Cry Baby On New York City, Live Music and Taking Risks On ‘Singing For You’
Photo by Kyler Vollmar / Courtesy of the artist
Emerging alternative rock band Cry Baby blends specific musical eras, creating a sound that’s reminiscent of mid 1990s rock and early aughts pop punk. Released this September, the Charleston band’s latest single, “Singing For You,” skillfully intertwines their signature sound with contemporary influences.
“Singing For You” wrestles with the idea that you should never change how you present yourself to be something for someone else — a concept that may seem obvious, but is very difficult to grasp and truly embody. This theme is delivered loudly and emotionally, creating a memorable track.
Over Zoom, I chatted with Cry Baby’s bassist, Joey Haines, about the band’s new music, upcoming headlining tour with Bears In Trees, the band’s love of performing live, and working on breaking into the industry and having a blast while doing it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Bianca Vasile: I know you’re from Charleston, South Carolina. Can you tell me more about where you guys met and how you started releasing music together?
Joey Haines: We all went to school in Charleston. When we first started up, we were just kind of playing around town and having fun. And then Carter, who's our guitarist, he wasn't even in the band yet. He was in high school at the time. Our first show was a house show, and Bristol Maroney was on the show, too, which was really funny, because like — look at where they are now! Slowly, we ended up acquiring our drummer, Matt. And then our singer left the band. And we were like, what are we going to do? Then we found our singer, Jamie, because Carter had a crush on her in his acapella group.
It was like, random friends that half-knew each other and slowly came together to do this thing.
I listened to your new single, “Singing For You,” and loved the style of it. Is there a distinct sound that you’re trying to convey?
Yeah. A lot of our older music was really 80s and 90s inspired. I think with “Singing for You” and all the songs in this record, we incorporate that. We took that nostalgia and brought it into this more modern era. It wasn’t just, “they made a song that sounded like the 90s,” or something. It was its own thing.
How do you hope listeners feel when they play this song?
With this rock thing, we wanted people to be pleasantly surprised because this was totally something we didn't do before. Although our live shows felt like a rock show, because we were all really jumping around and having a good time. But the music had never really reflected that. We were hoping people would be really wanting to go out in a mosh pit and jump around, and really love the lyrics.
You said “Singing For You” is about stopping being something for someone else. Can you tell me more about this?
I guess, being in a band, you're always trying to think of what people want, or want you to be. When we were first trying to put together new songs for this record, we were really confused about what it sounded like. All of a sudden, this rock thing started happening. And at first, we were kind of timid. Eventually, as we started writing, all the songs started coming together as really fun alternative rock. With “Singing For You,” we thought, “Oh, we're actually going for this thing.”
Some people might not like it, some people might really like it. But either way, like, we're gonna do it for ourselves. We're gonna have to take that risk in it. In one year, as a small band, it can feel like: if we make one wrong move, maybe it’ll set us back a whole year or something. If you rock it, and people fall off, it's hard not to think, what if it all dries up? You know, what if people stop being into it?
Is there a musician or style of music that inspires you?
When we started, a lot of it was like pop and R&B music. Right now, it’s more like Avril Lavigne and Sheryl Crow, and Soccer Mommy too, who have been a really big influence on our music creation. There's also some artists in New York that are really amazing, that I've been seeing around, and have been really inspiring to me.
You’re planning on releasing a new album in 2023. What themes are you hoping to explore in your album?
We've been able to explore a new sound, and say things that we never did in the past with this record. We feel like we carved out our own sound a little bit more. Before, we were just having fun writing pop songs. But this record actually talks about our current lives, our move, our band, relationships, money. Everything. It’s a snapshot of what it's like to be touring and trying to gain steam.
It’s about having to figure out — how the hell do I do this? It unintentionally ended up being a really cool time capsule of what our lives have been like.
Something I really love is your music video’s direction and creativity. I understand that your most recent video was directed by Gabe Ruckus. Can you tell me more about the filming process and the inspiration behind the video?
Yeah, Gabe is awesome. He is our homie. He ended up moving to New York, right as I did. I loved his work with this band very early. We met up and just kind of hit it off. We were like, “We have these songs coming up, we want to do videos, and we think you're awesome. I totally trust you.”
When we were filming “Singing For You,” we did it in two days and just ran all around New York. It was great. Because at that point, like I had already been friends with him. We were all in it together trying to make this thing happen. Everything you see in the video is pretty much places that we're actually hanging out all the time.
You’re going on tour with Bears In Trees in 2023. What are you hoping that your live shows capture? How is live music important to you?
I feel like a lot of bands just want to put music on the internet, and they don't really like touring or playing shows. But for us, I feel like that's what it's always been about. It’s why we do all this stuff. I like the energy of seeing a room of people jumping up and down, and going back and forth, and dancing, and singing the lyrics back. It’s so rewarding. It's so cool. We give a lot of ourselves, physically, in performances. We go all out, sweating, and you feel really accomplished. Like, I gave everything I had and I made this music that we worked really hard on in our bedrooms. We made it come to life here in front of us. We love that shit.
It’s that feeling of community, right?
That is exactly why we want to do it. We do all this thing so that we can get back out there and hang out with people. That's the most rewarding part of it all.
It is obviously a difficult thing to break in the industry as a young band. You guys just moved to New York — a very musical and artistic city — which I'm sure heightens these creative feelings. Can you describe what this process has been like? How has your move had an impact on your growth in the industry?
Absolutely. So, I moved here in January. I was kind of the first to do it. We started this new record in Charleston, but the majority of it has been done up here. The first weeks getting up here, seeing and constantly being reminded, like, oh my god, everyone up here dresses really cool. And everyone's music is super cutting edge. And it's this constant pushing yourself to be like, damn, I'm lame, and I gotta catch up. So there's been a ton of moments where I'll be out at a show or I'll just be walking around town and I'll see someone and think, “I never thought about doing that. That is so cool.” And then that will totally fuel me.
I've also been to a ton of shows because people are, you know, always coming through here. And DJ culture is so huge out in New York. Electronic music in general is so huge here. And I feel like that has super impacted our music and right now we're moving into a really fun, exciting, alternative rock world and our latest single definitely shows that. I feel like all the digital, DJ and dance stuff is really influencing the record and making it kind of glitchy and weird. And all of that totally came from just going out and seeing people perform and play.
What musical direction do you see your band going in? Do you have any big dreams in terms of the band's growth?
I feel like on the touring end, we always want to do more, we want to go out for longer stretches, we want to go with bands that really inspire us that we like. We want to get on some bigger tours and go back out to the West Coast. We want to do the UK. We're getting to do Canada this year, which [is] sweet and, music-wise, we really want to put out a record that we're proud of and have people connect with it and have that reflected on the internet. We'd love to get our music to as many people as we can. Part of that is just going with the flow and seeing what works. But yeah, definitely we just want to go bigger and bigger and bigger, basically.
We're really excited about this upcoming tour with Bears In Trees. We're excited to go play some of this new music too. If anyone is seeing this that hasn't checked us out: Let's dance and have a good time!
Check out Cry Baby’s music and find them on social media here. Their new single, “You Never Change,” comes out on November 11.