Milwaukee's Best: Honey Creek
The Midwest, a place where the greenery is to die for, the winters are unforgiving and the Pop Punk scene is not only fierce but also, in my opinion, some what overlooked. Let’s avert our gaze from the East Coast hype for a minute and take a trip to Wisconsin. There we find a band called Honey Creek and boy do they pack a mean Pop Punk punch that you won’t want to sleep on.
The band originally started forming in 2016, but fully became complete with its current members from 2019 and on. In 2020 they released their debut album A Whole Year in Transit. The whole album delivers from beginning to end. Zero skips. And with some of the bands influences being FOB and Motion City Soundtrack, you hear how they’ve taken some of the early 2000s sound, put a modern twist on it and boom, Pop Punk magic of their own is made.
They released a single in 2021 called Hear Me Now and with tours stacked and hints of new music, it seems this Milwaukee based band is taking the scene by storm. To give us some HC history, the band was kind enough to answer a few questions for me. Take a break from your 40 hour work week and enjoy their interview below!!
To kick things off, can you give us a little VH1 Behind the Music lesson about how Honey Creek formed and when you started releasing music?
Hey Kristen, first of all, thank you for having us! For a brief history lesson, Honey Creek originally formed in 2016 with Sam, Dylan, and Donnie, though its present incarnation has been built up over the last couple years. Back in the day, we were all acquainted with each other through the Milwaukee music scene, playing shows together though Chris, Ellee, and Emeric were playing for different bands at the time. Between 2019 and present day, as different bands and line ups came and went in the scene, we slowly put together the current Honey Creek, collecting some of the most talented musicians the scene had to offer. There were several EP's released back in those earlier days, but the first time Honey Creek really started to show us what it could be was in 2020, with the release of our debut album, A Whole Year in Transit. Ellee had been doing a good deal of co-writing with us on the project, which would lead to her joining the band not long after. It was also the first release to feature Chris as our lead vocalist.
Who would you say your top five biggest musical influences are?
The really cool thing about the band is that all six of us have very different experiences in music. At the heart of it all, we all have deep appreciation for punk and hardcore music as well as the culture that developed out of those scenes in the late 90's and early 2000's. As far as particular influences go in regards to the music we've released, there are three major players in The Wonder Years, Fall Out Boy, and Motion City Soundtrack. For us, at the end of the day, these are quintessential artists when it comes to pop-punk, being incredibly evocative and honest with their lyricism and without doubt some of the greatest musicians to ever do it. There's a lot of attitude and realness coming from those bands that we feel can be missing when it comes to pop-punk as a genre, and that is incredibly inspiring to us. This might end up being more than five, but as we keep moving forward with pushing and developing our sound, we would also have to give a good amount of credit to Enter Shikari, The Garden, Third Eye Blind, and some more hyper-pop artists such as 100 gecs and Charli XCX.
Your most recent single, Hear Me Now, dropped back in December of last year. Will we be hearing any new music from you guys before the year is up?
We're always trying to cook up something new and fresh, always trying to write the next best thing. At the moment, we're playing things a little closer to the chest as far as our next release goes but we'd love to see something out by the end of the year. We can say that something will definitely be coming out Soon™.
I had the pleasure of first seeing you guys in Milwaukee and all I can say is you guys seriously fucking rocked it. You’ve definitely been hitting the road a lot this summer, has there been one show in particular that’s been most memorable for you?
It has been a very cool summer for sure. This past tour we did in July was two years and two rounds of rescheduling in the making so between that and our first time being out in the west coast, the whole thing was incredibly memorable. The most exciting show we were fortunate enough to have played, however, had to be at Programme Skate & Sound in Fullerton, CA. There are very few places as legendary as Programme, having booked shows for so many incredible bands. Being able to play in the same space as some of our favorite bands was an incredible experience and definitely checked off some boxes for us on a personal level. Big shoutout to @LocalDeadbeat for being a homie and running that shit.
And lastly, if you could tour with two of your favorite bands/artists for a whole year, who would they be and why?
There's a lot of big names we've all dreamed of playing with. Though, if we had to spend an entire year on the road with anyone, we'd go with Action//Adventure out of Chicago, IL. We've known those homies for years and they are some of the best in the game. Easily some of the most genuine people we've ever had the pleasure of knowing. For our second choice we'd go with Weezer because well... it's fucking Weezer, obviously.
I think it's safe to say that Honey Creek is a band that's helping keep the scene alive and well. Keep your eyes on this band and if you can, catch them live as they are absolutely brilliant. Give them a listen, share their tunes over some brews with your homies and smash the FOLLOW button below to stay up to date on all things Honey Creek 🤘
All photos 📸: @samerghani
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