Hembree
Photography by Jonny Marlow. Interview by Heather Hawke.
Responses by vocalist and guitarist Isaac Flynn.
Kansas City band Hembree’s new album It’s A Dream! features colorful lyrics, danceable beats, and songs that you’ll play on repeat. The fact that the band was half way finished making this album when the world shut down in March of 2020 gave them the time to reflect and gaze inwards. It’s a Dream! represents new levels of sonic immersion for this artistic collective—a window into their creative minds as they explore and incorporate new textures into their rapidly-expanding worldview. “It really let us push the art forward,” vocalist and guitarist Isaac Flynn explains while discussing the creative reflection that he, bassist/vocalist Garrett Childers, synth/keyboardist Eric Davis, guitarist Alex Ward, and drummer Austin Ward undertook while shaping It’s A Dream!. While their first album (2019’s House on Fire) was more informed by their live show, with It’s A Dream, Isaac says they were able to shut out the noise because there was no noise. “We’ve grown up, and we’ve figured out what we want Hembree to be. I want this record to lift people up, and for the music to be a positive experience in their own lives.
For instance, the It’s a Dream! title track was written by Isaac at the very start of the pandemic when things were starting to feel a little eerie! He says, “I was channeling the balance of feeling like everything was completely insane while going through the motions of everyday life.” Once the band was able to get together safely again, the band begun recording the album holed up in Burbank with help from co-producer e.hillman and engineers Chris Kaysch and Jasmine Chen to complete work on the album.
It’s A Dream! possesses a groovy easygoingness that’s perfectly in line with the kaleidoscopic lyrics and finds the quintet pushing their established sound to new, colorful zeniths. Isaac says,“I want this record to lift people up, and for the music to be a positive experience in their own lives.
Hembree’s web/socials: Website – Bandcamp – Soundcloud – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter
Hi! So, these past couple years have been pretty intense due to various reasons including the pandemic… Before we began, how are you doing with everything? How have the last couple years been for you and how are you feeling? How have you been coping with everything?
Hi! I’m doing pretty well. I feel like it’s been a bit of a roller coaster for everyone, just riding the wave of pandemic emotions. I’ve had some moments where I’ve felt the most inspired to create that I’ve ever felt, and other days where I’ve felt completely gutted about the state of the world and I just want to eat a pizza and watch Seinfeld. What a ride it’s been for all of us!
I feel like the music industry has shifted even more so during the pandemic. How has it felt, to you, as an artist? Has it been freeing? Is it scary trying to question how to approach music making and then how to or if you want to creatively release it to the public?
When the pandemic started, I was fortunate enough to be able to just hide away working on this new record. I really enjoyed that there was no outside noise about how the music should sound, and it really allowed the band and me to be as creative as possible.
Lately, I’ve been a bit discouraged by how temporary everything has become in music, and how much of it is based around constant content and social marketing. I feel like while social media apps/streaming platforms can be amazing for discovery, they can hinder building long-term fan bases and occupy too much time in your mind. Sadly, music is in a quantity over quality state. Again, not trying to be a naysayer towards trends, but I think a lot of us got into music to write songs, perform and create communities with artists — not to be content creators, internet comedians and meme makers.
Going back to the beginning. Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like growing up there? Did creativity/music/art play a big part of your childhood?
Music was a massive part of my childhood. I grew up in an amazing city, Lawrence, KS. When I mention where I grew up to people a lot of them think, “Kansas?!” But Lawrence is an oasis in that state. It’s a college town that embraces the arts, inclusivity and creativity. Most of my friends played in bands growing up, and all the local venues opened their doors to us to host shows.
My parents are also amazing musicians, and music just felt like the thing our family did. I grew up playing music with them, as well as working at my dad’s guitar store. I was given the opportunity to learn from so many talented musicians at a really young age. Very thankful for all of it.
Tell me about your musical upbringing. What music did you grow up listening to? When did you first become aware that music was going to be a part of your life? What was your formal / not formal music education like growing up?
