Honeybutter Q&A
By: Avery Wageman
Credit: Nic LaFrance, Rhianna Hajduch, Sarah Bel Kloetzke, and Awa Mally
Honeybutter is a Minneapolis-based band that blends jazz, funk, and folk. The band is composed of Andreas Fenner on vocals and keys, Zak Khan on production and guitar, and Clara Wicklund on vocals and bass. Keep reading to learn what inspires their writing, who their dream collaboration would be with, and more. Also, look out for the upcoming release of their EP.
Once you guys decided to form a band, how did you decide on the sound you wanted to go for?
ZK: I think our music is a good manifestation of the energy that we have in hanging out.
Whatever we're working on, it's always like a really nice light tone to everything. We're not really too serious and it involves me hacking away at the computer. Wicklund is dancing around in the background and then jumping in and putting stuff together, bringing in some ideas that they've already premeditated on and then session on them together. But I think our music is very fun. It's very smooth and kind of for all ages.
CW: Going off of that, togetherness is a big part of our music and just as people, too, we're, you know, we value our friends and family so much and so making music that's inviting and accessible.
Are you guys currently working on any projects?
CW: A long time coming. But yeah, we have an EP in the works. I think it’s six songs.
AF: Yeah, this is our summer to hunker down. Create.
What do you draw inspiration from in your songwriting and that process?
ZK: Is it birds, food, and grandparents?
CW: For me, a joy that I got out of songwriting is putting, I don't know, universal, big feelings that we all feel, and complicated feelings, and making it super simple. We're handling that through a songbird, you know. Behind the scenes is all this other complicated stuff going on, and I think musically to songwrite, and instrumentally for me, what's so much fun is simplifying things.
The way we've done it is like Andreas and I have done more of the vocal writing and Zak has done work on the instrumental side of things. But that's always changing too. And like now we've worked together more where that form is different.
AF: Yeah, the first four songs are all kind of uniquely made. They all had kind of different paths. But this EP, this project we're coming out with, has definitely been more of the three of us hanging out, jamming, and then we're all kind of together from start to finish more so than our past releases.
How would you describe your creative process kind of taking it from an initial idea and then finishing the song?
ZK: One thing when it comes to how we write songs, I think there's the common denominator between all those is “Oh, I just like this little bit of magic” that starts an idea or starts a train of thought. And I think all three of us are pretty good at following each other's little sparks and helping each other kind of take those somewhere, whether that's a little voice memo that Clara will bring to the session that has her playing ukulele and singing, and that's the core of the song. We'll take that and maybe if we're excited about it, arrange it until it’s a full-fledged production. Or it's you know, me and Andreas dinking around on the keys at the same time until something sticks out like oh, that's super cool.
CW: I feel like we're all very patient people, maybe not in general, but when it comes to hearing ideas or musically working through something, hearing what the other person has to put forward is something that we all really value, and sometimes it takes a long time to get to that little magic moment. But yeah, so worth it.
What would be your dream collaboration?
CW: Well, I think we would do a fire song with Little Dragon.
AF: There's so many though. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, their name always pops up.
ZK: It could be interesting to pick someone that we think we wouldn't gel with and see what we could come up with. It would be a challenge. Like a TV show where they ask you “Okay, who are your most hated artists?”