I stumbled across this fairly new Nashville rock band I believe on Instagram during the pandemic, when social media was one way I was hunting for new local music. Happy to say I’ll be seeing you soon as WMOT has a bunch of summer live shows planned. The Beens are a folk-rock quintet, fairly new as far as I can tell, I found a few releases last year and they are about to release an ep a little later this summer. We’ll get to know the band in Liner Notes and find out about their song, “The Ride”, out today.
AnaLee: The Beens, like the canned food. Who are The Beens? I know there are five of you, but that’s about all I know! How did you meet and form The Beens? If you would, please introduce us to the band and who does what.
The Beens: First off, thank you so much for this and for showing so much love in our music! The band consists of Addison Simmons (lead singer and rhythm guitarist), Rocky Carnell (lead and rhythm guitarist), Charlie Johnson (lead guitarist), Brady Gouthro (bassist), and Jack Gardner (drums). How we all met kind of goes all over the place haha. I, Addison, met Rocky and Charlie while attending Belmont together and I met Brady when we went to the same high school together. I met Jack through another band when he took my spot as a drummer when I used to play in a folk band called The Bad Hats. Me and Rocky always say “Cool Beans” so when thinking of band names, it just came easy.
AnaLee: AnaLee: You released three songs in November including “Crazy For You”, a song that really stuck with me from the first listen. It’s one of those catchy melodies that grabs your right away and I just love it. It looks like 2020 was the first year The Beens released music as a band, had you been playing or recording prior to the pandemic?
The Beens: Yes, we had been playing music together as The Beens since April of 2019 but hadn’t recorded anything until November of that year. We were just playing lots of small shows and started playing for fraternities in Knoxville at UTK which just made us get better and get used to playing in front of bigger crowds. 2020 was a big year for us actually, despite what happened with covid. I really wanted to focus on us growing as a group and writing good quality music before releasing anything big so it was worth the wait to release stuff for sure.
AnaLee: The single you released today is called, “The Ride”, I’ve linked to the video below which is a cool look at you guys just being a band, making some music! Tell us a little about this song.
The Beens: The Ride was one of the first times I feel like we as a group really struck good on something and believed in a song 100%. To me, this song is about leaving somewhere, someone, or something to figure out who you are in this crazy world. It’s about self-discovery. This is the song that you would be listening to on that drive away from home reminiscing about all the memories you made with those people that made the person you are today. This song is something really special to us and every time we play it, I get a whole new perspective on everything that’s happened.
AnaLee: I know there’s an ep coming, what can you tell us about it? Where and with whom did you make the ep and when can we expect it?
The Beens: Yes, we’re in the middle of making the new EP! So exciting! Can’t reveal too much about it but I will say we’re close to being done recording the songs and we can’t wait for everyone to hear what amazing things we’ve been creating. We’re doing all the tracking at Dark Horse Recording Studios in Franklin, which is basically the Hogwarts of recording studios. We absolutely love recording there and it just bring a whole other element to this project. The Ride was produced by Andy Selby, which he is most known for all his work with Josh Groban and it’s been a pleasure working with him on that track. The rest of the tracks we’ll be doing with Greg Polsdofer who does a lot of work with the band Postmodern Jukebox, and the way some of these tracks are turning out with him are amazing and it just makes us want to release everything now haha. We can’t really say when we expect the EP to be released but I can definitely ballpark it near late summer so stay on the lookout!
The Beens, “The Ride”
The Beens, “Crazy For You”