Kind of piggybacking off the answer to the previous question, I believe my parents were making a record with their band while my mom was pregnant with me. I grew up watching them work in the studio, and it always just felt like home to me. They introduced me to the music of The Beatles, Tom Petty, The Police, Prince, etc. Just really classic stuff that are still my favs today.
When I was a kid, I was immediately drawn to the drums, and eventually I took some drum and piano lessons, but never pursued a true education in music. I have a basic understanding of music theory, and the rest is all feel for me (for better or worse). As I got into my teen years and started playing in bands, I think that’s when I really knew I was in music for the long haul. There were always two career options for me as a kid: baseball player or musician, and I ended up being more interested in the latter. I think I also realized baseball player is even more difficult than musician, ha!
When you were old enough to start seeking out music, where did you regularly find yourself (a certain record store / internet site / getting recommendations from a certain friend)? Who were some of the artists you first found and then were always on the lookout for?
When I was a kid, it was the end of the days of MTV & VH1 playing music videos, but they still played them and had countdown shows. I remember my friends and I getting really into Outkast, Ludacris, and Eminem’s “Real Slim Shady” was massive. This was the same era where everyone was getting CD-burners on their computers and making mixtapes for their friends. Which I think has had a big influence on the way we consume music these days.
I grew up on the classics mentioned earlier, and then in Jr. High, my friends and I became obsessed with Blink 182. I just remember being on their website and watching videos of them in the studio together and being like “this is the dream.” It’s been wild to watch the pop punk resurgence happening right now. Blink eventually led me to discover bands like Jimmy Eat World and The Get Up Kids (who are from our hometown and have become friends of ours!). Just shortly after my Blink phase, I bought the first Killers record and Death Cab’s ‘Plans’. Then Death Cab opened the indie vault for me, and it was game over.
My hometown has an amazing record shop called Love Garden Sounds. We would go there after school on Wednesdays (early release day!) and check out new CDs and buy posters for our rooms. By the time I was in high school, I played in a band with a friend who was 22, and he had great taste in music. He gave me a copy of ‘In Rainbows’ and it blew my mind. I still have my iPod classic with all the records from that era. This interview is making me want to bust that thing out!
Talking some more about your formative years… What was the very first concert you attended? Did you play any sports / go to summer camps? When was the first time you felt super inspired by music? Were there posers on your wall when you were growing up?
Since my parents were musicians, I think one of their shows was my first. They played this theme park in Kansas City called Worlds of Fun. I was mostly hyped to meet Snoopy at age 5, but I’m pretty sure they ripped the gig.
I was all into sports growing up. Baseball, basketball, football and rock n’ roll! Those were my favorite things for sure. By high school, I was phasing out of playing sports. My dad got ProTools and I just wanted to make music constantly. My friends and I started going to tons of shows around that time, too. One show that really stands out to me from those years was Wilco outside of our community arts center. It was a perfect spring night, and people were watching from the parking garage and their rooftops. I remember feeling the magic that is a communal live concert experience, and knowing I wanted to experience that on stage someday.
Describe your path to becoming involved with music. What’s your very first earliest musical memory? When was the first time you felt super inspired by music?
There’s a story of my parents mixing their record when I was like three, and I was in the control room and told the mixer that the song needed “more bottom”. Story goes, they turned the bass up and the mix was better. Was I a baby mix genius? Who knows! Haha!
I also remember playing a dueling drum solo with my friend at our third-grade talent show, and the school gymnasium going wild, ha! And one other memory that stands out is literally crying because it was too snowy for my Jr. High band to go record the day we had scheduled to track our first EP. I think we just had to wait like one more week, but I was devastated.
What is/was your current/last day job? What was your favorite day job?
For the last three years, I’ve been fortunate to do music full-time. I’m thankful for it every day, and I like it so much I think I just try to work so hard to make sure I can continue to do this for as long as possible. Along with Hembree, I do a lot of songwriting/music production/composition work.
