The Wild Honey Pie is a collective of filmmakers, writers, designers, developers, event producers and musicians supporting genuinely great music on our blog, in our original videos and at our events.
Phony Ppl either crash-landed from the past or the future: critics and fans can’t decide. Since throwing warehouse shows around New York in 2011, Phony Ppl has tossed together vintage astral funk, colorful world music, and dusted-out hip-hop either from the future or the past. Co-founded by writer/arrangers Elbee Thrie and Aja Grant, the band flipped D.I.Y recordings into self-released hits like “I Wish I Was A Chair” and “End of the Night,” and tours with like-minded experimental elders Theophilus London, Erykah Badu and The Roots. Their latest effort, 2015’s “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” gained rotation on BBC1 and Odd Future Radio, and the L.A. Times applauded it’s “meteoric rise” via social media, peaking at #6 on iTunes. The band will be on the road with the record throughout the year.
Dent May writes and records homemade pop music in Mississippi, where he was born in 1985. He began songwriting at age 12. The following year, he started a band called Flood, who covered Creed and 311 and sold homemade cassettes to classmates. In high school, heavily influenced by Elvis Costello and The Cars, Dent fronted a power-pop band called The Rockwells. Feeling like an outsider in Mississippi, he retreated to the Internet, where he spent his time soaking in pop music and culture from around the globe.
After dropping out of NYU film school, Dent founded Oxford, Mississippi’s self-proclaimed “infotainment cult” Cats Purring. Since then, his musical endeavors have included a debut LP of ukulele tunes on Paw Tracks, dance recordings under the Dent Sweat moniker, and a mysterious unfinished psych-country rock opera called Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City. He throws notorious DIY shows at his home, a former Boys & Girls club now deemed the Cats Purring Dude Ranch.
Recent singles on Forest Family and Paw Tracks have found Dent abandoning the ukulele in favor of cosmic synths, funky guitars, analog drum machines, loopy bass lines, and massive vocal harmonies. He played all the instruments on his new album “Do Things, which was recorded at the Dude Ranch and in a friend’s rural cabin by a cotton field. He has described the album as “Pet Sounds for the Smirnoff Ice generation” and “a wedding reception band on acid” via his Twitter account.
Lazyeyes is a three-piece from Brooklyn, New York formed in the summer of 2012 by guitarist and vocalist Jason Abrishami (The Twees), Paul Volpe (Triple Cobra) on bass, and Jeremy Sampson (Eastern Hollows) on drums. The band self-released their sophomore EP, ‘New Year’ in January 2015, which was quickly picked up and reissued by Burger Records cassette imprint, Wiener Records.
Lazyeyes was a featured artist in the November 2014 issue of NME Magazine and, in December, Stereogum described their sound as “a muscular, riff-happy brand of guitar-based dream-pop,” going on to proclaim, “their songs burst with angular hooks and polished melodies.” Their single, “Adaptation” also received high praise from Interview Magazine, who wrote, “‘Adaptation’s” fast-paced, garage-tinged guitar riff draws the listener in, propelling you through chorus and verse. It is both urgent and reassuringly familiar.”
Fraser A. Gorman
Just received updated bio for Fraser A. Gorman:
“I got no soul, coz Country Music sounds to me like Rock N Roll” – Fraser A.
Gorman
Fraser A. Gorman. A 23 year old kid who looks like a teenage Bob Dylan, a
full time carpenter obsessed with the history of rock n’ roll, expressing himself
through wry poetry, bent tropicalia, country-soul and rock.
After playing a flawless series of shows at SXSW 2015 and tearing apart an
opening slot for best mate Courtney Barnett and Bully throughout sold-out UK
tours in March and April, he’s now NME approved, hotly tipped by BBC’s
Radio 6 and Radio 1 and signed to an international label deal with Marathon
Artists (Jagwar Ma, Courtney Barnett, Childhood).
