By Lindy Rybloom and Tate DeCarlo

Indie band Babehoven has been releasing music since 2017, making them a defining artist in the scene for over half a decade. Drawing inspiration from alternative-country, Babehoven consists of Maya Bon and Ryan Albert–a powerhouse duo whose newest album thrives off of collaboration. The two find themselves in Hudson, NY, a quaint city upstate where opportunities for music recording are unrestricted and produce is fresh. We had the honor of talking with lead singer Maya Bon about all-things Babehoven with a special focus on their upcoming LP, Water’s Here in You. 

Tate DeCarlo: So our first question is pretty simple–would you please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do, what you play, and the band that you’re a part of?

Maya Bon: Yeah! My name is Maya, I use she/her pronouns, I live in upstate New York, and I’m a part of the band Babehoven. It’s mostly my partner Ryan and I, and we have live instrumentalists who join us for shows and tours who are awesome. We kind of change shapes depending on the shows that we play, but it’s Ryan and I as the little people behind the scenes. 

Tate: The core, awesome. Our biggest question for you right off the bat, we know that you have an album coming out which we’re super excited about. Water’s Here in You is set to release on April 26th, how are you feeling about that? 

Maya: I’m really excited about it! I think it’s a very strong album and it’s unique. We record everything at home, you can probably hear Ryan in the background, but he’s working on another song right now. We’re always kind of working on things but this album was unique for us because he joined me in the songwriting aspect of the album. I would normally write the songs and he produces and I co-produce them, but this time around, Ryan was playing some guitar chords around the house and I was saying “Hey! I really like that, can I write a song with that?” And then we’d write a chorus together and just kind of ended up collaborating more and more in that way and still, I am the lyricist and he is the instrumentalist, but it felt like a new territory of collaboration which was really exciting. I think in the songs you can really tell, they’re not a totally new direction, cause I always feel like “what does that mean?” like we’re the same people and our brains are pretty similar still but they’re definitely sonically developing in a new way. 

Tate: Yeah, that’s super cool! Would you say it’s more of a blended process now? 

Maya: Yeah! I would say so. We still have our little territories but we kind of met up sooner whereas normally I am the songwriting territory and then I bring it to Ryan but this time it was like, writing a song with Ryan. He would play the guitar and I’d be like, “You should do that” and he’d be like, “Ok!” you know? We kind of collaborated quicker. 

Tate: Was that planned? Or did it just kind of happen as you were going along?

Maya: Yeah, I actually had like literally 25 songs ready for an album. I normally just write a lot and then choose which of those songs, and most of those songs did not end up on the album because we kept writing songs together and we were like “well, there’s no room for more music” which, there’s always room for new music! But we kept finding ways to be like, “oh this is the album” and we don’t want to use those songs right now, so there’s this whole like, back catalog that maybe someday we’ll make use of. That’s the funny thing about songwriting. Sometimes there are just like, you just get them out and then they never reach anywhere, you know? 

Tate: Yeah! Do you have plans for those songs that didn’t make the album, or are they just kind of in storage for now? 

Maya: Yeah, kind of in storage for now. A lot of them haven’t even been demoed. But like, truly, yeah, if I’m thinking about the back catalog of my songwriting life, there’s literally thousands of songs that are never gonna be anything. And that’s kind of the cool thing about this. 

Tate: Yeah.

Maya: It’s fleeting, like things just kind of come and go, and then certain ones end up being like, ‘oh, we should work on this right now.’ Sometimes I wonder whether some of them are even better or worse. It’s just certain ones, you get inspired by at a given moment and we’re going to work on that. It’s not like they’re anything better. 

Lindy Rybloom: I noticed how you said you write tons of music all the time. I was wondering how long it takes you to have your average song fully, crisply, finished, if there is even an answer. 