Prior to that, I worked for a few concert promoters, a recording studio and then I worked at my dad’s guitar store. I’ve really enjoyed all the jobs I’ve had since they were still centered around music. Damn, I guess I really like music.
The only non-music job I’ve ever had was at a restaurant in my hometown with my bandmate, Garrett. I worked front of house and Garrett was a bartender. In the formative days of Hembree, he would close the bar, one of us would clean the restaurant, and the other would go grab beers to power us through a late-night recording session. Those sessions were really fun. Sometimes the songs sounded really good at 2 am, and really bad the next morning at 11 am.
Let’s talk about your upcoming album It’s A Dream!. I read that work on what would become It’s a Dream! was halfway done when March 2020 came about and when the world shut down, due to all the covid lockdowns, it gave the band an opportunity to “look inwards and refine [your] own sonic approaches while embracing a newfound maturity.” Did you have any parts of the tracks off of It’s A Dream! (whether it be lyrics, beats, harmonies) around the time of 2019’s House on Fire or before? Did the pandemic make you see the band’s music (It’s A Dream! and/or your previous releases) in a new light?
The only thing I had around the time of House On Fire was the beat to “It’s a Dream!”. Our co-producer, e.hillman, sent it to me in 2017, and I couldn’t find the right inspiration for it for years. But I always loved that little groove. Eventually as we started finding the funky/rhythmic style that’s all throughout the record, I knew it was time to finish that song. I think I had one of the interludes, “Present” sitting on a hard drive from 2016, too, but it was entirely acapella. Once the lyrical themes were set, that song felt like a perfect fit for the album.
Was there an event or a specific timeframe where a large chunk of the It’s A Dream! lyricism came out? Where were you at, physically, mentally (pre pandemic) when working on the music/lyrics off the album?
I was finishing up a lot of the lyrics right around March 2020. Weirdly enough, some of them seem like they’re about 2020, but they were mostly written prior to the pandemic. I’ve said this before, but it felt like we could all sense things were weird in the country, and that they were only going to get weirder. I was stressing about the world, as well as feeling pretty exhausted from all of the touring we did in 2019. I think I needed a break to write, and boy did I get one. I had been living in LA for a year at that time (now on year 3), and it was some really nice inspiration for me. It’s cool how a change of scenery can hit you with new inspiration.
I know that post U.S. Covid lockdowns, once the band was able to get together safely again, you all holed up in Burbank and enlisted co-producer e.hillman and engineers Chris Kaysch and Jasmine Chen to complete work on the album! What was it like recording with all of them? Did the pandemic shift how the band writes/records music? Has the band’s writing/recording process been something that’s shifted over time?
Working with Chris and Jasmine was amazing. We had done one session with them in 2019, and it went so well. We had planned to work with them again sooner, but of course it was delayed. So when we could finally get together, it was just so nice to work with some amazing humans on some music. Only three of us from the band went to the studio, and the rest of the work was remote. When we were in the studio we were wearing masks and getting covid tests, so it sort of felt like we all worked in a music laboratory together.
e.hillman is like the 6th member of the band, a dear friend and a musical mentor to me. We worked remotely together on the entire album. He had made plans to travel out, but covid started to surge again, so we opted for Zoom sessions. There’s a photo somewhere of us in the studio and a Macbook with Eric’s face listening via Zoom. Definitely a different recording experience, but it actually went very smoothly, and I think all of us are now pretty comfortable trying ideas and sending files back and forth. That said, next record we’ll probably go full Beatles “Get Back” and record live to feel that human connection again!
Did you find it helpful to be intentional when it came to writing the lyrics / music for It’s A Dream? Like “I’m going to sit down and work on a song.” Or was it more ephemeral, like you’ve been kicking something around in your head for days, weeks, months, and then suddenly it comes spilling out? Or was it a mixture of both?
