Logan Rex of Artikal Sound System talks Girl Power and Florida Pride

Ever–dynamic Florida natives Artikal Sound System released their 2022 debut full length album, Welcome to Florida, as dramatically as their front woman, Logan Rex, chooses her costumes. The album quickly thrust the quartet into the spotlight, making a name for themselves via their whimsically catchy choruses coupled with choice features from some of the industry greats like Little Stranger and The Elovaters. Such rapid success isn’t without it’s growing pains, as Logan explains:

“When you’re inside of something and working so hard and growing so much you don’t notice from the outside what that looks like…

Last year we just spent so much time on the road. I think a growing pain is that we would love to get back into the studio and write another album, but there just hasn’t been time to do that. So I think that’s what we’ll focus on this year – writing and putting out another album. Which is not a bad growing pain.”

Aside from the sonically dynamic No Doubt energy Welcome to Florida gives, spanning genres ranging from bubbly pop to ska, the album’s cover art similarly harkens back the same girl power-driven hometown pride of Tragic Kingdom.

“Where we shot it is actually across the street from where Cope, our keyboard player, lives. It’s this really cute trailer park right on the intercoastal and all these old people live there. We just wanted it to be super Florida so we all tried to be different characters that you might see throughout the state. We’re really proud to be from Florida and we had all watched the ZZ Top documentary about how those guys made Texas Pride [a thing] and we were like ‘You know what, we wanna show some pride about being from Florida’ so we kinda started with the album title and went from there”.

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry is far from easy, yet Rex effortlessly navigates the waters with her one-of-the-boys demeanor and carefree attitude–making her the farthest thing from a diva.

The band’s modus operandi is more Goonies, less Fleetwood Mac, evident within five minutes of being in their presence.

“I’m just a little rascal. Sometimes I’m like ‘I’m always the only woman, poor me, these guys don’t understand’, and then other times it doesn’t really matter. Just depends on which way the winds are blowing. Everybody’s really nice and I feel like because there are so few women, people are surprisingly like, ‘oh, we want more of that!’. They want to lift the ladies up. Sometimes it’s like trying to break into this boy’s club so it’s like anything else–two sides of the coin”

Catch Logan and the rest of Artikal Sound System on tour this fall with Iration and Cydeways!

Article by: Allie Adams