Babehoven's Seamless Collaboration On 'Water's Here in You'
Interview by Ethan Andrews
Babehoven's story is a tale of love, creativity, and collaboration that has shaped their unique sound and visual identity. Their journey — from their meeting in Los Angeles to their move to the East Coast — reflects dedication, experimentation, and the joy of creating music together. Their recent project, Water’s Here In You, showcases their harmonious collaboration, with track six, "Chariot," highlighting the deep connection and creative synergy between Maya Bon (vocalist, guitarist) and Ryan Albert (guitarist, producer). Additionally, their visual concepts and videos such as "Ella’s From Somewhere Else" and "Birdseye '' demonstrate their imaginative and collaborative approach to artistic expression.
Babehoven would be nothing if it wasn’t for the meeting of Bon and Albert. They came together in a way that was easy and made sense: Albert was working for Bon’s mother at her art studio in Los Angeles. He was giving her a hand on a project that involved a lathe cutter and a jukebox. Though we are not exactly sure what might have come out of that, it sounds pretty darn cool to us.
After Bon graduated college, she had made plans to move to Portland, Oregon. However, those plans changed when she went back home to visit and met Albert. “I just fell in love with him and decided to move back to LA afterward,” Bon tells Pleaser.
But Babehoven’s musical process wasn’t instantaneous, it was slow. It all started when Bon was in Portland, where she had found a drummer and a bassist. “It was a way to funnel my songwriting process into a band process,” Bon says. “I wanted to have a live band feeling.”
However, when she had left Portland to move back to Los Angeles, the small growing tree of the band had shriveled back up into a seed that needed to be replanted. And it was hard; trying to find a consistent rotation of musicians is not something that happens with the snap of your fingers. Sometimes it’s more of a pleasant coincidence, though.
“I just so happened to fall in love with Ryan who was a multi-instrumentalist and he had offered to play drums for me and other instruments if necessary,” Bon shares. Shortly after, the two acquired a practice space and Albert was playing drums in the 2018 live arrangement.
With what looked to have been a consistent band arrangement, Bon and Albert moved to the East Coast. They had stopped in Vermont for a few months, where Albert is from, and recorded together for the first time in his parents garage, from there recording more and more. Albert took on the role of working on the production side of things which Bon was less familiar with. Recently, they have started collaborating even more when it comes to writing.
“He just had some chords that I really liked,” Bon says. “I decided to write a song with those chords and I had suggested we do the chorus together as well, and I had come up with chords for the chorus. So we had decided to explore co-writing where he would bring more guitar parts to the table and I would write lyrics and melodies over them.” This shift in the way the two collaborate has made Babehoven more of a duo rather than a solo act with supporting instrumentalists.
With the release of their most recent project Water’s Here In You, a beautiful 12 track, gentle indie folk record, we were curious to learn more about their process. Track six, titled “Chariot,” was one of the songs that had built the album's sonic foundation. “It was one of the first songs we collaborated on when songwriting and marked a new chapter of our sound,” Bon explains.
The process of “Chariot” coming together was a great example of what their collaboration looks like these days. Albert brings in chords and together they workshop to make it fit the sound Bon is looking for, then Bon writes the chorus and chord progression. “The sound of the song is something different than what I would have written on my own,” she says. “And because I didn’t have the guitar the whole time I was able to think about the lyrics in a different way.”
Essentially, Babehoven is a collaborative band in every possible way. When it comes to their visuals, that case still remains. “For ‘Ella’s From Somewhere Else,’ those visual ideas were from me. I just had this vision of me in a red dress over a sky background,” Bon shares. From the get-go, Bon knew she wanted her friend Marie Claire Wintrow, who had made a dress for their video “Fugazi,” to make the dress for her. “She’s an amazing seamstress and costume designer and she hand-dyed the fabric and made this beautiful beeswax netted shawl.”
For the video portion, they asked Shia Wassenhart to take footage from her trip in Australia and overlay it. Then they brought in their friends Richard and Pearl who had come to the table with the idea of Bon and Albert being best friends, wearing fun outfits and doing fun things like chopping wood together, carrying things around the house, playing instruments, and dancing together. “And the overarching joke is that we have this dramatic height difference - I’m 5’1” and he’s 6’3.” And I’m just super proud of that video. Richard and Pearl have such a particular eye so it turned out very strong because of their approach.”
