Meet Boon the hottest new college band, you might have already heard about them from NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series or Capital Clash this winter. They are composed of AU students Brendan Principato, Jesse Paller, Luke Ramsey, and Drew Sher. Between classes, writing, recording, and their shows it’s hard to believe that they have time to even breathe, but they still managed to sit down with us after a band practice to tell us a little about Boon and their new EP available for download Rome.
Her Campus: How did Boon come to be?
Brendan: Boon started as my dorm room project, just something that I would use as stress relief and never really work on seriously. When I lived in Rome last year I didn’t bring any instruments with me, which was a huge mistake. I was flooded with all of these musical ideas and had no place to take them down. When I got home I started piecing the ideas together into demos. Then Jesse stepped in and we spent 10 months working the demos into complete songs. As we were finishing up the EP a friend of mine tipped me off to the NPR Tiny Desk Concert Contest. Jesse and I quickly arranged a new song for two guitars and submitted a video which, surprisingly was featured on the NPR blog. At that point we wanted to play shows but needed a bigger sound. Luckily two of our friends Luke and Drew were willing to join the line up just in time for our first live show. I can’t thank those guys enough.
Luke: Boon is Brendan, Boon is us, Boon is you. Boon is everyone.
Jesse: Boon is Brendan’s constantly growing baby, his moniker for solo songs that he writes. The infancy of Boon as a band was during fall break of our sophomore year when he and I collaborated and wrote an early version of “Play Along” together. When Rome was conceived it became the two of us in the studio.
HC: What influenced Rome? How was recording project? Struggles? Rewards?
Brendan: The city of Rome is an insane place. It’s falling apart and exploding with life and is like this great paradox of a environment. It’s ancient and overgrown with prehistoric looking plants and feels lawless. Living there for a little while ripped me away from everything and everyone that I knew and into this archaic landscape. The songs on the EP were conceived while wandering around the city in a daze for months. It’s a strange thing to be faced with some of the greatest achievements of humans all by yourself. I would be too amazed to control myself and turn to share it with someone but then remember I was alone. The distance from everything familiar, the climate, the language barrier; all of these things were huge influences on the record. When I came back home I felt mutated, like the city had infected me. I tried to embed the tone of the city onto the EP through samples I recorded abroad and sounds that paralleled how I felt there. It’s one of my favorite places on the planet.
Jesse: Brendan conceived most of the songs when he was living in Rome, and he sent me voice notes of skeletal forms. When he returned for the summer we began to decide which songs would appear on the EP. He lives in New York, and I was there for the summer. I would walk around the city listening to his voice notes and thinking about how to build the demos sonically. We met up a couple times and filled up notepads with ideas for how to make the sound in our heads happen. We recorded it at the studio I was interning at for the summer, Gravesend Recordings in the Silent Barn, an art space in Brooklyn (run by Julian and Carlos from Ava Luna.)
The biggest struggle for me during the recording of this EP was our perfectionism. We recorded endless vocal takes and guitar takes. It was hard to know when to stop, step back, not add this next instrument or this new layer of reverb. Often our mixing sessions went until 3am and we would be completely delirious.
This was an insanely rewarding experience for me. As a hopeful audio engineer/producer, it was amazing to get to work with such a creative boy. Helping Brendan finish these songs and pursue his elusive ideal sound was an amazing brain stretch. Also, I learned countless new recording and mixing techniques in the process of recording this, and I feel much more confident in my audio capacity now. It’s also just really nice to walk around listening to something I 100% recorded and produced, know it’s out on the internet, and being okay with that.
HC: How would you describe your style? The way you work together as a creative process?
Jesse: In terms of songwriting, Brendan writes almost everything. For the EP, he came up with the music and lyrics (except on “Play Along,”) and then we both collaborated on how the songs would sound. Because I played drums, bass, and most of the guitars on the album, his songwriting was definitely filtered through my style of playing. The EP sounds like a blend of our separate music tastes, skewed towards his of course. We came up with my parts during brainstorming and in the studio. Now that we are a full band, the new songs Brendan writes are filtered similarly through all of our styles- I like to play drums with intense dynamics (quiet-LOUD), Luke plays very groovy, jazz-influenced bass lines, and Drew is a master of guitar atmosphere. We’re now developing Brendan’s songs in practice together.
