Next on the list of local bands to fill a residency at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar is Huntington Beach's Honeypie.
Beginning the second Monday in April, this pop band, whose infectiously catchy vintage pop hooks are belted out by a diminutive singer with golden pipes, 27-year-old Trisha Smith, will take their place in a succession of local luminaries, including The Steelwells, Pacific Hurt and dare we mention Blok?
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After talking with Smith and guitarist Ryan Radcliff this week, I found out one endearing fact: Trisha gets tongue-tied during interviews. But don't let the sweet voice fool you, she has plenty of fortitude to soldier through.
OC Weekly: Congrats on the residency. Do you feel playing a series of shows like this is any different from a series of shows on the road?
Ryan Radcliff: I think it's definitely different, we've been planning this one for a while. We asked Vince back in October and we really wanted to do a residency that was right in Springtime. We wanted to have a series of shows that culminated in a special show. We have bands we wanted to do it with. So we definitely had a plan for these shows. While there's plans behind normal shows, this one's definitely kind of like a bigger picture.
Do you guys have plans to do any recording in the near future?
Trisha Smith: Yeah. We are planning on making a single. Probably a couple of songs. We'd like to come out with singles every once in a while to keep the new music kind of fresh.
Radcliff: We're excited for doing a couple songs at a time, maybe doing like a series thing. It's exciting for us because it makes it easy to space things out and hopefully keep the tension and keep the money down because we're definitely self funded. We really don't have any desire at this point to launch into a 14-song album type thing. Nothing wrong with people who do that , it's just for our scope, the idea of doing two songs or maybe at the end of summer doing a four song ep it's something much more meaningful.
Trisha, can you talk a bit about where you learned to sing?
Smith: I've been in a lot of choirs and took vocal lessons in middle school and sang in choirs in high school and college. I've kind of always been singing and it's the one thing I love that makes me happy.
Does it go without saying that singing in choirs is a whole other animal from singing in Honey Pie?
Smith: Yeah. I was actually majoring in music. I went to OCC and was taking all the prerequisites and getting ready to transfer as a music major and realized I wanted to do music for fun because I love just performing and having fun with it more than studying it.
Can you guys talk a little about your songwriting process?
Radcliff: We do most of the writing. We also write with Justin Suitor from Railroad to Alaska.
Honey Pie and Railroad to Alaska are about as far apart on the musical spectrum as groups can get. What's it like working together?
Radcliff: (Justin Suitor) can be at home doing a Railroad to Alaska show playing hardrock then come to the Camp and he can join us for a two hour set. I think those are just two different sides of the same coin for him.
Smith: We definitely admire (Suitor's) writing abilities and his talent. I think it's really cool when somebody can write in different styles.
I really enjoyed your performance at this year's Oc Music Awards showcase. I wanted to get your opinion on any band that stood out to you guys.
Radcliff: We were really excited for Micah Brown. I hate to sound like a Sunday morning quarterback but I think we predicted him to win. We weren't surprised.
Honeypie play every Monday in April beginning the 11th at Detroit Bar, 843 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa, (949) 642-0400 detroitbar.com.
