Fish House is a three-piece indie rock band originally from Mystic, Connecticut. With Jake Benavidez and Adam Jacey on guitar, bass, and vocals, and Kyle Torr-Brown on drums, the group has been playing together since elementary school. Throughout the years they have moved to Boston together, writing and releasing music all the while. Their live set at WERS was one of their last in Boston before the childhood friends relocate once again, taking their chill, indie sound to New York City.
How did you get started as a band?
Jake: Me and Kyle met in jazz band we started playing together and he was the first musician I started playing with outside my lessons studio. It’s funny because we went to the same lessons studio—it was just a little hole in the wall with a couple of rooms—but we met in jazz band.
Jazz band, like a high school jazz band?
Kyle: Oh no, elementary school!
Adam: At that point we all knew each other. We all knew each other but I wasn’t playing music at that point. Then in middle school we kind of starting farting around with the idea of playing together, and then we started playing more and more until we got to high school.
When did the band really get together, writing and releasing music?
K: I feel like it’s kind of always been that way.
A: Yeah! We’ve kind of always been doing that. I guess we kind of got more serious in the past two years or so. Jake and Kyle moved to Boston and we started playing a lot more.
J: Doing the whole shebang a lot more often.
A: So now we’re trying to make it our main thing.
Do you do you all write together?
K: Well, we tend to write chunks separately but then we’ll bring them together and say “oh, what could this mean in the context of what we’re doing,” and we’ll change stuff up, do a bunch of different stuff.
What are some other Boston bands that you like to play with?
J: Quite a few! There’s a band called The Water Cycle that we play with a lot. Raavi and the Houseplants are dope. There are plenty of really good bands that we’ve played with.
Tell me more about your songwriting process and what inspires you.
A: It’s been changing, always. I don’t know if we have one thing that’s really set in stone. I mean we only have an EP and a single out now. I think we’re leaning more on the subconscious now than before whereas before there was more wordsmithing. Or not just wordsmithing, but more of the craftsmanship side.
When you say 'subconscious,' you mean a stream-of consciousness type of writing?
A: Exactly! Sort if dipping into that umm…
J: The Flow! The Zone! The Source!
A: Dipping into that river that is available to all but is super hard to reach.
J: We’ll call it The Source.
A: That’s what we’re trying to do more of now.
Do you think your sound has changed as you’ve started doing that?
J: It’s not changing drastically but we’re trimming the fat. We’re constantly refining our craft, getting better at different things, concentrating on different things and then getting worse at things that we got good at and doing this and that. We’re constantly bouncing back and forth and I think that’s how we like it, you know?
So it’s like a constant work in progress.
J: Yeah! Like, who knows what the next music we will put out is really going to sound like. We don’t go in with a set goal. We try to be as creative as we can.
K: We’re finding we have a lot more creative control.
A: [sarcastically] Now that the label’s not breathing down our necks, we’re just ready to go go go!
What are some of your musical inspirations?
J: Well the thing is it just changes so fast. We will like to bring up different bands to reference if we have a reference in mind. But what inspires us most is different movies, or a good day.
A: We’ve been thinking a lot about movies lately. Paul Thomas Anderson is a director we’ve been thinking about.
So you’re inspired as much my movies as other music?
J: Lately I think yeah.
K: We’ve been paying a lot of attention to soundtracks.
Any tour news coming up?
A: We’re moving to New York so things will be pretty different. But we’ll be playing shows in the Northeast and we have a couple more to play in Boston.
What are some of your favorite places to play in Boston?
A: I really like Great Scott. There are some cool houses we have played too.
K: I like the Lilypad, we’re playing one of our last shows there. And I feel like the best shows we play are when we hop on kind of last minute and it’s kind of spontaneous. There was this one show at Midway Cafe we played where the opening band dropped out for a Modern Painters gig. We hopped on last minute and it was very loosey-goosey and I think those ones end up being the best for us.
Is there anything coming up that we should know about?
A: We have a music video out for our song “Clout Cloud.” And we just put out a single called “Better For It.” We’re going to have a three-song EP that will be coming out mid fall!
