Interview with The Honeyrunners: ‘It’s very strange to write an album with these themes only to see the songs coincide with such dramatic world events’

Toronto’s take on Southern roots and Americana, The Honeyrunners, have released their infectious debut album today, Everything Is On Fire, which addresses our culture of apathy and the sentiment that everything is on fire – as we sit back and watch – mashed up with the poetry of love and heartache.

The Honeyrunners comprises lead vocalist and pianist Dan Dwoskin, Canadian-Peruvian audio-engineer/producer, Guillermo Subauste (bass, vocals). Newer additions to the lineup include the soulful Conor Gains (electric guitar, vocals) and Toronto-born drummer and filmmaker, Lewis Spring (drums, percussion, vocals). ‘Almost by mistake, you stumble on these players,’ Dwoskin said. ‘Co-owner of the band, Guillermo, came into the fold in 2016 as we looked for a new bassist; I’ve managed The Honeyrunners since 2010, with an ever-revolving cast of players. I met Guillermo through Craigslist (an American classified advertisements website); it’s where I find all the best musicians, haha!. He learned all our songs in a week – a Peruvian punk drummer – I don’t even know if he played bass at the time (laughs). Conor, Lewis and I met at Come Together Festival in Frontier Ghost Town, an outdoor music fest three hours north of Toronto, they host an eclectic mix of roots, soul, blues, folk, rock, and funk bands. Lewis used to drum for Conor’s band, so we smashed the bands together, and voilà.’

Their band name comes from a story in Keith Richards’ biography, Life: ‘He speaks about where he gets his drugs from while they’re in France recording Exile, ‘cos he’s Keith,’ Dwoskin laughs. ‘He imagines hash cultivated by naked kids, covered in honey, who run through fields of the stuff, “honey runners”, and the drugs are scrapped off them. There are a lot of connotations. After we picked the name, we looked it up on Urban Dictionary: someone – typically otherwise single – having extramarital sex with an (often older) partner. Honey is a euphemism for sex and the honey runner often has to run out the back door to escape the spouse.’ The Honeydrippers also happens to be the name of Robert Plant’s old band, a singer that Dwoskin has idolised since teenagehood. Their name manages to convey both dark and light. ‘We’re optimistic people, but we’re also great cynics,’ he said.

Everything Is On Fire was born of late nights and long drives; a tapestry of rhythm and melody, underpinned with desperate optimism. The chorus of the title track sums up the band’s approach to art: ‘Let it burn. It’s the ashes that I admire.’ Or, as Dwoskin puts it: ‘We write songs for the times we need them.’

‘We were making a statement before it happened’

At its heart, the nine track album is both a celebration and a reminder of everything that’s wrong with the world. The title track, ‘Everything Is On Fire’, which could so easily be a reference to both COVID and the political environment in many countries, feels especially prescient as it actually pre-dates COVID ‘by quite a bit’, according to Dwoskin: ‘We were ready to release this at the tail end of 2019,’ he said, looking a bit dejected. ‘I was in the throws of being a new dad, a lot of things were happening in the band. Then, the title was an ironic one, it was a reference to being tired of the way the media was teasing headlines as bait. It seemed like everything was always on fire, especially on social media; doomsday all the time became exhausting. Then Australia – and California – actually caught fire, and it seemed almost insulting to release this album. In January 2020, we went to New Orleans. On the plane ride back, we saw a line from China, with many people wearing masks. My first thought was, “Shit, it’s coming”. I said to the band: ‘We’re going to sit on this album until we can tour tour again – a year and a half later and we’re not even certain we can head to Europe yet. It’s very strange to write an album with these themes, only to see the songs coincide with such dramatic world events. We were making a statement before it happened.’

