Photo by: Paige Margulies
This piece was originally featured in AM01 — Issue One of Ascribe. Click here to read it alongside the rest of the issue.
So first of all, congrats on everything — record deal, new song coming out soon. Can you tell us a bit about “Rerun?” That’s dropping Friday, right?
Yeah — because we are at Pacific Standard Time, we get it at 9PM the night before versus everyone else who gets it at midnight. So we’re doing the YouTube premiere for the music video a little early before the song drops everywhere. I’ll be prepping for that literally 24 hours from now. It’s crazy.
What was it like to make the song?
It’s such a wild story, ’cause Donovan [Lloyd] and I had like a batch of songs that we started before “Miss Me” came out. This band has been like a work in progress for a couple years prior to actually releasing music. We wanted to make sure we had like a collection of songs rather than just dropping a song and being like, “oh, what’s next?” You know?
Donovan and I had a batch of songs from like, two years ago, and we had “Rerun” just in the vault for a long time. I was stoked on it, but we couldn’t get that chorus to make sense with what we had going on in the rest of the song for a while.
We took it to this awesome producer — his name’s Hiram Hernandez. We originally started to do a song from scratch and I was like, “you know, we have this song that I really, really like, but it needs like tweaking.” He just brought a new life to it, I guess is the best way to say it.
I often feel like that happens when we take stuff to new producers; they just breathe a life into it that we could not do between the two of us. So I’m very, very excited this one’s coming out. It’s been definitely a favorite of mine for a long time and I’m really ready for everyone to hear.
The video for it looks so fun, everything I’ve seen so far.
Yeah. My friend Patrick Gilchrist — he’s in a band called Not My Weekend — he’s also very talented director. He heard the song when we started it. He’s been listening to our demos since way, way, way back. I remember sending it to and him being like, “oh my God, I have a music video idea for this.”
He’s literally had the video idea for like, eight or nine months. He had the idea when we were filming the “Distracted” video, like all he’s wanted to do is this music video.
He’s been waiting, so I know he’s really excited too ’cause he worked really hard on the video. It could not have come out as cool as it did without Patrick, so I’m very excited for everyone to see his hard work.
When it comes to Honey Revenge, one of the first things I think of — aside from like, banger music — is fun, bright colors and a really cool aesthetic.
Aww, thanks!
Is that something that you guys have intentionally done? How does the aesthetic of the band impact your work?
I don’t know, man. It’s weird. I don’t know if that’s how I intended it to be. Like, I always saw this band — before we even had the band — I always saw purple. I didn’t know what color my hair was gonna be. Purple ended up really complimenting me when I started going yellow, ’cause it made it look less green. Colorful hair and the colorful nails, I don’t always need to be super colorful. I think we both just have colorful personalities.
Unfortunately nowadays the industry is so visual, and to get people to check out your music you kind of have to look cool. Which is wack when you really think about it, but it’s one of those things where I really wanted to get the point across of our colorful, loud personalities.
I appreciate you saying that. I think we do a pretty good job of doing that, because I just put all of that color and vibrancy at the forefront of the look for the band.
Do you think we’ll see more vault songs? Have your prior releases also been vault songs?
Dude, yeah. “Miss Me,” I wrote for another project from like, three and a half years ago. That song has had so many versions. There’s a handful of songs that we’ve been playing live throughout the year. People are like, “when is this coming out?” and it’s like, “I don’t know,” ’cause we have so many songs right now.
We’re gonna be finishing them up at the beginning of next year. But we have to choose the best of the best. There’s about fifteen, sixteen, seventeen songs floating around in the vault right now. We know a good amount of the ones that we know are gonna come out. We have the next single after “Rerun” planned out; we’re very excited for that one. That one’s really cool. We’ve just started playing that one live as well. But there’s songs we were playing all year that I have people asking about and I’m like, “God, when I know I will tell you!” But yeah, they’re all gonna come out eventually. If I have anything to do with it, they’ll all come out eventually.
Do you find yourself writing more new music or more so polishing the vault songs as time goes on?
So much of both. My thing is always — I have so many songs that I love, like you’re saying from the Vault from years ago. I think there’s two more from the era that we wrote “Rerun” in, two years ago in the summertime that we revamped. Sometimes it’s like, just one melody gets to make its way and sometimes I think I have a chorus and then I bring it to someone. They’re like, “oh no, your chorus is the pre chorus,” and I’m like, “God damnmit!” So a lot of the time they’ll get a fresh chorus, but the three songs that we’ve worked on in the last year that are old ones.
Just in the last like, three months, we’ve written like six or seven new ones. So there’s a bunch of both happening. My heart always goes to the ones that I love that I want to still come out. But also, it’s so much about method and strategy when it comes to releasing; putting your best foot forward and your freshest, most current ideas is often recommended too.
So it’s a little bit of both. I can’t really say that it goes more one way than the other. We definitely have a lot of both going on.