Brendan: The style that we’ve had as a band is similar to the style that Jesse and I had in the studio which is basically, try anything and everything. If someone has an idea, we’ll try it a few different ways and see what works best. Experimenting with morphed forms of the songs and creating intricate sound environments is a lot of trial and error which is awesome because we often end up with some really cool stuff we weren’t even going for entirely. In terms of creative process, personally that changes for me regularly. I don’t have one tried and true method I use to write music. It’s very much just me feeling my way around the inside of my own head trying to pull stuff out that’s stewing up there. In practice that results in me using odd adjectives and images to describe the sound I’m looking for and the other guys are pretty amazing at creating the mood that I’ve got locked in my skull. It’s a bizarre process but all of three of the them are such adaptable and awesome musicians, it’s a great chemistry we’ve got going.
HC: How do you guys find time to write, record, play shows, and still be students?
Luke: Since we’re all so busy with other stuff it’s hard to meet and wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t an exciting thing. It’s like hanging out squared, so meeting and playing songs till something we do sounds right is fun and not hard to want to make time for.
Jesse: We practice and play shows late at night in a drum room at school, after our jobs and classes are done, and on the weekends. We’re all graduating seniors so we’re wrapping up our studies- our majors are all at the point where we can be more independent (Brendan and I only have a class each, which doesn’t hurt.)
Drew: I have a full-time internship at NPR on top of all that too. Between sleep, grades, and social life, my sleep has been sacrificed for sure.
HC: I saw on your Facebook page that you’re infuenced by Tequila and Spongebob, who are some musical artists that you listen to for inspiration?
Brendan: Some artists I look to constantly for inspiration are The Antlers, Deerhunter, and Grizzly Bear. All of these bands create really distinct and incredible sonic landscapes. In terms of lyrics I would say Joanna Newsom and Conor Oberst are some of my favorites. Oberst is a poet and Joanna treats each song like a story, as though the music and the narrative are equally important. Some other favorites of mine include The Talking Heads, Mercury Rev, Panda Bear, Radiohead, and Olivia Tremor Control.
Drew: Real Estate, Beach House, Animal Collective, The Antlers.
Jesse: For my drumming in Boon, my two main influences are Kris Kuss from my heroes Pile, and of course Panda Bear from Animal Collective (Feels era.) On the EP, some bands that influenced my playing (on all instruments) and recording styles were (again) Animal Collective, Radiohead, Real Estate, the Beach Boys, Neutral Milk Hotel, Pink Floyd, Beach House, Grizzly Bear (Yellow House style). I do have a whole separate group of influences that I mine when I’m writing my own solo songs (not attached to Boon). The cool thing about doing the EP with Brendan was that because they weren’t my own songs, I was able to detach from my usual favored aesthetic and get more unconventional with my musical vision.
HC: What has been your favorite memory since starting Boon?
Brendan: I think my favorite moment was the very first one. At our first practice Jesse and I taught Luke and Drew the chords to “Hunger” but we had never played it together yet. We were all super excited and crammed in this tiny little drum room and we were just like “Okay let’s just try and play it, who cares, let’s go.” When we started playing the sound was huge and there was this vibe that grew from it that I don’t think any of us were expecting to feel so immediate. I remember afterward we all stood there screaming, totally blown away by how immense it sounded.
Jesse: A few times in the studio we would be really stuck on something and then we would just wing it, try something completely random and it would work perfectly. Those moments of hugging each other and shouting in ecstasy were great.
Drew: My favorite memory was playing our first show. It’s an amazing feeling to play music for people.
HC: What’s in store for the future for Boon?
Jesse: A major label deal and a Grammy. LOL good stuff, I hope.
Brendan: Hopefully the future of Boon is more and more Boon. We’re looking to play as many shows as possible in the next few months. I also have a bunch of songs ready to be recorded so we’ll probably start recording the debut album this Summer. We’ll be recording in this imaginary rainforest that we practice in.
All Images property of Boon.