Sonically, ‘Everything Is On Fire’ is one of the most complex songs on the album, kicking off with a guitar lick from local Toronto guest guitarist, Champage James Robertson. Layers of instrumentation are added as the track builds and Dwoskin’s voice rises and falls in waves as the various instruments enter the fray, including tenor sax, bari sax, trumpet, piano, organ, wurly, percussion, and layers upon layers of gospel-esque harmonies. The soul-infused verse is also a brilliant contrast to the chorus, which manages to sound simultaneously bluesey and faintly grungy.

When they started to write the album, one track ended up being the lynchpin, according to Dwoskin: ‘What usually happens is that you get your “tentpole” track and think, let’s try to circle this one with the other ones,’ he said. ‘That track was ‘What Are You Scared Of?’, it’s an Americana rock ‘n’ roll ballad. We’d been listening to a lot of Nathaniel Rateliff and Brandi Carlile. The world has a resurgence of bluegrass via Mumford & Sons; that tends to fade, and ultimately comes back as young soul, punk, grunge, and R&B. Genres are truly mirrors for the events happening in the world. When one genre emerges, it tells you a lot about norms of modern society.’

The brunt of it is about cowardice and not dealing with your responsibilities’

‘Run & Hide’ is a powerful opener and sets the scene for what follows, seamlessly incorporating their soul, blues and pop influences. For me, it’s one of the catchiest songs on the album with an immensely hooky, singalong chorus: ‘Did you remember to check the grass for snakes, shake the trees and watch your goddamned face’. The rhythm at the start has a catchy acoustic hook that runs through most of the song, weaving between dirty drums and an apologetic flow of melody. ‘The brunt of it is about cowardice and not dealing with your responsibilities, leaving others to clean up your mess,’ Dwoskin said. ‘There are parts I can’t talk about that are a bit scathing (laughs). There’s a lot of bullshit in this industry, and a lot of people who will betray you for a penny. Music is reliant on trust and loyalty; when you get burned from the people you love, it scars. It’s an angry song! The chorus is quite Foos and Velvet Underground. We had to really wrestle this one into place. The original was faster and a bit more pop-punk. Do you know Alabama Shakes?” I say that I do, and that they’re great. ‘Their song ‘The Greatest’ was a loose departure point for Run & Hide,’ he said. ‘I love the Foo Fighters (I say that I do, too). This chorus is a Dave Grohl chorus, but I’m a soul-singer, so I can’t quite get “Dave Grohl loud”, it would destroy me trying to do that every show. With the chorus, we tried our best to keep it simple, with hooks and gang-vocals in the high bits. I would KILL to hear Dave Grohl sing this song properly!’ We get chatting about how brilliant the Foos are and I ask him what his favourite song is: “My favourite album is Skin and Bones (their live album from 2006) and my favourite song on it is the opener, ‘Razor’. ‘My Hero’ is also a favourite, for the epic drum riff that opens the song – it is so Nirvana. (He’s referring to the version on their 1997 album, The Colour And The Shape.) Dave Grohl is so versatile. Some people don’t realise that. He must have grown up on punk, folk, pop, rock – you can hear it in his writing. He has such a unique, and fun, approach to music.’

I tell him that I love the contrast between the seriously upbeat melody and the darker lyrics and he grins: ‘We use duality on purpose,’ he said. ‘Bands like Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones do that all the time. If Mick writes a song with sweet lyrics, Keith would write a dark riff, like on ‘Gimme Shelter’, I love the juxtaposition of that. I love to read Shakespeare. Anything from writers who use the tricks in their arsenal; language to pull the wool over people’s eyes. It almost seems like a way to keep themselves entertained.’

‘Wake Up’, the third track on the album has a more gentle, folky intro and was designed to be a split piece, according to Dwoskin: ‘It’s the last song we wrote for the album, and it almost didn’t make the cut’, he said. ‘I write a lot of songs to give myself advice. I was having terrible insomnia, staying up until 4 a.m. most nights. When you have a two year old, it becomes a nightmare – you’re a shadow of yourself. My wife helped me through it. The part about the shadows playing tricks on you, that’s the late night house ghosts. The song is also about being more culturally woke, at a time when most people are in a holding pattern of cultural influence.’