I feel like a lot of artists are very influenced by, like, their local scenes or the other artists that they know. You guys are based in Southern California and there’s a huge scene there. How would you say that you guys stay connected to it or find inspiration from it?
You know, I have been so involved and I think I’m lucky. I can never go to a show without running into someone I know because I’m so entrenched in it. I’m have mixed feelings about it too, because LA could definitely have a stronger local scene. It’s very pop-forward, which is awesome, but there’s not as much of an underground rock scene. There’s only so many venues that aren’t like 21+ that allow all ages and all people to be present. I definitely try and go out to my friend’s shows. I know Donovan and I, between the two of us, we go to like, five to six shows a week sometimes ’cause we’re in the hub of Los Angeles where people from touring bands are always coming through.
We’re lucky enough to have a lot of great friends that aren’t necessarily in our local scene, but are touring right now. So we get to see them when they come through and it’s awesome. We have friends like Chase Petra who are really fucking amazing and popping off right now. We have friends like Hoity Toity who are super involved in the scene, and It’s Butter, and then Not My Weekend — there’s so many, I could keep going on and on.
I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed is support karma is real. When you put your neck out and you support people around you, like they’re gonna feel more likely to do that for you because they recognize you and you were always there, you know? Just a camaraderie that I feel like more scenes and people in the scene should be taking advantage of.
I think that’s definitely something that’s so prevalent in this scene’s culture, just giving back to each other. A hundred percent. It’s so easy. The shows are not that expensive.
Is there like a scene outside of Southern California that you guys feel particularly connected to? Maybe ’cause you’ve toured there, or you know people?
It’s still Southern California, but Orange County, like where Disney is, right outside of LA. It’s a little further south. They have a really flourishing local scene.
They just have a couple more, like, venues that aren’t really venues. There’s a couple really great skate shops that host shows. There were a couple really good record stores. Whereas I feel like LA, it’s harder to get that licensing and it’s harder to not get a noise complaint ’cause everything is so close together. There’s a lot more house shows. I think in, like the Inland Empire, Orange County area. San Diego is really, really great too.
With my old band I got to play the Pacific Northwest, and I think Oregon has a really great flourishing scene. Pacific Northwest in general with Seattle involved is also really great.
I wanna switch gears a tiny bit and talk about the record deal, which is super cool. How did that come to be?
There’s so many ways it came to be. We work with this really, really awesome friend — his name’s KJ Strock. He writes for a lot of really awesome artists and I’ve been friends with him, again, from going to shows.
He was in a band that was signed to Fearless Records; they were called The White Noise. I was a very big fan of them, so I went to a lot of their shows when they were very early on starting out. That band’s not a band anymore. I don’t know if you know that the guy who started Thriller [Records] is the same guy who started Fearless Records, Bob Becker. So KJ was on Bob’s label back in the day when Bob owned Fearless.
Me and KJ just never lost touch, always stayed friends. One day he just hit me up out of the blue like, “hey, do you wanna write a song?” And I was like, “yeah.” We brought him “Miss Me” ’cause I already had that. He refurbished it and made it what it is. At that point, “Distracted” was kind of popping off, and I guess people at Thriller already had us in like their little file of bands that were, like, cool. They already knew about us.
It became a little more direct, I think, around that time. We just got really lucky, they’re really awesome. It’s cool because Bob has an amazing trackrecord of bringing bands up in the scene, but he’s now turned his attention more towards smaller bands and independent artists —which I think is really cool and gonna be really valuable.
I never expected to be on a label where the guy who owns the thing would talk on the phone with me for hours at a time about nothing in particular.
We have awesome people, like Nick Moore and Ivan and JT from Hawthorne Heights working for Thriller Records. There’s musicians at the forefront of the business, so it doesn’t feel super corporatey. It really feels like a collective of creatives, which is really cool.
It seems like it’s very hands-on with people who get it — which is super important, especially for smaller bands.
Yeah, and I think they have the resources while also allowing the creative control to the artists. Which is really, I think, something that you don’t see a ton with labels in general.
Not everyone’s pro label. I think our band was at a point where, for what I wanted us to be doing, it was not sustainable between Donovan and myself. It’s really awesome now, ‘cause we have this great team that we’ve acquired since that time, and I think we’re really excited ‘cause it feels like everything’s kind of happening now.’
Have you seen, like, any change or evolution in y’all’s creative process after signing?
I think just a little less nerves about putting in all of these efforts and resources for it to not catch. We have this team that are gonna make sure that there are people seeing it, that we’re reaching out to publications, you know? I feel like it’s hard as a smaller band like us, where people don’t know if we have a team. If you’re not signed, people don’t know if you’re legit or if you’re just a —I hate this term —social media band. I think we get pinpointed as that a lot, when in reality we’re just a new band and we haven’t had the opportunity to play a ton of bigger shows and tour. So people think we don’t, but in reality it’s just that we haven’t yet.
