Hi, everyone! I recently exchanged interview questions with Danny Davis, one of the two members in the OKC-based pop group Husbands. Davis, along with fellow member Wil Norton, have been making music together for nearly ten years. With both members of the band having full-time jobs and living more than 1,000 miles apart, they are an act that really makes the best despite being long distance. I was super interested to learn more about their process, and I definitely learned a lot of amazing stuff!
Which artists or albums inspired you guys to start a music career in the first place?
D.D.: I remember wanting to play guitar the moment my older brother played me “Stay Together for the Kids” by blink-182 when I was in 7th grade. It’s not a great riff by any means, but my teenage brain was very into it.
How did you guys first meet each other?
D.D.: We met in college. Wil was sort of friends with my sister and she introduced us when I was eating with my grandparents at a Chinese restaurant. I was a big fan of Wil’s band “The Non” at that time, so it was a big deal for me haha.
What’s the significance behind the band’s name?
D.D.: We're romantic dudes, so I guess you could call it a shoutout to our wives.
How have you guys managed to stay active as a band during the pandemic?
D.D.: Working on music over the internet has always been a big part of our MO because we’ve lived in different places for a large part of the band’s existence, so not much has changed in that respect. We had to cancel a string of dates at a handful of cool venues around the country, so we're gonna have to figure out how to use the non-refundable plane tickets we bought for those shows. Maybe we'll go on an all-inclusive band vacation when it's safe to travel again... Now that I'm thinking about it that's a really good idea.
Danny, what can you say about the drawings of presidents that you have on your Instagram page?
D.D.: They’re not great but I really enjoy doing them. I’m stuck on Andrew Johnson right now. A friend pointed out that my painting of him looks like Tommy Lee Jones so I’m feeling a bit daunted by that one at the moment.
I know that the live show seems to be an important part of the band’s image, but would you guys say that you prefer performing live rather than working on new songs?
D.D.: More than anything else, I enjoy writing and recording songs.
Can you describe your process for making a song?
D: It changes all the time. We have phases we go through that characterize different groups of songs. Right now, I’m enjoying writing vocal melodies and lyrics on top of pretty fleshed out instrumental arrangements from Wil. I’d say Wil’s the better instrumentalist between the two of us and it kind of feels like we play to our strengths when we do it like that. Plus he’s generally more willing to put in weirder chords, so for that I'm forced into a place outside of my comfort zone to try and achieve some sort of melodic payoff, which often turns out better.
Compared to past projects, how did the writing and recording process differ on your newest record, After the Gold Rush Party?
D.D.: After the Gold Rush Party was more difficult to finish than anything we’ve done before, but it was also the most rewarding. With Golden Year, we self-recorded and released a bunch of singles on bandcamp, picked some of the better ones to build from, wrote a few more songs to fill it out, and called it an album. With ATGRP, we wanted to have some sort of story to tell and a cohesive set of songs to tell it. We were also a little pickier with ourselves in terms of recording quality. We recorded some of the album with Chad Copelin and Christian Theriot at Blackwatch Studios in Norman, which was the first time we really worked with someone outside of ourselves on an album. We’ve talked about those sessions with Chad a lot, because it was a formative experience and we learned a lot from it.
What would you guys say is more important to you- lyricism, or production value and instrumentation?
D.D.: I’d vote neither and say it's the songwriting.
What led you guys to release a compilation of demos and outtakes on Wayne John?
D.D.: We have a huge vault of songs we’ve written over the years, especially between Golden Year and ATGRP, and it just sits in our dropbox and stares us down. In the interest of working on new stuff and allowing ourselves to let go of those old songs, we thought it’d be fun, and certainly cathartic, to put some of them out.
What have been some of your favorite songs to make over the years? Are there any fun stories behind them?
D.D.: “Neuromancer” was fun. The whole thing, music and lyrics, came out really quickly in one afternoon, basically in the first week after Wil moved back to OKC from D.C. We said, "Heck, let's do another one like the Beach Boys." I'd recently read the book per Wil's recommendation, and we wrote lyrics that riffed on that future dystopian imagery that somehow tied in a theme of future dystopian family dynamics. Zach Zeller (who does keys for us) came over and recorded those nice little Juno synth lines. A song is really fun to write when everyone is contributing in real time. Dunno, just vividly remember that afternoon for some reason.
If you could delete or rewrite one song from your discography, what would it be?
D.D: Two songs that we’ve never played live come to mind. There’s a song we put out on Bandcamp called “Swing Low, Dreamboat” that I think would be fun to re-record. The mix and arrangement is a bit of a mess as it currently stands. It's all built on top of a drum loop from a cheap Concertmate synth that couldn't keep tempo because it was dying. “Tokyo” is another old Bandcamp song that I still like a lot that wouldn't really need to even change much.
I know you guys have been pretty active with releasing new music lately, but is there any other stuff in the works right now?
D.D.: Besides working on LP3, we have some collaborative projects we’re working on but can’t really talk about at the moment - hopefully, we get some stuff finished that we can share soon.
What do you want people reading this to know about you and your music?
D.D: Nothing in particular. Just hope they enjoy the tunes.
What music goals do you have for the future?
D.D.: To be as big as Coldplay. If that doesn't work out we still have our day jobs.
Once again, I'd like to thank Danny for giving his time to do this interview. I wish him and Wil good luck in their future musicmaking journeys. Go check out their tunes, and keep your eyes peeled for more bazzreviews content coming soon!
To hear Husbands' music, log on to https://husbandsokc.bandcamp.com
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