Maya: On average, in terms of songwriting not production, just getting a song out, well, the way I write mostly is that I press play on my voice memos on my phone and then I’ll stream of consciousness write it down and then I’ll go back and be like, “What’d I just say?” And then I’ll write down things that I liked or edit things that I don’t and sometimes the song’s just done. Like “Often” came out that way off of Light Moving Time which is our former album, like, it just came out that way. And I was like, “ok, that’s the song” and I just wrote down exactly what I said. “Fugazi” was that way. And then there was like, a different approach, for example, “I’m On Your Team” where I really wanted to write a song about being on someone’s team and I wanted it to be in the style of Courtney Marie Andrews mixed with Roy Orbison, like I knew what I wanted. So I kind of went into it differently. And like, sat down and wrote down the lyrics and like thoughtfully, instead of just letting it out. I thought about it more, so that approach can take me like 45 minutes. 

Lindy: Wow!

Maya: And then, the stream of consciousness approach is like, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. Whatever it takes to, you know, depending on, sometimes like 15, but I try to – I try to not think. I try to not overthink it and just be like, “I’m getting this out and I don’t want to think if it’s good or bad. I don’t want any thoughts going on.” 

Tate: Really prolific, that’s impressive! 

Maya: Well, thank you. Some are probably like, it’s good that they’re in the back catalog, you know? Prolific doesn’t mean every song is great, but I think it’s good to just write, you know? Unfiltered. Take the filter off. 

Lindy: Yeah, absolutely. 

Tate: A lot of material to choose from too in that. Do you ever go back and refine things that you maybe have left sitting for a while? 

Maya: Yes. Right now, actually, the song Ryan’s working on is a song I wrote a section of, like just an idea in 2018. And, all of a sudden, yesterday, I was like–oh no, it was this morning–I was like, “I really liked this song. I think I wrote it last year.” I looked back and remembered it, but it’s this song called “Lasagna.” I think that’s what I’ll call it because I sang about lasagna. And that’ll jog my memory. I found it right away. I was like, “oh my god, it’s from 2018. And it’s still in my head,” So I was like, “ok, I have to write it.” It took me like 35 minutes to write it this morning. I’m gonna think about this. I didn’t just stream of consciousness. 

Tate: How many songs would you say you sit down and write in a day? 

Maya: It’s not an everyday thing. Its, it comes in waves. I don’t know if yall are musicians but I feel like a lot of people experience this. Not just musicians but creatives in general, where you’re dormant for months. You don’t write. And sometimes thats really stressful for a lot of people where its like, “what the fuck happened?” I was so good at this, people liked this, and now I can’t do it anymore. But I really try to not think about it at all. If I don’t feel like writing, I’m just not going to do it. So there’s some times a month, two months when I’m on tour I don’t write unless I really want to all of a sudden. Sometimes it happens at soundcheck where I’ll be like, “wait a second I need to write down this idea” and I’ll voice memo it, but it’s pretty rare. So yeah, it’s more like some months I’ll write a lot. But it wouldn’t even be, some people have those practices like, “I write everyday no matter what.” I don’t feel that way. 

Tate: Yeah, seems like a lot of pressure to put on yourself too, to go about it that way. 

Maya: Yeah, I try to take the pressure out of that side of music. It’s so pressurized in so many other ways, you know? 

Tate: Moving on, talking a little bit about how Water’s Here in You fits into your broader discography. How would you say it compares to some of your previous work? I know we talked a little bit about it being a more collaborative writing process, but sonically are there some shifts that are happening? Are you exploring a new sound?

Maya: Yeah, I think sonically, some of the songs are pretty out there. Like, there’s one song on the album called Millenia that is like, kind of cuckoo. There’s no time signature. It’s droney, and like, kind of spoken word, but I’m singing and it’s very wild. There’s a few songs like that on the album that are definitely us kind of just, you know, going off the beaten track and just letting it go. But I would say this album is overall, less country, alt country. Like sometimes we’re in that category with songs like “I’m On Your Team.” There are some other songs that I feel like people say, “that’s kind of alt country” and I agree. But this album, I think the collaborative style that Ryan and I have is less country, it’s more like – I always have such a hard time with genres–but it’s more, I would say, kind of, sonically, a little bit dissonant. “Lightness Is Loud,” for example, which just came out a few weeks ago, it’s kind of a weird song. If you listen to the chords, Ryan actually made a TikTok of himself playing the chords cause we’re trying to like be on TikTok now, which is really funny for us. But, we’re not even that old. I’m 28, but I feel like I missed the TikTok thing, like I’m at that cusp. And so we’re trying to be on there. But he made this TikTok video explaining how to play the chords and they’re weird chords. I would be hard pressed to find a song that sounds like “Lightness Is Loud.” It’s not a normal sounding song. But I think what he does really well, and what I can do well is that we make something kind of pop-ish, not pop like pop music, but like popular enough. 