I think the whole social media band thing is BS, to be completely honest. But I think it helps give us a little bit more legitimacy to people that don’t know about us if they find us and they see, “oh, this band is signed to Thriller, we know Thriller is legit.” I think it’s dumb, but it’s almost a cloak of verification to people.
Genuinely, people take you more seriously — which is dumb, but it’s validating to people to see that other people take them seriously, I think.
I have some short, fun questions for us to get to know you on a personal level, if that’s cool with you. The first being: if you could collab with any artist, who would it be?
Such a good one. I always say The Band Camino, just ‘cause I feel like they changed the trajectory of my life when it comes to what I wanted to be creating. I was so in this, like, Warped Tour bubble and I feel like they really showed me how to bring pop into that style of music. I owe a lot of my inspiration in the last couple years to them.
But also, I think Don Broco. The Home Team are a really awesome band that I would love to collaborate with. So those, I think.
Would you say any of them are also your dream tour, or is that maybe a different realm?
Oh yeah, I’d love to tour with any of those guys.
So on the note of shows, what’s your favorite show you’ve ever played?
I think I’m gonna say the show we’re playing on Friday, ‘cause this is the first sold-out show I’ve ever played in my whole career. We’re opening for Loveless, and they’re awesome. Futuristic is opening after us, and he’s awesome. The Loveless fanbase is very, very loving, and welcoming, and sweet to us. I’m very excited to meet a bunch of them. And I love The Echo, it’s one of my favorite venues.
So I think this will definitely be our favorite show. I’m gonna say the one that we’re playing on Friday.
Is there a producer you’d love to work with one day?
I’m a singer, right? I don’t play instruments, I don’t do all the tech stuff. So. I didn’t really know a ton of producers until the last like, five years or so. My dream producer to work with on anything was Kris Crummett, and he has mastered all of our songs. He’s just been very invested.
We’ve also gotten really awesome opportunities. We’ve worked with Erik Ron; he’s been a friend for a long time, but he’s also worked with some of my favorite bands. Zach Jones has also worked with some of my favorite bands, and he’s doing our music right now. We got to do a song with Mike Green. There’s all these awesome people — not to name drop, but we’ve already gotten to work with like so many people.
I feel like Zak Cervini is someone that I would definitely like to work with. And Drew Faulk. So those are the two that in my head I would like to [work with] eventually.
On the note of, like, creating songs, is there any song that from any artist that you wish you would’ve written?
Oh yeah. “See Through” by The Band Camino. That song just changed everything for me. I don’t know what it is. I’ve just listened to it so many times and it never gets old. There’s gotta be a couple more. I’ve been listening to a lot of Beauty School Dropout lately, and they have this song called, “We Made Plans & God Laughed.”
It’s like the title track off their new album that’s really, really great. And then I feel like “Fire” by PVRIS is a really good song.
Can we expect an album or EP soon?
Yeah, you might be able to expect that! We’re going for an album, that’s the goal. I’m just a full length bitch, like that’s me. I love a cohesive piece of work. I think that’s what I’m looking forward to, ‘cause I wanna do vinyl.
I collect vinyl, I’ve made it a whole part of my living space. You can literally see right there, there’s vinyl hanging on my walls. I love vinyl and I love the art of it, and taking it out of the sleeve, and doing all of the artwork. It’s just something that I hold near and dear to my heart.
So yes, we are working on an album. I don’t know when it’ll come out. I don’t know how many songs it’ll have on it. We’re very up in the air right now, but we have so many right now that we kind of have to put out an album. Because otherwise, we’re gonna lose half of the songs we’ve written in the last couple years to just disappear into the void.
Is there anything that you would wanna say to any of y’all’s listeners, or maybe someone who doesn’t know you guys yet?
Well, hi, first of all. I’m Devin, I sing. Donovan’s not here, but they play guitar and they’re — I always say Donovan’s the honey and I’m the revenge, ‘cause I think people get that mixed up.
Donovan’s like sweet, happy, bubbly — and I come off that way, but I will get you.
We’re just so excited to be doing everything right now. Follow us on socials. I’m chronically online, whether it’s my personal [account] or the band account.
We’re really heavily on TikTok, as I think any artist trying to break through is. We’re on Twitter, we’re on Instagram, we’re on Facebook. We do all of it. We have a text line, we have a Mail Chimp, we’re putting out music. We’re gonna be putting out a bunch of new music in the next year or so.
We’re gonna be going on tour next year, and we’re gonna be meeting a bunch of new people. So just come out — just come out and meet us.
I’m very much —and I know Donovan is too — we’re very much all on the table, so there’s not really a ton about us that we’re trying to hide, I guess is what I’m saying. You kind of gotta come see us and meet us to get the vibes. But I think you will like us, and you should come hang out.
