TEARAWAY MAG
In Conversation with Club Ruby
Read article on Tearaway website here
Club Ruby is an Auckland-based band, who this week have released their first ever single BADA. Premiering it with a concert at the Wine Cellar on K Road this past Friday, this indie five-piece are on a mission to bring a fresh, exciting perspective to the music scene with catchy, relatable lyrics and stardom in their sights.
Hey guys! Can I get you to introduce yourselves?
J: Ok, I’m Jade a.k.a. Club Ruby President Ruby, which is my stage name. I’m currently in my last year of studying music and commerce in New Zealand, but I’m actually from Virginia in the US. I’m also a radio DJ on 95bFM at the moment for the Monday Morning Glory show.
H: I’m Hon a.k.a Vice President Hon. Let’s see, I’m pretty much Kiwi since I came here when I was two, I came here from Thailand. I studied music at Auckland Uni, I did the Jazz performance degree and that’s where I met Jade.
How are you guys feeling about this new single release next week? Can you tell me a little bit about it?
J: Very, very excited! It’s the first music that I’ll ever release into the world. Although a lot of band members have their own projects that they’ve already released songs under, it’s my first thing. I wrote the song brackets, ‘you’re born alone and you die alone and that’s good enough for me so I hope it’s good enough for you too’ and it was written with one of my best friends, Reuben Hudson. He studied pop music as well in my year and we wrote a bunch of songs together.
Most of our songs, this one included, just start out with Reuben and I having a conversation about life. I’m very excited, this is the first band I’ve been in where we’ve actually been able to record and release something. Bands are so hard to maintain, when Reuben left, I was like, do we need to get another lead singer that also plays guitar or do I take over as more of the leader? And that was, it actually worked out because now we have our gimmick where I’m like the club president and then the vice president and maybe the club members can change around if I maintain being the president.
What’s your creative process like?
J: There are several different processes that have come out of being in a band. The first one is I get emo and I write songs by myself in my room at 3AM. Another process that has come out of this is the Reuben process where you just have a conversation and it turns into a song basically. And then the third one that we’ve been doing more so now is I’ll start writing a song, and Hon and I have gotten into the habit of singing everything that we do throughout daily life. So I feel like we’re always having mini jams even in the car or whatever. And then sometimes we’ll pick up an instrument and finish the jam and be like that one was actually catchy.
Hon is also really good at adding the instruments so I feel like our brainwaves kind of have already produced it in our heads. Now it’s like when we choose the jam it comes out really fast and we don’t even have to finish it because the band is so used to playing together that we can do a demo with guitar and vocals, send that off to the group chat and show up to a rehearsal and they’ve already written parts for it because they’re all music alumni.
How did you guys get your start in music?
H: I got started in music pretty late actually, at age 16 when I thought about getting into music and saw a guitar, I thought eh, and then saw a bass and thought that looked cool. It just became the perfect thing for when I didn’t want to stay home, like I’ve got band practice. [Hon has actually been in 13 bands!]
J: I’ve always been singing ever since I was a baby, which is cliche. My Mum was like I got this *NSYNC album and you were singing that in the back seat at two years old. I’ve always loved music, I did all the musicals at school, in choir and then I started bands when I was 15-16. I think it was a great way to express my emotions – there were no role models for me that I could see in acting or music really so at one point I was like ‘I need to be my own representation’.
If you could collaborate with other artists, who would you guys choose to collaborate with?
J: A stretch goal is Beabadoobee. She’s amazing and I really like her aesthetic as well. I feel like we’ve gotten a little inspiration from the scribbly drawings of her covers and that kind of thing.
H: Origami Angel. Anime, rock music!
J: NZ band, shout out to Lost Vessels, they sound Midwest emo.
What’s coming up following this new single and release show?
J: We’re releasing our next single Weekends and we have locked in our single release show for that, which is gonna be on June 30th also at the Wine Cellar. We’re calling the show ADHDiaries and all of our leads are gonna be diagnosed with ADHD and we’re gonna drop a podcast on the same day that is all of us talking about having ADHD and being freelance musicians at the same time.