Tate: Catchy. 

Maya: That’s the word I’m looking for. We make something catchy out of something that is not normally going to be catchy. 

Tate: Cool! Yeah, that’s a really cool process. I was listening to “Lightness Is Loud” this morning and “Chariot” back to back and I was like, these songs sound so different. It’s really cool that they’re on the same album. Obviously, you’ve been releasing these songs off this album in a particular order for a reason; do those two speak to the sonic diversity of this album? 

Maya: I would say that those two are actually more similar than some of the songs that are going to come out. 

Tate: Really? 

Maya: Yeah, it’s a very diverse group of music. There’s one song that is definitely alt country on there. There’s these few songs that are like ambient, weird kind of, there’s one with me on the organ and like, just me and the organ and my voice kind of phases in and out with other voices of myself. Like it’s very, kind of trippy. There’s a lot of weird songs on this album. I think that “Chariot” and “Lightness is Loud” are obviously quite different. But I do think they are actually going to be surprisingly like some of the songs that seem a little more similar once you maybe you hear the whole rest of the album. Let me know. 

Tate: Cool! Yeah, that’s super exciting. How would you describe your sound in general? I know that this is maybe a hard question to ask as you’re like, experimenting with new stuff like you’re saying, but do you feel like you’re really starting to move away from that alt country that you’ve been in before and exploring something completely new? Or are you refining what you’ve already been doing? 

Maya: Um, well, I don’t think we’re moving away from alt country, like, in my own songwriting process, I kind of do lean into like, kind of country sounds these days. So I think that’ll be back around for sure but I would say how I describe our sound is we’re pretty indie. We’re just like, kind of run of the mill indie in that if you heard us you’d be like, “oh, that’s an indie band.” We’re not pop enough that we’d ever be like a really popular band. Some bands are like, “someone who doesn’t listen to indie would like this.” I feel like we kind of toe that line with maybe “Birdseye,” the second single, but like the first one we announced, could attract a more pop sounding brain, but I think I’d say we’re like indie, alt country, alternative, rock, sensitive rock,

Tate: Sensitive rock, I like that. 

Maya: Lyrically-based rock. 

Tate: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Lindy: We were talking about the diversity of your sound, and we were curious what your musical influences have been recently and maybe throughout your life. 

Maya: Well, I actually have written down the musical influences for this album, and I’m gonna pull them up. I don’t want to forget anything. 

Tate: Some insider info here. 

Maya: Alex G for sure. Always. He’s amazing. Such a great producer and just like thinker of chords. Big Thief. I guess you don’t know the songs yet, but Big Thief is on there. Ellen Arkbro, for a lot of these like more ambient droney things. She’s like, freaking amazing. And we’re big fans. So she definitely comes out for us. Mount Eerie, Kristine Leschper. She’s also a dear friend and I’m just so inspired by her music so she always comes out in my music. Sunn O, have you ever heard of Sunn O? This is a band that Ryan referenced for one of the songs on the album, but it’s like pretty much like performance art in music. It can be categorized as like, metal but it’s really not. It’s like long, slow, one strum, but they wear like insane costumes and it’s very loud, but they’re cool. Mojave 3, Cocteau Twins, Life Without Buildings.

Tate: I actually noticed, on “Birdseye” I feel like the vocals at the very start are so Cocteau Twins-esque, it’s awesome.

