A Conversation with The Honey Brothers’ Adrian Grenier & Ari Gold – HuffPost 3.23.12
Mike Ragogna: Guys, this is your second album, right?
Ari Gold, Adrian Grenier: Yes, that’s correct, a long time coming.
Mike: A long time coming, like years. What took so long?
Adrian: Family obligations. We had to take our sister to the prom because her boyfriend bailed on her.
Mike: See, that sucks and that always gets in the way of doing a new album. How did the writing go into it? Everybody comes in with their own songs, for the most part?
Ari: Yeah, most of our songs were stuff we wrote in Adrian’s basement or some of them we wrote on the road. Most of them were finished or 95% finished, and then once we got into the recording process, we tweaked some and made some changes just based on the vibe in there. But, we weren’t writing from square one in the studio.
Adrian: Ari was remixing all the way to the very end.
Mike: Really? Ari, what are your responsibilities beyond being a Honey Brother?
Ari: Well, Adrian is exaggerating a little bit. There was one song that I wanted to remix and I remixed it 45 minutes before the upload deadline into the system so that the album could be released, and I got it in right under. It was one of those Indiana Jones moments… But it was just that one song. There was one other song that we recorded, actually. The producer was out getting lunch. We snuck on his computer and recorded the song called “Time Space,” which that was one we all kind of made ourselves. But the rest was done in a more proper way. We knew how to hit “record” on the system, and we hit record and made the most anarchic song on the record, in a good way.
Mike: You sport lots of different styles on this record, like “Green And Gold” is sort of dance, right?
Ari: It is pro-dance…
Mike: And what is all this business of Paul Simon smoking a joint with Elvis Costello?
Ari: Uh, Adrian?
Adrian: Well, you tell us, what would that look like?
Mike: I know what that would look like, I’ve seen it. No, I haven’t. Oh, and then you had to go and throw in the Belle and Sebastian rehearsal space.
Adrian: We’re trying to show how fun and playful we are while including some of our influences. But at the end of the day, it’s just so hard to define. We’re going to really leave that up to you. But at the core of what we do, we’re looking to be defined on the dance floor.
Ari: I fully agree.
Mike: After your first album, I bet there was some demand to get another album out, though like you said, the prom got in the way. What is the creative process? And who’s the one makes the calls saying, “Okay, come on, let’s get our asses in gear”?
Ari: That’s depending on which day of the week it is. We have 5 members, and we have a manager and a producer. So that’s seven days a week, and on any given day. One of us carries the whip. But it depends on the mood.
Adrian: Also, writing songs isn’t the issue. We love playing, we play together, obviously, but it’s really just a matter of finding the discipline to say, “Okay, we have enough songs to work with, let’s sit down and discipline ourselves to actually put them down in a more formal setting,” which is why, I think, we have our manager to thank for this album, because she insisted that we retreat to the woods where we wouldn’t be distracted. I think that was very helpful.
Mike: Well, one of the methods probably was that your producer had you guys get in a circle and work up vibe of the material you had.
Ari: Yeah we actually were in a circle and we were in the basement of our producer’s old Victorian house in Kingston, New York. It was Winter, so it was like a shamanic ritual, like we were stuck in the sweat lodge of our own imagination. We couldn’t leave, it was snowing outside, and we’re sitting in a circle singing our song until we find the right groove.
Mike: Let’s catch everybody up on what the Honey Brothers are. You all have your “Honey” aliases.
Ari: Well, I think on some level, all of us are looking for the sense of family, and we’re looking for the sense of family when we formed the band. The idea of having a band of brothers was appealing even though genetically, maybe we weren’t brothers. But initially, it came up out of our love of old-time American music from the 1920s and 1930s which, if you have a microscope, you might be able to detect a little bit of that influence in our music, but not too much. There were a lot of brothers bands back then, and we liked the idea of being a modern and sweet and edible version of that.
Mike: (laughs) Adrian, you’re no strange to brothers considering Entourage. Do you miss your other brothers from not filming anymore?
Adrian: Of course, but I’m just looking for the next reunion up on the big screen.
Mike: Is that going to happen?
Adrian: If I have anything to do about it, yeah.
Mike: Cool, I think that was the intention with The Sopranos and everything, but I just never know where any of those series go as far as movies.
Adrian: Yeah, a lot of things have to happen in the meantime before we actually see it in theaters. Scripts have to be written, deals have to be made… but in the meantime, you have to create Honey Brothers albums to buy you time.
Mike: Now, you’re a drummer. Just curious, did you have a drum set on the set to play between shots?
Adrian: Well it’s funny, actually. Kevin Dillon and Jeremy Piven both play the drums as well, so there’s a lot of camaraderie there.
Mike: As well as a drum circle.
Adrian: Not quite.
Mike: (laughs) Just playing. This is a question I ask everybody. What is your advice for new artists?
