Band Highlights: Babe Haven

After being led up the stairs at Music Farm by their tour manager, Bree, Aubrey and I stepped into a frigid green room and laid eyes on Babe Haven. Having been freakishly devoted to them since last year’s release of Uppercut, we spent the whole two hour drive to Charleston with the windows down, listening to their “inspiration” playlist on Spotify- only turning the music down to turn and ask each other “is there a bad song on this playlist???”. We were running ever so slightly behind, thanks to my class schedule, and we tumbled out of my car on unsteady, fishnet clad legs to conduct our first ever interview together. I don’t wanna pat us on the back too early, (mostly because Babe Haven made it engaging and enjoyable by virtue of their personality and expertise) but I think we’re basically professionals now. Driven, passionate, and bewitching, Babe Haven walked us through everything from cucumber farming to the uniting powers of Kittie. We’re beyond thankful we were welcomed into their space and given an opportunity to talk to Lillie, Julia, Naomi and Brendan between their soundcheck and what I can honestly say was one of the most joyful concerts of my life. If you take anything away from this article, let it be this: BABE HAVEN IS NOT TO BE MISSED. 

Interview Transcript: 

[Babe Haven (BH) is: Lillie (lead vocalist), Naomi (guitarist), Julia (bassist) and Brendan (drummer)]

[WUSC is: Aubrey Ayres and Issac Czerniawsky]

WUSC: we were listening to y’all’s inspiration playlist on the way here- not a bad song on it. 

Naomi: Except for the King Gizzard one-

Brendan: hey! 

WUSC: that was like the one- the first song we queued! Are y’all King Giz haters? 

Lillie and Naomi: No!

Naomi: No we love it, it’s just fun to make fun of Brendan. 

WUSC: This

is a pretty informal interview, if y’all are cool we’ll just jump right into the questions? 

BH: we’re cool (Naomi: we’re so cool)

WUSC: Okay sweet! I’d like to ask each of you- what’s something you’re super proud of but never get the chance to brag about? 

Lillie: Like, just in general or music wise? 

WUSC: just in general! unless you wanna say something music wise, totally up to you. 

Lillie: i’m still in like, band brain right now- so I would say: we were just talking about this yesterday, but I don’t really get to like, sing that often? Or get to do anything that operatic like I like to do? 

Julia: says the lead singer of the band. (BH and WUSC laugh)

Lillie: well, you know, we’re singing, we’re screaming, and it’s so much fun, I just really like to sing sing. 

WUSC: that’s so sick- are you like, classically trained? 

Lillie: no, but i did the like, growing up, training myself with youtube videos. Singing in the stairwell at my parents house when nobody was home. 

WUSC: why does it sound so much better in the stairwell- is that like an acoustics thing? 

Lillie: (sing-songy) it’s the acoustics, but yeah. Somebody else can go. 

Brendan: I feel like I talk about all the things I’m proud of. 

Lillie: yeah, I be yappin’. (BH and WUSC laugh)

WUSC: well you can just tell us the thing you’re most proud of, then! Something that’s happened to you recently where you were like, “damn, I really killed that.”

Brendan: I had a good cucumber garden this summer. (julia laughs)

WUSC: sick! Did you grow for your friends and family, or-

Brendan: yeah, just for me and Julia. We had like… probably 7 cucumbers? It was my first time growing them. 

Lillie: yeah man you were out there

Brendan: the onions didn’t go well- I feel like i buried them too shallow. Anyway- 

Naomi: well, Lillie and i just moved in together- we’re dating, bee tee dubs, and we’re finally living together with my dog. And that’s really cute and epic-

Lillie: uh, it’s really epic (they laugh)

Naomi: but other than that I’m starting like, personal training courses? So I like want to be, doing that? When we’re on the road I’ll be able to online coach, and my goal is getting queer people, or even femme-presenting people, to be comfortable in the gym. 

WUSC: that’s a noble calling- did you do sports in high school? 

Naomi: yeah, and I did Exercise Science in school, but I had no intentions of wanting to do anything like that. I was gonna go to medical school but then COVID hit, and I made a band instead. 

Brendan: you were gonna go to medical school? I didn’t know that. 

Naomi: yeah, and now here I am! (lillie laughs)

Julia: I’ve been doing real estate photography- which is pretty great. I feel like that makes a lot of sense, I have a photography degree. 

WUSC: Yeah speaking of great I feel like that’s a perfect segue- this seems like the biggest tour for y’all that we’ve seen, especially since the release of Uppercut, how’s that been going? 

BH: good, it’s been good!

Julia: it’s the biggest headlining that we’ve done- I feel like we’ve kinda been- we pull up to venues and they have these nice green rooms, all this stuff, it’s been kinda crazy. And like, people showing up-

Lillie: it’s crazy, like, are you sure? We’re used to opening for bigger acts and stuff, and so it’s really interesting to see how many people we can pull in a city, which can be really intimidating since we’re still a small band, but like- yesterday was really f**king lit, in Asheville, but just beng places we’ve never been before- in the middle- I almost said the middle east (laughter)

WUSC: yeah we were just in Iran (laughter)

Lillie: it’s really nerve wracking to see who might show up, to these places we haven’t headlined. 

Julia and Naomi: it’s been cool, super cool. 

WUSC: okay- we have been kind of non-stop streaming the Die (And Rot) music video, and I have so many questions for you. So many fabulous aesthetic choices are being made- you’ve got this kind of, 1920’s cabaret thing with the makeup, I feel like you pull from all kinds of pop culture- I know you’re a photography major and that Lillie designs y’alls merch, but what was your influence for the video and the general aesthetics of your new album, Nuisance? 

Julia: we were just going for like- wait what were we going for? 

