After a successful tour with blues extraordinaire Ben Harper, the indie duo Hey, King! (Natalie London and Taylor Plecity) entered the studio to produce gorgeous, layered pop and rock music. The LA-based band spoke with Adobe & Teardrops about their seemingly unlikely partnership with Harper, the philosophy behind their songs, and the creative projects they’ve been pouring themselves into during the last year.
(Photo Credit: Richard Fournier)
Rachel: Your press materials said you were partners. And then I didn’t want to assume, ’cause I feel like a lot of people use the word partner.
Taylor: We’ve been together for six years and it’s such an integral part of the material. We’re lovers. We bang
Rachel: There are a lot of songs about relationships on the album because that’s a song writing subject just rich. I don’t think anyone’s tapped out that vein yet. But how do you negotiate that while you’re writing songs together?
Natalie: I had started the band before I met Taylor. And so some of the songs are more in that vein of loneliness and adventure and longing.And then Taylor and I met and we found love. She’s an amazing, amazing actor and filmmaker — and I didn’t realize that she was also an incredible musician and singer. And so when she started just singing along to tracks around the band, they were all like, “What the hell is going on? She should be doing this with us!”
So we started writing more duet-based songs, but I love that Taylor has always given me permission to run with the song no matter what aspect of our relationship It’s exploring. It definitely changed the trajectory of the band and the song writing a lot to be able to kind of delve into the relationship itself and like, sorry, is a good example of that.
The song “Sorry,” It was, was like, little tiny tiffs that just ended up blowing up.And then we just were laughing about it this one time and being like ‘we’re in a comedy, we’re not in a drama. Like our life is like a comedy adventurous story. It’s not sad! We can make the narrative of our lives, however we want it to be. So let’s write this song about arguing.”
Rachel: This is a very fun album and I feel like it covers like a lot of different like musical ground. And I was really surprised that you’d worked on this with Ben Harper. This album is like a lot of what I would describe it as indie pop and like folk. Definitely feel free to push back.
Taylor: We call it Irish rap.
Natalie: No, you gotta calm down with that, babe, cause someone will think that!
I’d like to hope that we have this similarity. Even though our genres are very different that man like pours his whole freaking soul, like onto his legs to the stage. Like people feel like they’re going to church. He just gives everything when he’s up there. And so he wanted that out of us. His sound didn’t necessarily shape the record. He definitely gave us a ton of freedom to go to the depth of what we needed to. it. Wasn’t like getting recorded and get out. There was never any pushback. I’d be like, “you know, we played this one song where we had a harmonium” and he’d be like, “I got a harmonium and let’s grab a vibraphone.”
Rachel: What are some of your musical roots? Because I feel like there are so many incredible influences and textures. It sounds like Natalie has a lot of experience doing like arrangement with all kinds of instruments.
Taylor: I played in these really bad bands all throughout my life, like starting at middle school, we had these weird local concert showcases that were not anything what Natalie was doing. Luckily I had some experience touring around my little state of Arizona before any of this happened.
Natalie: I started playing guitar and singing and writing songs when I was like four or five years old, like my first song, like I’ve written out and like blue marker on this little white journal. I still have it memorized:
If I were a king, I would open the skies/Clear the waters and open your eyes/Because we are Kings/Kings of the world, Kings of the world and Kings of our own.
I created this band that was at the heart of all of that. Yeah. I was playing music full time. I was living in New York City. We were flying out to meet with different labels. We were touring, we were doing everything, and I got bit by a tick while I was on the road and contracted Lyme Disease. So I was bedridden for over four years. I couldn’t read or write or walk or talk. I lost a lot of my memory. And I didn’t think I would play music again, let alone, they didn’t think I was ever going to come back from it.
That plays a huge, huge role into what the music is and what it’s about. I played a lot more emo, darker kind of stuff before I was sick, to be honest, than I do now, because you’re like, well, who the fuck cares? I’m alive. Let’s have some hope.
Rachel: “Half Alive” is, to me, the most distinctive song on the album.
NatalieWe just played drums. That’s the kind of freedom that Ben gave us. He was like, “what do you want for drums?” And I was like, “Record all of this and then reverse it all and loop it.” It was just like me playing with brushes the snare around with stuff. And then it just builds from there. It was really fun.
Taylor: There’s even parts of it where she takes her ring off and she’s tapping it on one of the snares.
Rachel: Obviously touring is not on the table for at least a little while. I know people are doing all kinds of fun and creative stuff to get music to people. What are some things people should be looking out for from you?
Taylor: We’ve been creating all of our music video assets between Natalie and I. We’ve been doing everything from directing shooting, editing, and producing ‘cause we’re lining up everything.
We’ve been putting all of ourselves into our music videos, just cause that’s what we were able to do. And it’s been so much fun.
Natalie: Taylor made me up my game.
Taylor: You have to up your game. It’s all about leveling up. No matter what you do, the next thing has to make you level up from it. And then next thing has to make you level up again.
Check out our music videos. I am so proud of how they turned out. I’m so proud of the work that we were able to do on very, very minimal budget.
Natalie: The song “Beautiful,” we traveled for four days with the DP, just the three of us and our dogs and did the whole music video.
And like, they got to go with us to the Bombay Beach, Big Bear, all these strange places. And we made it all about me being on an adventure with Finn and Taylor being on an adventure. We find each other at the end. And I mean, that was a blast.
Taylor “Sorry” is my favorite. We found this perfect couple to be us and they even lip sync certain points of us and it’s this gorgeous older couple. Eileen Dietz and her husband Thomas. They let us shoot in their house.
Natalie: They embodied that song. They really let their relationship be captured.
We just put out “Road Rage.” We really wanted “Road Rage” to speak more as an anthem and more of other people’s stories than just our experiences and us telling that story.
Taylor: “Road Rage” is about what it feels like to be a girl, a woman walking around and getting harassed.
Natalie: The focus was not a narrative, but make this everybody’s story that felt comfortable being a part of it. And the people that volunteered to do this were absolutely amazing. We have Deborah Wilson from MAD TV and comedian Luenelle. And just all these, like Brooke Marham from the show In the Dark, all of these incredible actors and a ton of friends all came. I couldn’t believe it, watching their performances of this song blew my mind.
Taylor: Definitely that’s what we’ve been putting our focus in during quarantine. I have tried to give my all to the streaming concerts and live shows, but for me, it’s really, really difficult to get that same intimacy .