Interview with Babylon King
Babylon King would describe themselves as “Woodland Whimsy Folk Pop Alternative”. Honestly, that is the best mix of words to describe them. The duo, Brody Gable and Grant Misse, originate from Lawrence, Kansas. Soon though, they will be relocating to New York City.
I had the pleasure of speaking to the couple about their upcoming album and their journey. We have been friends for years, and it’s been a fulfilling adventure just watching them flourish as individuals, but also in their music.
We talked about Ancient Greece, lyricism, queer happiness and queer tragedy, and everything that makes Babylon King who they are. This was such a special interview and I believe that their answers and ideas can bring some light.
xoxo,
Shaughnessy
“Payment to the Afterlife”, the debut album by Babylon King releases August 29th.
Where did the name ‘Babylon King’ come from?
We wanted something that sounded intriguing, yet regal. We wanted it to draw people in and just to have that memorability that a name does. So Babylon King, is it a band? Is it a person? What is Babylon King? And that's the question that we wanted to ask ourselves.
And now we ask everyone else. Yeah, we also had written a couple of our songs and we felt like the name was fitting with our sound as far as it had come at the time. And it wasn't like, the name came first.
It's cool to know that the music came first. That also is another thing, though. How would you define your music and your creative journey as a band? Kind of a big question.
I think our music is what we've come to realize is very woodland whimsy, queer coded. It's very alternative pop all over, but it does have those folk roots. So if I had to choose a genre, woodland whimsy, folk pop alternative. Yes.
And then for the sound of our music, I wouldn't say well, like the creative journey has been based around one album.
So this has been a journey inspired by stories from Greek myth. And most of those stories, we've been trying to retell through lenses of people that are not either the main character, or they're not what the overall story that the patriarchy of ancient Greece told and retold over time. And so they'll focus around either queer or female characters for the most part, not entirely. And so we kind of have been journeying through those experiences and those thoughts. But our sound definitely has many more turns that we think it will take in the future. But we do like where our album is at conceptually.
Well, that actually brings me into another question actually was the album. First of all, so exciting. It's called payment to the afterlife, right? Yes. Okay. Tell me more.
Payment to the Afterlife, well it is name dropped in one of the songs.
I honestly can't remember if the name of the album or the song had been written first. But it ties it together. So we really liked being able to use that phrase.
And we wanted to ask ourselves, like, if we're talking about Greek myth, and we're talking to the Gods, the very first song is titled invocations, as in like invoking the muses and asking to have them help us tell a story the way that ancient epics, like Homer would do, and mentioned the muses at the beginning. And so at the end, like, what is this about? And so we're trying to treat this album as like, in the style of a Greek myth, like this is our payment to the afterlife. This is what we're, we're putting forward in hopes that we like reach Elysium, the like, the best, the best option in the Greek afterlife, essentially.
Have both of you always been involved in Greek mythology? Is this like a new thing? Is this something you have passion for? I'm just curious.
So Grant was probably way more into Greek mythology before I was. And the reasoning for this album really coming to life was one day in October, two years ago, I brought Grant this song called ‘bee sting’, very personal stuff, very much my own story mixed in with Cupid's story or Eros, as we call him.
And I showed Grant because I had a crush on him. We were dating, but you know, you can still have that.
I said, “here's bee sting. You wrote a song about Greek myth.” I want to be like you and show you that I have that vision.
And we ultimately said, Okay, what if we got crazy and made an album about this concept of mixing reality with this Greek myth, and making it about us and making it about the girls and the gays, and having that representation where a lot of times there isn't. And I'd say that that got us into Greek mythology.
And I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about it. We listened to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of books and just did a lot of research and then storytelling through our own lens and then through the lens of people that we've met and how they relate to the Greek myths.
How has being in a relationship and building that partnership affected your music and the album?
I think that it was, to me, like, making music together is one of the deepest things you can share with a person. Like, it's a huge commitment.
