We’re super-excited to be speaking today with Easy Bees! Greetings and salutations, everyone and welcome to Vents Magazine! Before we dive into the Q&A mosh-pit, can you introduce us to the band

Hello, Vents! Thank you for having us. We are Easy Bees: Ford Natirboff in Savannah, GA, Jim Hawkes in Amherst, NH, and Jake Greenlaw in North Haven, ME

Major congratulations on your beautiful new debut release! Starting at the tip-top, can you talk a little about what inspired this gem of an album?

Thank you! The inspiration was the passing of our mutual hero Tom Petty and wanting to create our own music because you never know how much time you have to live out your dreams! Tom Petty’s albums produced by Jeff Lynn fit the clean and separate recordings we could accomplish in different physical locations. We used that as a starting point then it organically grew into what it is now.

We read that Tom Petty holds a special place for the band. Can you talk to us about how he influenced you as individuals as well as a band?

When we were all in college together, we collectively would deep dive into an artist and learn a ton of their songs. Among the most prominent were the Beatles, The Band, and Tom Petty. What connects those artists is their songs are fun to play as a band and they have great melodies and harmonies. With Tom in particular there is a richness to his songwriting where you go “How the hell is this song only 3 chords, so good, and makes you feel something deeply?” There is a magic to all his music. When he passed away, we had already been friends for 15 years, living our separate lives. But we had a common urge that we wanted to get together, play some Tom Petty tunes, and pick up playing some shows again. After a year or so of doing that, we got inspired and started working on our songs, with the magic of Tom constantly fueling us.

We’re big admirers of the tune “Diamond Ideals” which is the lead track on the new album! What’s the VH1-Behind the Music origin story on this gem of a ditty?

Diamond Ideals started as a sarcastic joke about keeping your diamond ideals instead of your friends. Commentary or criticism of people who easily abandon others with slight differences in opinion. Through the creative process, it took an unexpected positive turn and became about sticking to your guns because you have to live with yourself when no one else is around. Being true to yourself in a very vague way. It was mostly written by Ford but brought to life by Jim’s production, Jake’s melodic bass line, and the band’s vocal harmonies.

How did the music video for “Diamond Ideals” come together and are there more video projects in the works?

We live in three different states so each time we get together it’s like “What can we get done?” We were at Jim’s house in New Hampshire and we were playing basketball with his kids in the driveway and well…that’s kind of all you need to get an idea. So it was just, let’s play the song under the basketball hoop while they’re playing basketball and just see what happens. And we got hit a lot. Most of what ended up in the video is our candid reactions to not being able to keep our faces straight. And that’s very consistent with everything we do, which is not taking ourselves too seriously. We are always hoping to get a chance to make some more videos for these songs.

In your humble opinion, what differentiates Easy Bees from the other music out there on the 2024 landscape?

A lot of our songwriting comes from the folk tradition of if it works for you then use it because it’s a part of who you are. There is a lot of stuff out there now that is too concerned with not trying to sound like anything else to the point where it gets in its own way. We don’t try to hide our influences but lean into trying to create the type of music that we love. There isn’t a lot of male harmonizing rock anymore or groups where you hear different primary songwriters/lead singers on the same album. Years of harmonizing/learning music together, songwriting separately, and recording with different projects have helped us as a band. There wasn’t a time when each one of us didn’t have involvement in a musical project at one level or another. Also continued friendship and a shared obsession / deep love of music.

Who did the producing honors on the new album and what did the collaboration process between band and producer look like in the studio?

We produced this record on our own, all together. That includes recording, mixing, and mastering. It was always going to be a DIY project but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a great group of people helping us out and lending us gear when we needed it. Due to our location differences, we did a lot of preproduction remotely, starting with a very large batch of songs and whittling it down as we went along. Dropbox is very useful to musicians in the digital age. When we were finally confident enough, we got together at Jim’s in New Hampshire and recorded drums and basic tracks to about 18 songs. Jim has a large living room with a vaulted wooden ceiling so that the drum sounds. The biggest decision-making occurred after that, where we needed to drill into what our sound was going to be. Since we have mentioned Tom Petty so much, and we had to record the instruments in layers, it made the most sense to go all-in on the Jeff Lynne record-making approach of the late 80s and early 90s where he knocked it out of the park on so many records. We didn’t go for that particular sound on every song, but that was at least the starting point. And then the best part was when we got back together and recorded a majority of the vocals throughout a weekend, layering harmonies all over the album. Since we did everything on our own we took our time with the whole process, learning as we went along.

Besides Tom Petty, who would you say are some of your biggest influences musically?

The Beatles. We all are huge fans and bonded at first over them. Jake and Ford just saw Dylan in Ashville NC so definitely Dylan. The Band was also huge for us as a band. Watching Levon Helm rip at the heartstrings singing his throat out behind the drums in the last waltz together in college was close to a spiritual awakening.

In the wake of the release of the new LP, can fans look forward to catching you on the touring/performing circuit in the coming weeks and months?

The album is currently doing well on the college charts so we will be reaching out to some schools about possible shows in the future.

What does the creative process generally tend to look like when you get together to work on new material? Is there rhyme and reason to the creative madness, or is it a bit more freeform than all of that?

Jim was mostly the project’s producer. Eight of the twelve songs were mostly written by Ford. Four of them were mostly written by Jake. Part of the problem with amazing home recording technology is that you have endless possibilities at your fingertips so we took ideas as far as they could go before honing it all in. Songs were cut that were 90% done. Everything was gone over by everyone with a fine-toothed comb. Everyone sacrificed something at some point for the perceived greater good of the project as a whole but we are all happy with the end product and the response to it has been very positive.

You originally met at New England College in Henniker, NH. Did that scene influence you as artists

There wasn’t much of a scene there as it is a small school in a one-street town but the theatre department was top-notch and allowed us to take over the student-run theatre and put on shows there where we interjected little silly films. That was a great time. We were invited to play two songs for ‘International Night’ where the college would celebrate its International students and we chose ‘You Really Got Me’ the two-minute burner by the Kinks and ‘Echos’ by Pink Floyd: the radio edit is 15 minutes. Pretty sure our grades suffered that semester.

At the end of the day, what do you hope listeners walk away with after listening to the new album?

We hope that listeners walk back, listen again, and realize that their favorite song on the album has changed. And as they take a drive while the late summer sun is lazily sinking into the horizon they play it and let it take them Into the coming days of autumn.

Thanks for spending some time with us today, guys! What’s next for the band and where can fans go to keep up to date with you and Easy Bees?

Thank you Vents! Keep up the great work. Listen to Easy Bees on any streaming service, request us on your local college radio station, and follow us on Instagram for updates @easybeeseasybees. Thank you for your support of our work!