Maya: Very much so. Oh, funnily enough, Taylor Swift’s song “Teardrops On My Guitar” comes in. 

Tate: Really? 

Maya: Which is surprising, but I love that. Angel Olsen always, Guided by Voices, Squirrel Flower, John Prine. Um, and then there was someone that I was like, “that’s who I was referencing in lightness is loud.” And I couldn’t remember who it was for the life of me and the other day I remembered it. But I’m probably not going to remember now. I should have written it out. There was an artist that I know now I was directly trying to sound like in my writing. Anyway, if I think of it all. I’ll let you guys know. It was someone. 

Tate: That’s quite the listening list you’ve got for us. I’m curious. I recognize some names, but not all, so we’ll have to do some exploring. 

Maya: Yeah. 

Tate: Pivoting a little bit, we’re really curious about the Babehoven origin story. We’ve talked about your music and now we’d like to know a little bit about you guys in general. How did y’all meet? How did you start playing music together?

Maya: Sure, sure. So I started Babehoven in 2017 in Portland, Oregon when I was in undergraduate with the intention of steering away from folk-y stuff, which was what I had always–I’ve been writing songs and playing since I was really little and I always was like, folk like singer- songwriter, maybe me and like one other person, sometimes doing harmonies. I just felt like I kind of moved away from that sound, and really wanted a full band. And my first few albums especially had kind of I called it like “sad-girl-punk,” which is just so embarrassing now, but that was what I kind of thought of it as was this new direction for myself, I was writing with like barre chords for the first time and changing my style. And I was like, “okay, I don’t want it to be under my name anymore. I want to have a band name.” So, at the time, like, Girlpool was like running the sphere. And they’re also like dear friends of mine from growing up in LA and everyone’s band at that time was like, “girl something,” or like “babes something,” or “mama something,” “Mommy,” you know, and still is like, we’re still all doing it. But, I want for there to be a femme thing. I was thinking, I had just seen my former piano teacher who I took piano lessons with him from like, ages five to 15, and he’s obsessed with Beethoven. So Beethoven was just on my mind and I was like, “Babehoven,” ha ha. And I didn’t think it would–I really didn’t think I would be doing this for that much of my life. Like, I just thought, “Oh, I’ll do this in college.” Like, I didn’t really think it mattered that much, when I named it so I was like, Babehoven, I put it on Bandcamp. And then it’s funny now I’m like, eight years later, like still describing this name, it’s like such a stupid name. But it also works because no one else has it. And it’s easy to search and stuff. 

Tate: It’s an earworm too, it sticks.

Maya: Yeah, and some people don’t recognize the Beethoven reference, which I actually prefer, because then it’s not a pun, it’s just a word and a hoven is also a word. So, anyway, it’s fine, I don’t hate it too much. That’s the thing that band names, you’re just gonna hate it after a while, because you’re stuck with it. Anyway, that’s when I started the project. I had a drummer and a bassist who were friends of mine in college, Elias Williamson, and Skyler Apia are their names. Then when I graduated, in 2018, I moved back home to LA and I met Ryan, who was actually working for my mom at her art studio. He had just moved to LA from Vermont, where he’s from. And I just fell in love with him. We’ve been together ever since, and we slowly started playing music together, well like, not that slowly, the same year, but I needed a drummer and he plays drums. We were doing a duo set for a long time with him on drums and me playing baritone guitar to try to fill out guitar and bass. And then we started doing production stuff in 2019 when we moved from LA to Vermont, temporarily, we were gonna move to Philly. We were just at his parents house for a few months, and we were like, “why don’t we record things?’  He has all the tools. I have a few microphones, he has speakers, and we just kind of slowly started to work on music more. Then it’s been like every year, sometimes multiple albums in a year, we’re just always working on things, it’s fun. Sometimes it’s a little stressful, where we kind of put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be like, “we have to work on this right now.” Like, we’re going to be on tour for two months, this is the time! He works doing construction work too, so he’s exhausted sometimes. I’m always getting fired from jobs because I run a band and I’m on tour for two months and then can’t keep another job. Right now I’m between jobs. But yeah, that’s the origin story. We slowly just kind of become more and more like, this is a pretty big part of our lives now. Whereas when I started it, I was a college student like planning on going to law school after I graduated. And then I was like, “oh, the band’s like doing fine. I’ll just go to law school in a couple of years.” Now it’s been a while, and I do want to go to law school still eventually, but I’m enjoying the band. 

