UCSB students watching Isla Vista band Big Hungry perform. (Lauren Chiou / Daily Nexus)
Isla Vista bands Big Hungry and Cordoba performed on the 2025 Shabang Music Festival stage, bringing a UC Santa Barbara presence to Dairy Creek Golf Course in San Luis Obispo for the two-day music festival. Both bands were included on the lineup featuring popular headliners Jungle and Wallows, along with performers Briston Maroney, Kream and Odd Mob.
Big Hungry won the annual Santa Barbara segment of the Battle of the Bands tour on Feb. 27 at SOhO Restaurant & Music Club, securing them a spot in the festival lineup. Hosted by Shabang and music collective Free the Youth, five bands are selected out of hundreds of submissions to compete for a chance to perform at Shabang. Big Hungry’s competition consisted of several other notable I.V.-based bands, including The Sweeps, Birchwood, Dislocated and Pretty Cheeky.
Big Hungry guitarist and third-year history major Stiles White expressed the band’s desire to win Battle of the Bands.
“We only had 15 minutes, and it was a competition we didn’t want to lose,” White said. “We’re all pretty competitive.”
Once Big Hungry won (which was decided by crowd applause and a panel of judges), White, along with the rest of the band — drummer and third-year psychological & brain sciences major Curran Hoxie, rhythm guitarist and third-year environmental studies major Moe Johnson, bassist and third-year psychological & brain sciences and English double major Avery Lindsey and vocalist and music studies major Nolan Guss — was all set to perform at the festival.
Big Hungry performed on the Cuesta Ridge stage on Saturday, May 3 at 2:30 p.m. Despite the cloudy skies and windy weather, the Isla Vista band attracted a crowd of longtime fans and first-time listeners drawn to the group’s groovy sound. They only performed their original songs, which lots of crowd members seemed to be familiar with — many could be seen screaming the lyrics to “Jake on the Phone.”
Being accustomed to mostly playing house shows in I.V., the band was thrilled to be playing a set with professional equipment and a sound technician to help improve their sound on stage.
“We could hear every sound that was being produced on stage … It felt really powerful,” White said.
Big Hungry won the Santa Barbara Battle of the Bands competition on Feb. 27, securing their spot on the lineup. (Lauren Chiou / Daily Nexus)
Multiple students were in attendance, from UCSB alums already familiar with the band to students from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo hearing Big Hungry originals for the first time.
“It’s so fun seeing [Big Hungry] on a big stage,” UCSB alum Phoebe Lariccia said. “[They sound] so much better than [they] usually [do] in I.V.”
“It’s nice to see that they played mostly originals,” Lariccia added.
While Cal Poly first-year art and design major Maddie Fosko did not know of Big Hungry prior to their performance, she praised their set, describing the band as having “good vibes.”
“They were really good,” Fosko said. “It was fun to hang around.”
Cordoba, a former Isla Vista music scene staple whose name is derived from Cordoba Road in I.V., performed on the Cuesta Ridge stage the day before, on Friday, May 2 at 4:20 p.m. Consisting of UCSB alums Charles Silver, Marlowe Kushner, Wally Corngold and Gabriel Cohen, the group began playing together in early 2022.
Since graduating from UCSB in 2024 and leaving the Isla Vista band scene, Cordoba has been working on making a name for themselves in the music world. According to Kushner, the band secured the Shabang gig through pre-existing I.V. connections, specifically with the popular band resource Instagram account @soundsofiv.
“Wally [Corngold] and I lived with a friend named Devlin [Ott, fourth-year geography major] who runs @soundsofiv on Instagram. She put us in touch with a guy named Robbie [Baker] … [a] talent buyer-slash-booker for Shabang,” Kushner explained.
Landing a spot at Shabang was a huge accomplishment for the group, with Corngold describing the band’s experience performing there as “the greatest time ever.” Decked out in matching dark green track suits (an on-stage ensemble signature to the band), Cordoba played a mix of jazz, funk and indie originals, powering through technical difficulties and on-stage nerves to deliver an electrifying performance.
Cordoba performing in dark green tracksuits, a signature look of the band. (Lauren Chiou / Daily Nexus)
“We had a little bit of technical [difficulty] right before we went on … I think [if that] had happened to the old Cordoba, we would have been pretty shaken and nervous,” Silver said. “But thankfully, that happened to the modern version of Cordoba. We were pretty unfazed by it.”
“Right as we started, all of our friends were filing in and family members,” he continued. “It was just a blast. We were all making a lot of eye contact and smiling at each other and just clearly all having a good time up there.”
“From the first note of the song that you start with, it’s like you blast off into another mindset or a state of a whole other reality,” Cohen said. “Shabang was just, like, really beautiful.”
Both bands have future projects lined up after taking on the Shabang stage. Big Hungry is recording and plans to release new music in the near future. Their originals can be found on Spotify, and any future projects from the band can be found at @bighungryband on Instagram.
Cordoba plans to continue making music and hopes to relocate to New York to explore the music scene on the East Coast. Their original music is on Spotify. More information about the band can be found at @thebandcordoba on Instagram.