Ari: You better love what you’re doing because that’s the ultimate payback, loving what you’re doing. All the other stuff that you think you’re doing it for, cannot be said enough. You can’t count on anything other than loving what you’re doing, so you better love what you’re doing, because you can count on that. The fact is that for me, every time I get on stage with these guys, I have a blast. I love it. I absolutely love it every time, I’ve never not loved it or had a show that I didn’t enjoy. I always enjoy it. That’s because the music makes me feel good and it hopefully makes people listening to it feel good, and I know it makes my brothers feel good. That’s really crucial. I see it, I know a lot of people in the film business and the music business, and they’re miserable all the time, and it’s like, “Are you enjoying what you’re doing? If not, why are you doing it?” It’s so hard to do, you really have to love it.
Mike: Adrian, how do you feel about it?
Adrian: Well, I’d say you guys are in the Wild, Wild West of music, to break down the music industry. It’s basically up for grabs and you have all the power to go out there and earn fans, take back control. I think more and more, young bands are able to make it a decent living, albeit it’s not like the fantasy rock star experience. But a lot of that was just smoke and mirrors anyway, because the studios were walking away with the cash in the end, and a lot of these artists, as much as you’d think that they were big and famous and rich, ended up with very little. You’re in the driver’s seat, guys and gals. Make the most of it.
Mike: Nice, good answers. As far as the immediate future for The Honey Brothers, there’s going to be some touring, right?
Ari: yeah, we’re doing a few dates, and they’re calling it a tour, a very small tour. We hope to put more dates down in the future, but it’s challenging.
Mike: When you guys are on the road together, you’re creating, right? It’s not just about playing the venue, you guys are getting a little creative too?
Ari: Yeah, we’ve done some hotel room writing before and backstreet writing, and I think Adrian’s thighs get sore as he plays drums on his thighs in the back. (laughs)
Adrian: We actually have been making a lot of music videos as well, that’s been our creative outlet as of late, which has been exciting because Ari’s made films, I’ve made films…we enjoy that creative process also. Bringing in other film makers to help, like Vadim who created our “Green And Gold” video.
Mike: It was really clever.
Ari: Adrian actually spearheaded that video, he’s got a friend who’s really creative and was like, “Hey I’ll do a video” and Adrian had to bulldoze the band and the manager to say, “You know what, let’s all just send him some footage of our previous videos, shoot some footage on web cam, just send it to him in Florida and let him be a crazy chef, go disappear and come out with a concoction.” He did amazing work. That was Adrian’s push.
Mike: You can’t just be making records now, you have to be looking at the bigger picture including social media and all of that. How much are you guys employing Facebook and Twitter, for instance?
Ari: We do it, but I think we all have to be reminded every now and then to do it more. We love engaging with our fans but remembering to post something every day sometimes is challenging.
Adrian: What I did–and this is a new project–is I started http://wreckroom.tv/, and basically, that’s where we rehearse, that’s where we play, and that’s where our songwriting happens. But not only that, there are a lot of other bands that come down, write and record in that space. So I said, “Why not just create a venue, a stage, to display all these cool bands.” So I’d encourage you guys to check it out, because The Honey Brothers are going to be making an appearance there as well pretty soon. Sign up, check it out, there’s a lot of new stuff coming out. Again, it’s all this new media, social networking opportunities that we all have to take advantage of. We can’t always just hoard and hide our work waiting for that big break. I think it’s just a matter of being a little more fluid and letting the creativity just be an expression in the moment and that’s what we’ve been doing with the rec room as well–The Honey Brothers just going down, recording stuff, and putting it out.
Ari: When we’re just playing a show for Oceana, which is an environmental charity down in Florida, and we’re rehearsing for the show, and Adrian got out his phone and said, “OK we’re doing another video right now.” Just having that feeling that you can just take out your phone and make a video, that’s totally acceptable in five minutes. The sense of not hoarding your work is really key, like you said. The old music business, the idea of having stuff sitting on the shelves, long lead PR campaigns of six months before the record comes out, you’re pounding the pavement. All that can be useful, big bands are still doing that, but one of the advantages of being smaller is that you can be nimble and you can be actually creative on a daily basis, which is more fun.
Mike: Yeah, it’s more of a guerilla approach, right?
Ari: Yes. We’re in the jungle, we’re looking out at the world, and we’re firing Honey-tipped arrows.
Mike: (laughs) Couldn’t have put it better. Any words of wisdom before we wrap it up here?
Ari: Wisdom? Have a good time, all the time. That doesn’t sound very wise. Love thy enemy.
Adrian: Words of Wisdom? Support your solar-powered radio stations.
Ari: Yeah!
Mike: (laughs) Nice, thank you very much, sirs. Time Flies Like A Peach. We didn’t talk about this. Time Flies Like A Peach?
Ari: Well time flies like a peach, doesn’t it? Life moves by faster than a blink, so we picture a joyful way of dealing with that image by imagining a peach flying through the air. I think it’s a joyful way of looking at the fact that we both live and die quickly and we’re all going to be gone, so it’s a celebration of life.
Adrian: Life passes with a peachy quickness.
Mike: Nice, good one!
Ari: The Allman Brothers had a strong peach theme, so keeping with the brothers’ tradition, I think there’s a peach thing going on.