If you haven’t already listened to Honey Hayze’s latest single Afternoon, stop what you’re doing and go listen to it now. The track is a woozy and infectious slice of crooning indie-rock that we’ve had spinning on repeat for weeks.
So as the band tour the track around Australia, we caught up to chat all about it, their relationship with Byron Bay, and what the future holds.
As they continue their huge national tour, we caught up with Sydney outfit Honey Hayze to chat about their new single Afternoon.
HAPPY: Hey, how’s it going? What are you up to at the moment?
HONEY HAYZE: Going well thanks. Eating lunch with my dog in Bondi, getting ready for rehearsals for the weekend, answering Happy Mag’s Q’s.
HAPPY: We’ve been loving Afternoon! How does it feel having the track out there in the world?
HONEY HAYZE: It’s rad, we sat on it for a few months not knowing when everyone was going to be back in the country etc. so plenty of time for the excitement to build. It’s been great hearing the feedback and getting a lot of opportunities coming our way, but we love playing live, so to have a new track we can tour up and down the coast is what revs us up the most!
HAPPY: Could you tell us a bit about the song?
HONEY HAYZE: It’s one of them real product of your environment I guess, all living on the eastern beaches it’s that point in the arvo, you’ve been in the water all day, sun-kissed and cracking some coldies getting ready for the night, the catchy chorus was the Hayze idea of a perfect afternoon – a real road trip song. We noticed it was going to be a catchy single when we were working on it through Europe and had some pretty large crowds chanting the chorus, they kinda decided our next single for us I guess.
HAPPY: You’re currently touring the single… how have the shows been so far?
HONEY HAYZE: They’ve been great, one of the best parts of hitting the road is seeing all your mates along the way… it’s not without its issues, of course, worrying if we have enough money for petrol to make it back from Melbourne in a pink hatchback, or partying deep into the morning after a Riggs show nearly missing my flights only to have it delayed 4 hours… think I arrived 20 mins before the show at Northcote Social, the guitars never arrived haha. Anyone wanna spot is fuel money for Byron this weekend?
HAPPY: We understand you’ve got a bit of history in Byron. Could you tell us about this?
HONEY HAYZE: Yeah Byron’s been great to us, when we started we were lucky to get two local Bondi shows at the royal before changeover, after that we couldn’t play locally anywhere, next minute we were on our way to our third show, it was at the Northern and we got a call that Skeggs we’re playing before us. A real character building show, something we still kind of can’t believe happened. NYE as well was amazing playing with all our mates’ bands at the Byron brewery and on line ups with acts like Bec Sandridge and Harts. Was surreal considering we could barely play at home.
HAPPY: If you had to describe your live show in one sentence, how would you do it?
HONEY HAYZE: A sweet and smoky musical infusion brewed from the honey pot.
HAPPY: Have you played with any killer band on the tour so far that we should check out?
HONEY HAYZE: Swazi Gold were amazing, I’m not going to give away too much, check them out, and we’re super excited to be playing with our mates this weekend too; Leroy Francis, Sloan Peterson, Jesse Redwing, Garage Sale Band, I guess the advantage of headlining is you get to pick the bands you want to go and watch.
HAPPY: What’s next for Honey Hayze? Any other exciting plans in the works?
HONEY HAYZE: Currently recording our EP, which we are super excited about, we kind of have it all working together really well now musically so it’s a great time, a small run of shows then we should have that ready for our EP tour Novemeber—December. That’ll be our fourth tour, feels like years ago we started not 15 months.
HAPPY: Cheers for the chat!
HONEY HAYZE: Thanks Bill, pleasure’s all mine.
Afternoon is available now. Listen above.
Catch Honey Hayze live at The Northern in Byron Bay this Saturday, July 6th. More info here.