Tate: That’s awesome. And there’s plenty of time for law school, I’m sure, maybe later. 

Maya: Life is long. Ideally. 

Tate: As a Portlander I have to ask, where in Portland were you? 

Maya: I went to Lewis and Clark. 

Tate: Oh, amazing. One of my best friends from high school, his dad is a professor there. 

Maya: Oh my god! Who? 

Tate: He’s a computer science professor. Jens Mache. 

Maya: Yeah, that’s really cool. 

Tate: That’s so cool that you get to have not only a band like fulfilling for your own personal ends, but a band that’s fulfilling in your relationship too– that’s incredibly special. I feel like that’s pretty rare. 

Maya: It is really special. It’s hard sometimes, people often ask what those dynamics are like, as a couple and it can be challenging, but I think what keeps us working so well together is that we’re both really excited about something. Today, for example, Ryan had every intention to be with me during the interview but then we’re so excited by this song, he’s like, “I need to work on it.” And I’m like, “you go work on it”. Like, hell yes, you know? We kind of gas each other up when we need it, that’s the positive side.

Tate: Yeah, that’s amazing, and I want to say I’m very glad that Ryan chose to pursue that song instead of the interview, good for you guys for sticking to it. I’m again pivoting a little bit, but we were looking at your Instagram earlier today, and it looks like you’re touring with Indigo De Souza this winter. Am I correct in that?

Maya: So we actually toured with Indigo De Souza last winter.

Tate: Oh, okay. I saw the dates, but I didn’t see the year. How was that experience?

Maya: It was awesome. Yeah, we love Indigo. And the whole band is so sweet. Landon, if you’re out there, you rock. Landon’s their bassist, he’s just a total gem, character, beautiful person. But we had a really nice time, and the shows were great. The crowd was way different than other crowds we played for before. They were like, kind of exclusively like young women and queer people, which was cool. I mean, there were obviously men there too. But it was like, very young woman focused, and I haven’t really played in front of that many like, kids. They were 16 even younger, sometimes with their parents and they were just so excited. And every single night, not exaggerating, people passed out in the audience from seeing Indigo, like they fainted. It was that kind of vibe, where you’re just, you’re so happy to be here, and that feels really nice.

Tate: That’s really special, too. That’s awesome. It seems, as we kind of look at how you’ve released music over the years, that the DIY ethos is a pretty core part of Babehoven. What kind of pushed you to take the self publishing route?

Maya: Well, initially, we did not have options. I released my first two EPs off with an album in Portland or with a label in Portland called Good Cheer. And then they kind of fell apart. And I was just self-releasing for a while, and like self-distributing and doing all the PR myself. Then we signed to Double Double Whammy (DDW) in 2022 I think. I think it was last year. No, that’s two years ago now. Yeah, 2022, and we’ve been releasing with them since then. And we love DDW. It’s been great. I love everybody on their catalog, we’re good friends with most people on the catalog. So it feels like a great fit for us. But, you know, when we were self releasing it was definitely not by choice. But I learned a lot. And I think the thing that has been most true about how we release music is that I just want to get things out there. I try to be less precious about, you know, is it the perfect release? Or like, is it going to be heard by millions of people and more just like, I want to like release things and put things out there and not hold onto things too long. So we’ve just released a ton of music over the past seven years and I think that’s worked in terms of growing our base, just constantly having stuff out instead of like, the other route, which is being really careful and  not releasing something until you have the perfect label behind you. Like, you can be really tactical, which I think can work for some people. But yeah, our method has just been get it out there. 

Tate: Yeah, that’s sweet. Lindy, I think you have a really good question about this.