Naomi: kinda spooky-

Lillie (finishing her sentence): kinda witchy, we like to do a western moment so like, kind of pulling some of that. We filmed in Asheville on our friend- well I guess he’s our friend now- this farm that he works at. So I guess it’s kind of gothic, witchy, siren-esque-

Julia: southern gothic-

Lillie: yeah definitely

Naomi: and too, for our album shoot, our makeup artist- who just moved to New York, she’ll be doing our makeup for our show in Brooklyn, we really gave her free reign and let her do what she wanted to do. 

Lillie: and we’ve kind of fallen into this aesthetic- we’re definitely starting to kind of find our style, too? Which, we’re coordinating all of our looks this tour, or trying to-

Namoi: western!

WUSC: denim on denim man. speaking of recent aesthetics, Die (and Rot) specifically, what were some of your musical inspirations for the new album, Nuisance? 

Lillie: we really wanted to try to keep true to our riot grrrl roots, which was still, we still are, technically. But there’s a lot of new metal influences- we wanted to get heavier, but there’s almost a lot of bouncy, almost rapping, you know? Which is very- what would you say that’s inspired by?

Brendan: Kittie, probably. 

Naomi, Lillie and Julia: yeah, for sure. 

Brendan: I feel like Kittie was the one place where we all came together. 

Julia: i feel like we all kind of have different tastes- artists and genres that we lean towards in our own personal listening, and so we all have those influences when we come together. I don’t think any of us really listen to the same music on a daily basis, but we all listen to Kittie. 

Naomi: something about those really chuggy guitar riffs, when they get combined with the way we sing, and with riot grrrl, you get something really unique and different. And I feel like riot grrrl tends to be really bright with the guitar tones too, so when Lillie sings riot grrrl [over more nu-metal influenced tracks] we get something really specific to the Babe Haven sound.  To have something really bright and yelly over something really heavy gives us this different sound. 

Julia: i think our group vocals really tie it all together, like I was saying at that other interview, if you listen to the songs by themselves, like a karaoke version- 

Naomi: you mean instrumental? (BH and WUSC laugh)

Julia: instrumental! That’s the word i’m looking for!-

Lillie: that’s kinda fire, we need karaoke- (laughter)

Julia: exactly- if you listen to the instrumental version of the songs you might not see how different they really are. 

WUSC: I feel like gang vocals are so riot grrrl, and like you were saying, to hear it applied to something so- distorted, early 2000’s new metal is so- loveable, for us. 

Lillie: yeah, we’re trying to find a way to blend everything together that we really like, so it’s not just riotgrrrl, so it really sounds the way it sounds to me, in my head, but at the end of the day it’s up to us, we can do whatever we want. 

Naomi: for sure, we take inspiration almost like, guidelines? 

WUSC: yeah- kind of on that note, are you guys super fond of genres? Do you feel like they’re more helpful, or more restrictive, or what? I feel like that’s been kind of contentious recently. 

Lillie: it has- there’s like this newspaper that called us ‘slam punk femme metal’ (BH and WUSC laugh)

WUSC: I don’t get slam from y’all at all!

Lillie: right! I was like i don’t really f**king care what people wanna call us, there’s just too many subgenres and genres of s**t, and it’s just like- one of our songs could sound like one thing- like Blind Yourself kind of has that shoe-gazey aspect to it, some of it’s hardcore, some of it’s straight metal. 

Julia: yeah, I would hate to be in a super niche genre that we have to stick to- it’s awesome to get to pick and choose. 

Brendan: there’s a quote from that guy from Queens of the Stone Age- what is it? 

Julia: I’ll google it- here, ‘genre is for teenagers and people who work at record stores’ (BH and WUSC laugh)

Lillie: i definitely feel like we’re genre bending, especially when it comes to certain things like hardcore- genres and labels are really important to that group of people. 

Julia: dude sometimes when I post a TikTok I have to include hashtags- I’ll be like riot, metal, hardcore- (BH and WUSC laugh)

Lillie: and there’ll always be somebody in the comments like (gruff voice) ‘this isn’t hardcore!’

(laughter)

WUSC: do those people have jobs? Or-

BH: that is their job (laughter)

WUSC: well, we know y’all have stuff to do, so we’ll just ask you one more question- I just really wanna talk about Final Girl where y’all are chanting ‘finish him!’- it feels like I’m in the movie theater with you guys, which makes me so happy- where did that idea come from, did anybody really advocate for that? 

Julia: that was my idea- and then we all got in the room for the recording and we like, stood away from the mic-

Lillie: yeah we stood on the other side of the room facing the wall- it was awesome. 

Naomi: i think before you [Lillie] came to the idea of it being a final girl of a horror film we were kind of just like- ‘finish him!’ like Mortal Kombat, like ‘knockout!’ things like that-

Lillie: the whole ‘final girl’ thing, that horror trope- let’s just kill men, why not?

Julia: well it’s like, they’re getting chased, and then it turns around and the girl is the one with the ax or whatever. 

WUSC: we love it. Any closing remarks from y’all? 

Naomi: it’s actually crazy that you were talking about the theater- our manager Bree is working on getting that to play at the Alamo, if you know that theater, like, before movies closer to halloween. 

WUSC: like ‘let’s all go to the lobby’ but instead it’s Final Girl, that’s so sick. Anything else, generally, from Babe Haven? 

Lillie: there’s lots of stuff going on right now that we can’t talk about yet, but (laughing) catch us on IG, on TikTok, we have an awesome announcement coming up in November…

If November is too long to wait, we totally understand. A band that can move seamlessly from Opera to Mortal Kombat, coupling their earnest vocals, technical prowess, and dominating stage presence with the wit and warmth of their band members, tells us that Babe Haven is going somewhere, and fast. We recommend you catch them while tickets are still $15, it won’t be that way for long.