We had the privilege of sitting down with The Hails moments before they hit the stage in Nashville on their run with The Happy Fits. Robbie Kingsley, Franco Solari, Dylan McCue, Andre Escobar, and Zach Levy have been making waves in the music scene with their dynamic sound and catchy melodies since forming in South Florida in 2016. With their blend of indie-rock, folk, R&B, and a touch of nostalgia, The Hails have carved out a distinctive sound that sets them apart in the music industry. We’re curious to hear about their creative process, their experience touring this spring, and what’s next for the band.
With a loyal following and several successful tours and festivals under their belt, The Hails are definitely a band to watch out for in the indie rock scene. Let’s get into it.
BTS: To start off, can you introduce yourselves and your instruments? And if you’re feeling fun, what your superhero name would be. But I know that’s a lot of pressure, so I’ll leave that up to you.
Robbie: My name’s Robbie, and I sing. And my superhero name would be… The Carolina Reaper.
Dylan: Ugh, that’s a good one. How do you just come up with that?
Andre: I know, what the hell?
Robbie, The Carolina Reaper: Somehow, at first I was thinking King Crimson. What are you?
Andre: What am I? I’m the bassist.
Dylan: Who am I? [laughs] Um… I’m still trying to figure that out.
Andre: As far as a superhero goes, I don’t know… You’ll probably have to come back to me. I’m sorry, I’m lame.
Dylan: My name is Dylan, and I play guitar. Yeah, I’m going to have to steal Robbie’s idea for King Crimson because they’re a band that I really like.
Zach: I’m Zach, and I play the drums. Madi gave me a name. Apparently, I’m Zach Attack.
BTS: Can you describe your sound to readers who haven’t listened to you before?
Dylan, King Crimson: It’s changed a lot over the years. It’s tough to pinpoint.
Robbie: I’m trying to come up with a cool metaphor. [laughs] We sound like a sunny day before it’s about to rain.
Dylan: Yeah, I mean, the umbrella term is obviously indie-alternative rock with a pop sensibility. I would say we pull from R&B as well. We have a lot of influences. The cool thing about our band is that we all have very distinct tastes and backgrounds, so each individual person gives a new flavor. There’s R&B influence, and recently some new songs with a little bit of folk influence, and then maybe some electronic dance.
Robbie: We’re kind of getting into the experimental side where we’re introducing more soundscapes.
Dylan: The stuff we’re going to be releasing may not have as much pop sensibility as some of our other songs.
Robbie: We saw LCD Soundsystem at III Points, and that was pretty life-changing. Now we’re like all in on working with sounds.
BTS: Sounds – awesome! Do you all notice a common element that comes about in all of your music despite the different genre influences? Something that separates you from other artists?
Dylan: Other artists also have a wide variety of influences, but there’s definitely a healthy amount of conflict in our music-making process. We have to make compromises sometimes, and those compromises can lead to more interesting music at the end of the day.
Andre: The stuff that we want to release is stuff that we like to listen to, so I feel like that’s also a huge positive thing for us. We all collectively pull from different areas, but we can all agree we’re going to choose these specific songs, and this is what they’ll sound like.
BTS: Going off of your music-making process, do you have a certain environment that you like to write or record in?
Robbie: It varies. My ideal environment is alone by myself with my acoustic guitar. But it can vary just because there’s so much to do with technology now. You can write inside of a computer now, so I think that’s something I’ve been trying to add to my palette. And obviously, as a band, we still have that need and drive to jam and just kind of feel it out in the room together.
Dylan: Which we don’t get to do as much of these days because we’re not all living in the same cities. So we don’t often get to just meet up. We were in college when we first formed. We wrote all of our songs pretty much from just jamming. We would just improvise for like thirty minutes, and like two or three of those minutes would be something cool, and we’d develop that. I also really enjoy writing on my own and then coming up with a piece of something, showing that to the band, and then fleshing that out as a band. If there’s any ideal method for me, that’s a fun way to do it.
BTS: Right. We saw that you all are like a ‘remote band’ in a way. Where are you all based?
Robbie: I recently moved to New York. These guys live in South Florida.