And I was like, wow, if you're open to making music with me, and like fully releasing it, that's really entangling our lives. And so to me, it was also at the beginning, it was like, wow, this is a very good faith like thing to put out into the world. Because we're really committing to each other in a way that I don't think I've committed to other people before. We have a difficult task, and we face it together. And I think that keeps the art flourishing. And it keeps us, what's the word? Like, engaged? No, motivated. Motivated.
It keeps us motivated to keep going and keep making art that sounds different. Because I personally have a different style than Grant has, though we can combine them and make them something completely different and new. And I think that that shows in our relationship too, is just how we can create together all the time and be in love.
How would you describe your music in one to two words? This is something that kind of takes a little bit of discussion, because it's hard to describe any music in one or two words.
We were discussing our last song on the album. And we kind of wrote it for each other. But Brody talks a lot about how it was also written for all the other people in our life, because it's about, like, in a way spending forever together.
And so I feel like our music is also a lot for other people. And so it's kind of like a community for us. I don't know how to put that into two words.
So thank you for that. It's a dedication. And something you share.
Right? So hard. I mean, we were like, it's the sad and sexy tour. But now after this conversation, it might be, I just mean, broadly, like our album, we think sad and sexy for this album, for sure.
But definitely, like, it's a dedication. And a, I think, I don't know, hurt. It's heartfelt. It's a heartfelt dedication. Yeah. Wait, I like that.
You also said, sad and sexy tour. Will you be playing shows soon?
We don't have any shows lined up because we're leaving the state and moving to another. But you know, it's our hope that we can get out in the next couple months and just book some stuff in New York. Since that's where we're moving.
Your lyrics, what is your process with that? Do you write them together or write them separately and bring it to each other be like, Oh, this is cool. Or, you know, how does that work?
A little bit of both.Most of the lyrics we collaborated on and read them together. There were a lot of times where it was, okay, let's get the chords, let's get the melody. And let's find the words to put over it.
We know the story we want to tell it just has to come out through the music. And there's been other times that were kind of like with ’bee sting’, I'm like, hey, I have this song, and it's in a process of writing it, but we might be able to make this together. And most of the times it was, if one of us wrote the lyrics, then we would find a way to make the music work together.
And if we both wrote the lyrics, we would find a way to make the music work. And it just kept kind of going in that cycle of, okay, we know what story we want to tell and how are we going to tell it. And most of the time it was together that we wrote the lyrics and we fleshed out the things we wanted and the things we didn't want.
How has specifically being in a queer relationship and being in queer spaces affected your music?
I would say the perspectives we choose are definitely colored by our queerness. Like, ‘Jealous Love’ is two different stories that have really strong parallels in which a God falls in love with a mortal in a queer relationship. And their mortal counterpart dies either from their own actions or from somebody else's actions. And they have to essentially experience that pain. And we've noticed that there are a lot of stories centered around queer pain. And we definitely wanted to also like to have our spin on it.
But we didn't want all of our queer stories to be just about the pain. We wanted them to be about the feelings of the relationship, more so than just the loss. And so Jealous Love is about being jealous of somebody else, maybe wanting your person and having all those feelings.
But we didn't really focus on the part where like, they die at the end, like those things happen. But we're more concerned about representing a queer relationship in Greek mythology and not just oh, in this queer relationship, like there's pain and suffering at the end, because that's what happens in queer relationships, because that's not true. Yeah, we wanted to show that there is joy and there's the uplifting part of and mess.
We wanted to just show that in all rawness and realness and show that Greek tragedy and gay Greek tragedy does not represent what queerness is - And that gay is more than just a tragic story. Which is something that I think that we've seen a lot in just common media is, oh, these two men, these two women are in love with each other. And that's just going to end poorly for them because they're gay.
And that's kind of this album is saying, well, here's this experience that gay people have and female characters have, but actually female and queer queer people in the real world world experience goodness, and just letting them have that space and then have the story be told in a way that says, this is good. This is something that isn't going to just end up in tragedy.
“Payment to the Afterlife” releases on August 29th.
Presave the album here.
Keep up with Babylon King here.