Definitely a combination of both for me. That just tends to be how I work. I would sit down and be like “okay, finishing this song today” and then end up starting an entirely different song based off of one little piece of inspiration. That song would end up making the record and the one I sat down to finish wouldn’t. I’m very open to just riding the musical inspiration wave.
Does traveling influence you as an artist? Are you inspired by the places you go, or do you think your work would sound about the same no matter where you created it?
For me, it definitely does. My wife jokes that we need to move again for Hembree’s third record because my inspiration changes with each place we’ve lived. The first record was made in Kansas City, this record is LA. Where we going next?!
As this was your sophomore album, what mindset did you have going into the creating / recording process of it? Did you feel any sort of limitations when writing or recording it? Which songs were the easiest / most difficult to create? What song(s) are you most proud of on this record? Why?
Weirdly, because of the circumstances with the pandemic, I feel like myself and the band were really able to cut loose and experiment. I remember we were touring so much in 2019 that I was worried about not having enough songs for the album. We had 15 in March 2020, and I think by the time we started production that number hit 30 something. The extra time was so good for us.
“House on a Hill” went through the most revisions of all the songs, I believe. I love where it landed, but I think there’s like six versions of that song on my hard drive. “Panic” was another one where we tried a bunch of ideas and eventually went back to the inspiration from the initial demo.
I think each band member would have different songs that are their favorites. I really like the chillers on this album. I really love “Daylight” and “I’ll Be on Time” because they’ve helped me remain calm and fight through anxieties in these crazy times. But I’m also super proud of the total jams like “Reach Out” and “Operators (feat. Bodye)”.
When and how did the album title It’s A Dream! come about in the album creation process? What is the significance of the title?
We had the song titles “It’s a Dream!” and “It’s Real!” and we loved the combination of those two together. At one point we were considering holding “It’s Real!” for the follow-up album, ha! “It’s a Dream!” just seemed to really capture the weaving in and out of reality that’s all throughout the album, as well as fit the times.
Your music videos are pretty great! Do you have any fun behind the scenes facts from the making of any of them?
Thank you! The illustrators of the “Reach Out” video are two of my best friends, Tad and Jessica Carpenter. We had talked about working on something together for years, and it was a joy to collaborate with them. I remember Tad saying he only had a few ideas and then sending something like 40 Google slides with us as cartoons and a whole storyline. It was so fun to create an animated world around the song.
One fun fact about the “Operators” video is that we met the director, Coco, at a show in Chicago in 2019. He just came up and introduced himself, and he was like 20 at the time. He was visiting for his senior show and told us he made music videos. I remember him DMing them to me later that day and being like “Whoa. This guy MAKES MUSIC VIDEOS!”
On that topic, how hands on are you with the making of / direction of the visuals (music videos, press images, artwork) that accompanies the music? Do you feel like the art that accompanies one’s music is more / less important than it used to be? How do you feel like social media / the internet impacts the intention behind all of this?
I’m very involved in all of it, and my wife, Drue, is an insanely talented designer who is truly our creative director. Her and I work incredibly closely on all of the artwork, videos, merch, etc. She really pushes me to be as creative as possible with every aspect of the band, and I truly don’t know where we’d be without her help.
I mentioned this a bit earlier in the interview, but I get a little worn out with the constant need for more and more content for socials. Somedays I think it’d be amazing to just not do them at all, but I know it’s the way people hear our music. That said, I do enjoy how a cool teaser can get people so hyped about sharing a song. Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to be a grumpy old man and just complain about the way music is consumed. Trying to find that balance :).
What was your favorite part about the It’s A Dream! writing / album creation process?
I’d have to say when a few of us could finally get into the studio and work together. I really enjoyed my time writing and tinkering with the songs and production, but it was pretty joyous to be able to work together again and get creative. I think it left all of us realizing we should never take those moments together for granted in the studio. I also love all of the collaboration on the record. It feels like we found a way to make a very collaborative record during a time where that was very difficult, and I’m super proud of that. Frankly, I can’t wait to start the next one.