Add to that the fact he’s an active part of the small but amazing DIY collective
Milk! Records (run by Barnett and Jen Cloher) and the endorsements of
his skill as a writer and musician are ringing loud all over the world. Now,
Fraser Alexander Gorman’s collection of cool-as-fuck, funny, heartfelt and
super-infectious tunes has come to fruition on his debut album titled ‘Slow
Gum’.
His live shows have grown in a short time from intimate to majestic. Fraser’s
built an enviable support-slot CV over the past year featuring such diverse
yet prestigious names as Damon Albarn, Wanda Jackson, Guy Clark Jr,
Justin Townes Earle, CW Stoneking, and his buddies You Am I.
Corbu is the music and visual art project of Jonathan Graves, who writes hazy, retro-futuristic pop songs and draws from a gradient of influences from Aphex Twin to the Beatles, from dusty VHS sci-fi to architecture textbooks.
Since releasing their first single ‘Want To Be’ with Converse Rubber Tracks, The Britanys have been getting praise from publications such as NME, DIY Magazine, and Popular TV. Named one of the top 10 bands from New York to look out for in 2015 by the New York Observer, The Britanys have quickly been getting comparisons to The Strokes, Iggy Pop, and New York circa CBGB’s in it’s prime.
After building a studio in their basement in Brooklyn, The Britanys have just finished recording another single ‘City Boys,’ which will be a part of their next EP out on Lolipop Records this Fall.
“‘Want To Be’ by the fuzzy New York upstarts The Britanys…sounding like something The Strokes might have wandered into in the early noughties”- NME Magazine
The Britanys sound like they’ve absorbed the work of their yesteryear heroes and flipped all inspiration upside down. Every aspect of ‘Want To Be”s delivery sits outside the norm, even though the thrashing chords and New York vibe recall early The Strokes. – DIY Magazine
The Britanys deserve a spot on your springtime playlist, mostly because their breezy tunes are just so damn good.- Popular TV
Dare I say, their concept bleeds into the influences of Velvet Underground and even Iggy Pop circa 1977- Alt Citizen”
Sam Cohen
“I’m Sam Cohen, and I’ve been making records for kind of a long time. The first time, I was 18. I wrote angsty songs about my girlfriend leaving me and recorded them along with some rockabilly and mambo covers in several midnight to 7 sessions in Houston, TX. I moved to Boston to learn some chords, formed a band, and made a record in two days. It was horrible. We redeemed it with a home recorded EP that nobody ever heard. The guitars were phenomenal.
That morphed into Apollo Sunshine. We spent a year making a record that was weird and fun, though, at that time, we were singing like some gladass castratos. We spent the next two years touring ceaselessly. I think we might have been pretty cool at that point. Dirty dogs. Life on the road. America. The Band.
We made two more records. The third one was the best.
After that, I was living in Brooklyn and started Yellowbirds to be more of a solo thing. I made records I still like to this day. I made stop-motion collage videos to accompany the music, and started to put a little world together. It’s still there on the internet. I got to do some stuff, too: The National had us at All Tomorrow’s Parties, my bandmate Josh and I played with Bob Weir (several times), we toured a bit, Rolling Stone wrote about me (.com, whatever).
So those Yellowbirds records were pretty good, and people started asking me to produce their records. I worked on a ton of albums; playing, producing, engineering, collaborating in many different ways (sometimes with famous people).
I started to hear what I sound like, so I became Sam Cohen and made my latest record, Cool It. It’s mostly just me alone in a room, playing guitars, drums, bass, synths, singing, recording in both haphazard and elaborate methods. A few songs have my beloved Yellowbirds bandmates (Josh Kaufman, Annie Nero, and Brian Kantor).
If you’re reading this, you’re on the internet, maybe thinking about listening to a single mp3 by an artist you’ve never heard of.
Well Hoss, take her for a whirl. I stand behind this shit.”
We live in Brooklyn.
There are four of us.
Loud, soft; yeah we can do that.
We like to cuddle.