Dylan: Three of us live in Miami. Franco, who’s not here right now, is in DC.
Robbie: We formed the band at the University of Florida, but not all of us even went there. So even when we were there, we were always kind of fractured. We’ve always known how to deal with it, weirdly enough. I think that’s another thing too, I guess that kind of makes us stick out. We care so much about it, we actually fight and find the time to be together… 5+ years going.
Dylan: We’ll hop on a Zoom session when we’re working on music, trying to finalize songs. Somebody will pull up their project file on the main page on Zoom, and we’ll all give our input. And then obviously, for shows, Robbie and Franco will fly in a few days in advance, and we’ll practice. We have a studio in Miami that we rehearse at.
Robbie: The full operation is still in Miami.
BTS: Where do you all see yourselves going in the next five years or so?
Zach, Zach Attack: [laughs] …physically or?
BTS: [laughs] That is kind of an existential question. Where do you see yourselves going as a band?
Robbie: As a band, my goal is to just keep putting out records and, hopefully, enter each new record with a new set of ideas and themes. We want to figure out a way to diversify our sound even more. It’s fun to have those “aha” or “wow” moments when we listen to a demo and realize, “This is sick! This is our next thing, our new sound, our new path.” Recently, after wrapping up one record and jamming together right after our New Year’s Eve show when we were all in Miami, we had a jam session that felt like a breakthrough, at least in my eyes. It gave me an idea of what we might do with our future stuff. I think that’s one of our ongoing strengths—we keep progressing, feeling the progress, and developing our sound. We try new things and ideas. Ultimately, we want to be known as good songwriters with well-produced songs.
BTS: With that being said, is there a dream venue or a dream festival you guys would like to play?
Robbie: Red Rocks would be crazy. It’s doable, you know, within five years?
Dylan: Hell yeah.
Andre: Slane Castle, baby.
Robbie: That would be wild.
Dylan: Only two or three bands have played there. It’s like U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, maybe a couple of others.
Andre: I’d like to hold that sort of influence on people. [laughs]
Dylan: That would be cool.
BTS: So you talked a little bit about upcoming music. What do you have coming out soon?
Robbie: We have two singles called “Heaven” and “When You Are Bored” on the way.
Dylan: There’s going to be an album by the end of the year.
Robbie: Not necessarily at the end of the year, but within the year.
Andre: [laughing] Is it in Quarter 4?
BTS: Wait, can that be your superhero name, Quarter 4?
Andre, Quarter 4: Appreciate you. [laughs] Team effort.
BTS: What kind of influence will the upcoming album have?
Robbie: What’s cool about this album is that it taps into the classic rock and alternative staples we grew up on—bands like Radiohead and The Strokes. That’s what we bonded over when we were getting interested in forming a band. It has elements of psychedelia, like a touch of Jimi Hendrix. It draws from those big artists with profound catalogs that people revere. We’re trying to make really good rock/pop songs of the modern day. There are a lot of great sounds on it, and it has a forward-thinking theme.
Andre: It was tracked that way as well.
Dylan: I have thought about putting out another EP or record with straight acoustic guitar songs though because we have some really good ones worth working on.
Robbie: There are some pretty folky songs on there too. There’s even a song that’s just me and Dylan.
BTS: Is there anything else you’d like the readers to know before you head out on stage?
Robbie: We have a few music videos out — one of them was shot on film. We absolutely love it, it looks amazing. We actually went to a convenience store near our studio and had to shoot inside it at midnight. It turned out really great. We also have a good number of shows coming up. Actually, quite a decent amount. We’re currently on a run with The Happy Fits. We’re also excited to play with The Beaches — sick band. We’ll be going to Texas with them. And then we’ll be performing with The Moss. We have a few of our own shows sprinkled in there too.
Dylan: Come to the shows!
Buy tickets for the rest of The Hails’ tour here and stream Fiona here!
Be sure to check out The Hails’ socials to stay up to date on their upcoming releases:
Instagram: @the_hails
Twitter: @the_hails
Facebook: @TheHailsOfficial
Youtube: @TheHails
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