For “Birdseye,'' they collaborated with their friend Ash Kron, who came up with the idea for the video. “Ryan and I were really at a loss with what to do for the video,” Bon says. “Sometimes it's hard to come up with visions for songs but Ash came up with this amazing detailed vision with me as a bird with my binoculars. I can’t fly but I have this balloon chair referencing the guy who took off in a balloon chair in the 70s. And it's just these vignettes of me observing humans and trying to figure out what's going on with them. Humans are so weird.”
To dig deeper into the songs, we asked Bon what inspires her lyrics — whether it be people in her life or the places she has been. She tells us this was a question she had never been asked before, so she had to think about it for a moment. “There is a song we haven’t released yet which is one of my favorite songs I have written before and there’s a lyric about longing to tell an estranged family member about how well the tour went, and how kind people are.”
Bon paints a beautiful picture of what the DIY touring scene looks like. Things have been going a lot more smoothly in regards to touring; she’s seen a handful of generosity within the scene with the way people offer up their beds, food, and other necessities that are hard to get when on a small touring budget. These acts of kindness have inspired Bon to do the same — hosting people and making fans feel comfortable in her own home, creating a strong community. “This is something that has been coming out in my lyrics: hopeful admiration for humanity and trust in the community that I’m a part of in the process. Just a lot of gratitude.”
This just goes to show how music really brings people together — whether it’s the community that is built because of the spiritual shared love of making or listening to music, or the in-person community that is built through singing a song together with a bunch of strangers in a crowd. “A good example of it is like the end of ‘Ella’s from Somewhere Else.’ We’ve been doing a group song at the end because when everyone sings together and they get really quiet, it's like this feeling that’s hopeful, moving, and human,” Bons shares passionately. “Music is such a human experience and I just feel really grateful to be human because I can play it and be able to connect with people in that way.”
Community support shows up in many different formats for Babehoven. When the band is on tour, like many artists, they have a supporting act accompany them on their journey — often giving those bands the opportunity to find their own place in the world of music. “It’s been so fun thinking about the people that are opening for us. Because we never had this experience before other than in regional settings. So the main focus I had was ‘Who do I love?’”
“Like Greg Mendez being on the East Coast leg. This is just a huge honor,” Bon tells us. “Greg is an amazing songwriter and all of us on the tour separately and collectively listen to him and admire him. So it's really such a blessing to be able to play and have them open for us that we would open for too. Like, we have opened for Greg before and we would continue to do so and it feels non-hierarchical in that way.”
The band also gets a lot of help from their manager Kelly, who keeps track of a handful of people in different cities they want to uplift and give a hand to. And just like when it comes to helping those on the road by opening up their homes, Babehoven does the same when it comes to supporting acts. It’s a “they help us, we help them” mentality for this band.
Due to her strong love and admiration for all of the artists joining Babehoven on tour, Bon has struggled with finding ways to be able to promote all the bands. “I spent my last few days making this unhinged tour poster with every single person listed. I need them all to be visible and promoted. It’s really important to me that everyone is seen and valued.”
This current Babehoven tour has been full of surprises, especially in regards to the crowds. Most of their shows have been packed with fans showing up and showing their love for the band. They have sold out a couple of shows, but even if they didn’t, the amount of people who have shown up has been a big surprise for the band. “Merch has been selling pretty well and people show up in merch and I’m just moved by that, you know? I still can't believe it. It feels very surreal,” Bon says.
She tells us she never really expected the band to have a following like this, which isn’t to say she doesn’t believe in their talents. “I never thought we would get to a place where we would headline a tour. I always thought that the DIY tour sandwich was the pinnacle for us.”
It’s also exciting for them to have a diverse fan base with really kind people in it. “There’s a lot of cool queer people, a lot of young and old people. I like these people, and I like that they like us. We’ve seen people bringing us flowers, or being really emotionally present and asking genuine questions,” Bon says.
Babehoven's journey reflects the power of love, creativity, and collaboration in shaping a unique musical identity. Bon and Albert's latest project, Water’s Here In You, showcases their evolving sound and captivating approach to artistic expression, establishing them as an inspiring duo in the indie folk music scene. With so much thought and dedication being put into this musical project, one cannot help but be eager to see what else is in store.