‘It’s a love letter to musicians pulling songs out of the ether’

It’s a theme that runs into the next song, ‘Ghosts’: ‘It’s about whispers when you’re awake late at night, your brain goes crazy, you think and feel things,’ he said. ‘In the nighttime, there’s this electricity, it’s about coming to terms with that and using it to your advantage. It’s a love letter to musicians pulling songs out of the ether. A musician’s greatest fear is that their inspiration will disappear and the muse will never return. There’s the line “It ain’t my fault if they’re too deaf to catch all these tales of ghostly breadth” about the gift of listening to the ghosts. Samantha Martin, a Canadian blues and soul-singer, recorded guest vocals on the track. She’s a force of nature, and a great mentor to most of us in this business. I never realised how similar our vocal rangers were. At the end, you can’t tell who is who!’

I say that a lot of musicians seem to write songs in the middle of the night or after drunken nights out and he laughs: ‘Bones’ on our EP 2, I was writing it at 4 a.m. on a drunken walk home.’ I say it’s something about the ‘witching hour’ and the inherent darkness in it and he agrees: ‘Every time I watch Exorcism of Emily Rose (a 2005 American supernatural horror film), they talk about the witching hour, and demons coming out to play at exactly 3 a.m. I always wake up at 2.58 a.m., my brain is playing tricks on me!’

Dwoskin is particularly adept at finding stories in the little moments: ‘A lot of the lyrics come from photographic moments, some magic in there that needs to be told,’ he said. ‘I’ve started focusing on smaller stories. I listen to a lot of Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Tom Waits – they do that a lot. My philosophy is that if you can write a good song about a quarter lying in the street, you can write a song about anything. Do you know The Staves?’ I say the name is vaguely familiar. ‘They’re sisters (based in London), they did a cover of Bruce’s ‘I’m on Fire’ with beautiful harmonies. I’m focused on singers like that, who can deliver a good story and break your heart.’

As a band, The Honeyrunners are a Northern take on Southern Roots and Americana – hot-blooded and full of heart. ‘We focus on new production and things we’ve learned from soul music, bands like Humble Pie, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and singers like Aretha Franklin and Etta James. I grew up on them, and the Stones, The Beatles. I’ve been listening to a lot of new music lately (His current obsession playlist – “The Goods”). Chris Martin had a big influence on me ‘cos of his incredible falsetto. We’ve done eight gigs in two weeks, and today my falsetto is shot!,’ he laughed.

‘The music is for teenagers, but the iconography is for people who had tape decks’

Just as you think you know where the album’s going, they throw a surprise into the mix with the track ‘Mixtape’ that is so gloriously 80’s and could easily be an A-ha song with its synthy intro, making it the danciest track on the album. I say that as a kid of the 80’s who made a lot of mixtapes, I really love this one. ‘The 80’s style was deliberate,’ he grinned. ‘We were talking to a 17 year old in a t-shirt shop who had tapes all over the counter. I thought: “Dammit, do I need to print some tapes for merch as well (laughs)?” Mixtapes are so nostalgic, aren’t they?’ We laugh for a bit about what a pain it was to repair the tapes with a pencil. ‘On Spotify, if you put ‘Mixtape’ on full-screen, you can see the hidden video canvas (he shows me), there’s a pencil in there for fixing the tapes, the video’s about a tape deck with little ghosts keeping it well oiled. It’ll be up on social media in a few weeks. We wrote it to be a radio pop song, within the next two weeks, I hope you hear it on the radio in the EU and UK. The music is for teenagers but the iconography is for people who had the tape decks.’