Lindy: Yeah, we were wondering about having that DIY process and if that has, over the years, attracted a specific audience or allowed you to create a certain sound within your band.

Maya: Big time. I think the audience now has started to change because of the bigger touring opportunities we had last year like, with Slow Pulp and Indigo De Souza. We also toured with Skullcrusher and Horse Jumper, but those two have similar audiences to what we have had before. But Slow Pulp has like a bro-y audience. They’re lovely, but they’re bro-y for sure. So now when we’re playing shows, a lot of the people who are new fans are this kind of like, Slow Pulp fan and we’re so into it, I’m like, come one come all, you guys are awesome and are like, great bros. But it’s definitely a different vibe. This is the first time I am noticing we have a new fanbase. And formerly I feel like the fanbase that we had which was very small, it always has been. We’re a pretty small-ish band that has been mostly found by music listeners. People who like music a lot, who will research music, that’s who found us. And I like those people. A lot of those people are really thoughtful, sensitive, beautiful listeners. 

Tate: You’ve bounced around from Portland, to LA, and now you’re in Hudson, NY? How are you liking it?

Maya: I love it. I’ve lived, Portland, LA, Philly, Vermont, and now Hudson in the past 5 years. We moved a lot, which was hard financially and mentally, but we ended up here after quarantine from many ways of hearing about it and having friends here. We rented this house with a bunch of friends and I love this area. We’ve been here for three years and it’s the perfect place for us. It’s so cool, everyone is lovely, there’s lots going on, and we get to be in the woods. We have really good produce that is grown by our friends and really good fresh milk and really good cheese. There are swimming holes everywhere. You can’t miss them, it’s just the best. And we have a wood stove. 

Lindy: How, if so, do you feel like living in NY has affected your upcoming music? 

Maya: I think living in upstate New York particularly, because I don’t think this would be true about New York City, has affected our upcoming music in that we just have time and space to play. No one can hear us here. We can just make music all day and focus on what we want to focus on. Obviously the hustle still happens, we have to work on other things, Ryan has work a lot, it can be hard financially, but for now it’s kind of ideal in that we don’t have the hustle of the city on top of that all, like being in LA, I love LA, its where I’m from, but you can’t do this. You can’t record for hours multiple times a week because there’s so much happening. There’s cars going around in the background all the time, it’s just not easy. 

Tate: Are there any musicians, artists, venues, or even organizations in upstate New York that are doing a really good job supporting the music scene, or supporting you specifically? 

Maya: Yeah! Avalon Lounge in Catskill is amazing, Colony in Woodstock has great shows, Tubby’s in Kingston is great. PS21 in Chatham is this very cool art space and outside art performance area that has amazing dance performances, performance art work and also music–they’re really trying to push more bands to come right now and that’s been really lovely. Um, but like truthfully, I don’t live upstate because I want to perform upstate. I like performing in cities more than I like performing here. But I like living here and I like going to shows here more than I like going to shows in the city most of the time. But I like performing in the city better because you make more money and there’s more people. But I feel like going to a show upstate feels so nice because it’s intimate and there aren’t as many people here. I know on the opposite end it’s like, you want more people to be there when you’re performing. 

Tate: That makes a lot of sense. 

Lindy: And then finally, where can people find your music and stay up to date on your releases or your tours, or upcoming events? 

Maya: Yeah, so we have a Substack which I just launched a few months ago where we’re sending everything that you would want to know, and I don’t spam you. I’m like writing poems and sending like personalized things with photos and stuff, but I also send tour dates and stuff. And then Instagram is super helpful, follow us on Instagram. Follow us on Spotify if you don’t know about that, following artists you like on Spotify actually makes way more of a difference than you think so, follow people you like on Spotify! Yeah, those are the ways!

Tate: Thank you so much for your time, it’s been wonderful to get to know you and to get to talk to you! 

Maya:Thank you guys so much, this was really fun. 

Tate: We appreciate it, really great to meet you.

Lindy: Nice to talk to you!