With radio singles including “The Distance” and “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” and six studio albums, CAKE remains a force in popular music. Vince DiFiore has played trumpet, keys and auxiliary percussion with CAKE from the band’s formation in 1991. He spoke with Jayplay about the band, his college experience and their new solar-powered off-the-grid studio.

CAKE is playing at the Crossroads KC at Grinders in Kansas City, Missouri, on May 2. General admission tickets are $30 and doors open at 7 p.m.

What were you like in college?

I had a really good experience. I went to UCLA. It was sort of a media center of the world there.

All sorts of bands coming through campus for concerts at noon, always showing a lot of movies on campus at night and it was close to the downtown art museum, so I’d take trips on the weekend to some of those, like the L.A. County Museum of Art.

I didn’t play trumpet when I was there, was just studying psychology and took up guitar and harmonica as a way to keep musical.

What was your best or funniest experience in college?

I keep thinking of all sorts of mishaps. (Laughs) I don’t know if those are really crazy good things. I don’t want to sound like a bad drug story or anything. (Laughs)

There is a way to describe college, like the time I passed out in Venice Beach and woke up with total amnesia.

Things were really pretty normal. I was just trying to find an identity like everyone else. That’s the tough part of that college age. If you haven’t picked something that you really want to do when you’re 18 … you haven’t been set on a real course.

So that’s really what I remember most from college is struggling for an identity and a path and then choosing one, and then all of a sudden making my personality fit with what I chose, which was psychology.

I went as far as I could with that and luckily the band had taken off and I chose to really pursue music.

What are some of the stresses that come with doing this as a job?

The five guys of the band got together and made music that people wanted to listen to at that time. Then there’s the pressure of repeating that. Every record has to be a little bit better than the last so that it still perks up people’s ears, something that is exciting and interesting to people. That’s probably the biggest thing. And then also getting along, too.

That there are other people who might challenge you in your workplace, or there are certain things that are expected of you—I think it happens to a lot of musicians. They lose sight of what it means to cooperate with other people and learn how to get along and not let testosterone get the best of you.

We’re all in a small room working together, in the studio together, and we have to get along. So that’s a constant challenge is just being polite to each other and being assertive in what we want, in what we want individually, creatively, but then also having enough objectivity to get along with each other and make the right decisions together as a group.

You overhauled your music studio to run on solar power. Why build an off-the-grid studio?

We wanted to do something that would make us more current with all of the energy problems that we’re having. Get something that would make us feel better about our own energy consumption. We’re so aware of everything that’s happening. You really have to do something to feel like you’re moving in the right direction. Though we are still consumers of energy and other things, it did feel good to do something that was right and help in some way.

It makes us feel a little more free in the studio. You don’t have that general free-floating anxiety that you sometimes feel when you’re in a building using up energy. It’s good.

Electricity is so tied into what we’re doing there—with recording music and using electric instruments. It’s been pretty cool—it looks sharp, too. It’s definitely not an eyesore; it’s a sweet thing. We have a video up on our website of the whole process of installing it also.

You guys give away a tree at every show, so does that tie into all this?

It’s a simple thing that people can do. It’s a good stage prop. It enables good discussion between (lead singer) John and the audience. We always have some trivia question, and give away T-shirts, but giving away a tree is always more exciting.

People send photos of themselves into the website and there’s a picture of them with their newly planted tree on the news section of our website. It’s been a fun thing about the computer revolution.