The closing track on Everything Is on Fire, ‘Those Eyes’, is the perfect closer. It’s a heartfelt ballad that pulls at all your strings even before you know the backstory and, once you do, it becomes even more poignant: ‘It’s the saddest song we’ve ever written,’ Dwoskin admitted. ‘Our older guitarist, Marcus Bucci, plays electric guitar on it. When we do this one live, Conor adds this incredibly sorrowful slide guitar on it, with a sound similar to Keith’s songs from The Stones. The lyrics are about a mother who dies in childbirth, and a father who is pained to look at his own daughter, who resembles her mom. Marcus wrote the music to it, and it just floored me. It reminded me of ‘Rain Song’ by Led Zeppelin. I heard a radio interview with the dad about learning to shift the blame away from the daughter. How strong of a human do you have to be to do that? It got me thinking how I would handle it. Could I handle it? I hope I never find out. We sang it once at a private show of 20 people, and I didn’t realise that a woman in the audience was pregnant; I felt awful. I spoke to her afterwards, but she reassured me that she liked the song, and that these were thoughts and fears that she had herself. I was relieved, but still felt like I put my foot in my mouth – a common feeling for me, as they give me a mic and center stage…’

The lyrics are incredibly moving: ‘It had me drowning in sadness. She went and left us alone. That night I left you for madness, left you for comfort but you are my home.’

Dwoskin’s own struggles also fed into the song and he initially resisted putting it on the album: ‘I didn’t want it to be a bad omen; my wife was pregnant at the time. I didn’t want to add it to the album until I knew I would have a healthy wife and healthy baby,’ he said.

‘It has so many genres; from Michael Jackson to Radiohead and Springsteen’

I say that this is one of those albums where it’s really important to play the tracks in the right order as they are so interlinked and he agrees: ‘I rarely shuffle an album,’ he said. ‘We meticulously placed them in order. You know, I played our album on shuffle just to see if some songs work better together and we did change the order of some of them.’ I tell him the theory that a friend of mine has that the third song on an album sets the tone more than the opener and he becomes very animated: ‘The third song is the artist’s favourite song,’ he explained. ‘Song number one is for the public and the record label, it’s the people pleaser. Song number two will be the follow-up single, it’s probably the best song on the album but with song number three, it’s the song the artist did for themselves, they don’t care what anyone thinks of it. That’s true for me, ‘Wake Up’ is the third track and was my favourite (laughs) but now I think it’s ‘Everything Is On Fire’, I love the way it builds when the beat kicks in about a minute in, that dance riff, it has so many genres; from Michael Jackson to Radiohead and Springsteen. When we added the horn section, the whole song lifted off the ground. We were listening to a lot of Anderson Paak (an American rapper) at the time.’

Locally, he is a big fan of punk rock bands The Beaches, and Skye Wallace, with whom they have shared bills. He’s also been getting into hip hop: ‘It took me a long time to get into hip hop,’ he confessed. ‘I love Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne; their vocal deliveries are incredible. And Macklemore – great lyricist and delivery. But my favourite is Frank Ocean – such an amazing artist all around. His album Blonde had an incredibly strong influence on me and my writing. I love Kanye, I’m obsessed with how he produces music. ‘Watch The Throne’ and ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ albums are epics. Listen to ‘M.O.N.S.T.E.R.’ on the second one, and soak in Nicki Minaj’s verse in the middle; it’ll blow your mind. Adele does a great version of it in Carpool Karaoke.’ We chat for a bit about how songs can reel you in: ‘I remember the first time I heard Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’,’ he said. ‘I pulled my car over to listen to it, it was a game changer.’

I ask him what his dream line up would look like and I can see how he’s really thinking about it. ‘Can I have a few?,’ he asked. ‘We’ll do two dead, three alive (laughs). Dead would be Led Zeppelin, with Jimi Hendrix to open the set with his Band of Gypsys. Alive would be Alabama Shakes, Radiohead and Foo Fighters. The reason I want to succeed in music is to be in the same room with some of these people, to sit and chat with them and hear their stories. Wouldn’t that be amazing?’

 Spotify and Instagram (@honeyrunners)

(Photo from left to right:  Lewis, Guillermo, Dan and Haig Beylerian, who has moved back to Nova Scotia but previously did guitar/vocals.)