think the deck is stacked against you. You are able to find a new way to push through and to then get to a point where you can enjoy life again, because we get so caught up in the struggle that we don't ever think it's going to be sunny again," said Duffy.

"We're both parents — I have a 9-year-old; Bri has a 5-year-old — and we want to show them that it doesn't end with the heartbreak and the pain. This is part of life, but so is joy and so is hope and so is perseverance."

Cliffdiver's Tulsa singers shatter stereotypes for emo musicians

Although the band doesn't confine itself to one genre, Wright said she and her Cliffdiver cohorts don't shy away from calling their music emo, embracing the style's emotional expressiveness and confessional lyrics.

And the singers belt their emo songs despite not fitting the stereotypical image for emo artists.

"We talk a lot about our age when we're out here, because I turn 35 next month. Bri's not too far behind me," said Duffy, whose co-lead singer is 33.

"We get up on stage and say, 'Hey, I didn't join a band 'til I was 30. So, if you're out there at 27, 28, 29, 38, 47, it's not too late to chase your dreams.'"

As a woman of color, Wright is a rarity in emo music, which tends to conjure images of angsty white kids in Hot Topic T-shirts, Vans shoes and black eyeliner.

"I grew up listening to it ... and with my voice being what it is — it's big and it's Black and I love that — we knew there was going to be a challenge folding it into this music in the way that we wanted. So, we just experimented ... and the minute we knew something sounded right, it sounded right to everybody. So, we would move forward, and we've kind of got it down now. I was telling the guys the other day, I'm ready to write the next album (because) we got good at this really quickly," she said.

"I've already seen the impact of big girls seeing a big girl, of moms seeing a mom, of brown girls seeing a brown girl ... So, it's very important to me, because it can change lives. Representation changes lives, and I am so happy to be a small part of that."

Cliffdiver with Goalkeeper 

When: 6:30 p.m. June 18. 

Where: 89th Street OKC, 8911 N Western Ave. 

Bowling for Soup, Less Than Jake and Cliffdiver 

When: 6:30 p.m. Aug. 2. 

Where: Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23.  

Tickets and information: https://cliffdiverok.com. 

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Adding second lead singer powers success for Oklahoma band Cliffdiver