This story originally appeared in our May 13-26 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
A Frontier flight pass, a bottle of whiskey and sketches of blue — this is the origin story of Wax.
The Cincinnati-based band formed in 2023. Members include lead vocalist and guitarist Joey Barreau, drummer Owen Dingle, guitarist Jack Tyszkiewics, keyboardist Jon Vicarel, and bassist/vocalist Matt Weiglein.
Dingle, Vicarel and Weiglein, formerly of local band Queen’s Ransom, began making music with Tyszkiewics. Needing another vocalist, Tyszkiewics suggested his college friend Barreau from Miami.
“I was living across the country, and they wrote a crop of songs they wanted to record,” said
Barreau. “I flew in from Miami. I met everyone for the first time, besides Jack, and the next day, we were in a recording studio. We started practicing immediately, finished the songs in the studio, and that was that. I flew back to Miami, they mixed the record by themselves, and it got put out under a different name.”
A different name that they were somewhat reluctant to share.
“We’re not going to talk about it because that name sucks,” said Barreau. “I’m not going to
mention that name.”
“I’ll mention it,” Dingle chimed in. “Sketches of Blue,” to which they all recoiled.
They described their early EP and name as not very good, but having potential. They realized that they were talented musicians with good ideas, who worked well together but had been held back by time constraints. “Literally, one of the songs, it was time to record it, and we’re like, there’s no lyrics,” Barreau said. “And I sat on the couch, I wrote the lyrics, then I went in there. It took a bottle of whiskey to have the confidence to do it. I was like, this is ridiculous.”
“We drank a ton during that first recording,” adds in Tyszkiewics. “They got me hammered and gave me a pen and said, ‘Get in there, sport.’ And I was like, all right, here we go,” Barreau continues. “I’ve just met these guys for the first time the day before. But we made it happen. And again, what we really took from that was there’s a lot of potential here. There’s good musical ideas here, and everybody just really liked each other. It’s some of the best memories I’ve ever had in my life. The hardest I’ve ever laughed was just that span of four days of meeting everyone for the first time.”
“I think we really wanted to write together too,” said Vicarel. “It was coming off of the Queen’s Ransom thing, and we wanted to try, you know, different music in a way as well.”
After a rather successful first meeting, the group decided to fully commit to the band. Barreau bought a Frontier Airlines flight pass, a six-month flight membership, to travel back and forth from Miami to Cincinnati to work on songwriting and crafting their sound. Eventually, moving back to the Queen City in summer 2024. Then, they began performing live at venues around the city. This seriously prompted them to revisit their band name.
“No one talks about how hard it is to come up with a band name,” said Barreau. “We were
nameless for like a year.”
“We wanted something timeless,” Dingle adds.
“We wanted it like a wall art flash tattoo,” said Tyszkiewics. “Not something that seemed cool in the moment, and then in ten years you’re like, fuck.”
After countless brainstorming sessions, they landed on the name Wax. Simultaneously, they worked on their debut album, “Virtual Fever,” and as they wrote their first single, they knew they had something special.
“The first song we wrote on the record we just did, “Worry Worry,” was one (that) basically just came together in the studio,” said Tyszkiewics. “I would say it was all of a sudden, like, ‘Okay, this is our new sound, we’re going for it.’”
“We’re going disco-esque,” said Dingle.
With influences like LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes, Tame Impala and Nile Rodgers, Wax
tends to find themselves in the realm of funk while transcending genres.
“If you listen to our album all the way through, it’s almost like three different bands,” said
Barreau. “There’s the funky kind of disco-ish synthesizer type of wave. There’s a bit more
straightforward rock and roll, early 2000s New York-influenced rock ‘n’ roll, then there’s more bluesy stuff on it as well. But I think to build out a band, you’ve got to have a clear
understanding of your identity, your sound and just how you’re going to be perceived by people.
It’s a delicate balance we are trying to strike between music that can serve two purposes. It’s headphone music and speaker music. Music you can listen to in your headphones, and you really hone in on it and take something from it. Then you can also throw it on a speaker at a party, and it’s going to hit, and it’s not going to clear out the room.”
Virtual Fever was finished in late 2024 and released in October 2025. An album, they say, could not have come together if it weren’t for their producer, Isaac Karns, who operates the studio Marble Garden.
“(He) was just genuinely one of the most creative people I’ve ever met in my life,” said Barreau. “Just has the best energy about him in the world. We went from strangers to fast friends so quickly.”
“He’s part of the family,” adds Dingle.
“The community is better for having him,” Tyszkiewics said.
They described Karns as a pillar of the Cincinnati music community — someone who saw their project from a fresh perspective and offered innovative ways to flesh out their album.
Though they have found their groove, they are constantly evolving and exploring their chemistry as a group. One thing that stands out is the admiration every member of the band shares for one another.
“I think a lot of the reason our music is structured the way it is is because we’re fortunate
enough to have our best guy on bass,” Barreau says when discussing bassist/vocalist Weiglin.
“Which is something a lot of bands don’t have, a lot of bands are hiding their bass player behind guitars and behind a root note. Whereas in Wax, Matt is typically carrying the melody. Jack and Jon are very percussive and harmonic, so they’re adding chords in, typically, a very syncopated and harmonic manner.”
“It’s very much like reggae music in a way because everybody in reggae is playing rhythm
except for the bass player,” adds Vicarel. “They’re the melody.”
Even with so many voices in the room, Wax tends to work together as a unit, never letting ego get in the way of doing what’s best for the group.
“One of the really special things about this group is that it’s a safe space for horrible ideas,” said Barreau. “Jack and Jon always have ideas turning; they always have something to bring to the group. So a lot of things start with someone in a bedroom, but nothing comes to life until we’ve really hashed it out together and we all feel good about it. Everyone’s credited on every song as a songwriter because there’s contributions from everybody on all of it.”
While most modern songwriting happens on a computer, Wax prefers an analog approach, avoiding gimmicks or AI in the process. They constantly road-test their material as a group, playing in front of live crowds and letting the audience show them what sticks.
Recently, Wax had a residency at MOTR Pub every Wednesday through the end of March. Then they started a two-month break to work on new music in anticipation of their June 6 kick-off at Madison Live. A ticketed event with a line-up of local bands like Fat Sal and Space Chaise Lounge, which they are referring to as the Wax summer jamboree.
Above all, Wax wants to create music that people can connect to and stay authentic to
themselves while making it. They agreed that if they were to have a mission statement as a
band, it would be:
“Make the best music in the world, and surround yourself with musicians that inspire you and push you. And if you do those two things, you’ll be alright.”
This article appears in May 13-26, 2026.