Yukon native Danny Davis, frontman and songwriter for Husbands, spoke to Oklahoma Gazette about tour, life as a full-time musician in Oklahoma City and what’s next for the band.
The interview for this story was conducted by phone. Apparently, aligning a regular Monday through Friday work schedule with a full-time musician who lives in Costa Rica for half of the year while also working as a full-time, real-life husband can prove to be difficult. Who would have thought?
And yes, that is how the band got its name. Davis and original band member Wil Norton were the only married guys among all their friends, so it just became a thing.
I got to learn a lot about what the life of a full-time musician looks like in Oklahoma City. Danny said you get to do super-fun and not hard-to-do things. I asked him to paint a picture, to which he said, “Well, I guess yesterday I dug a giant hole in my backyard.”
Davis is converting his garage into a studio to record the next Husbands project after the band’s upcoming tour with Cold War Kids. Construction is but one of the skills listed under the requisites for career musicians nowadays, though.
“Sometimes it looks like talking to people on the phone. Sometimes it’s sitting around, thinking about a song all day. Sometimes it’s going to a studio and recording. It’s practicing with the band. It’s prepping for tour,” Davis said. “It’s a lot of things, and it’s fun. It’s a great time.”
It’s been a busy two years for Husbands between the release of its 2023 album Cuatro and touring, which included appearances on stages at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Governors Ball.
Travel for the band picked up quickly after Davis quit his job as a software engineer to pursue music full-time prior to touring with Goth Babe in 2022, a tour he described as a “dream come true.” It was Husbands’ first time doing a tour of that size and getting in front of huge crowds.
Husbands has since been on several other musical excursions since 2022, both as headliners and support for other national touring artists including Wilderado, Sports and now Cold War Kids.
Though fun, touring is hard. Long drives and general daily life inconsistencies are a part of the difficulties, but playing shows, seeing new places and meeting new people make up for it.
The ability to work well with the folks you’re on tour with is just as important, and fortunately, Davis is surrounded by people he loves. His wife is the band’s tour manager, so that also makes it a bit easier.
“We have a good time when we’re out there. It’s a lot of hard work. We have a lot of long drives and a lot of music we listen to in the van,” Davis said. “It’s kind of a meditative experience in some way. You know, you get out there and do the same thing every day and get into routines a little bit.”
People he loves includes fellow band members. While Davis does practically all of the writing for Husbands, he is accompanied on stage by Alberto Roubert, Ethan Wilcox and Zach Zeller.
Zeller is a musical Swiss army knife who switches between lead guitar, synth and vocals. He also studied music and knows music theory. Davis describes Roubert as “an incredible drummer” which is why he’s involved in several other local projects. Wilcox mans the bass but also plays in other local acts and is “good at coming up with interesting ideas.”
Husbands was originally founded with Wil Norton when the band released its first music on BandCamp in 2013, then another collection of songs in 2015. It wasn’t until the release of its 2020 album After the Gold Rush Party, though, that Davis says they released a “proper record.”
“It was a specific sound we were going for and songs we wrote specifically for it versus piling things together which is what we’d done in the past,” he said.
Big stages
Husbands’ highest streamed song, “Mexico” (8.2 million), is on that album. The song details Davis’ bucket list dream of quitting his job and moving to the beach with his wife, which kind of came true. It’s a dreamy, upbeat indie rock track with catchy synth loops and guitar riffs. The Beach Boys-esque background chorus vocals corroborate the band’s Spotify bio, which reads “landlocked beach pop that sidequests Krautrock, garage rock, and tropicalia.”
“Mexico” isn’t the only location-based song title in Husbands’ catalog, though. There are also “Phoenix,” “Super New China,” “Tijuana” and a few Oklahoma City locales: “I Don’t Wanna Die (at Fassler Hall)” and “Fancy (Nichols Hills).”
“I would say I owe an enormous amount to Oklahoma and Yukon and Oklahoma City and this state in terms of influencing sound,” Davis said. “We have our song “Garth” about growing up in Yukon and being in the shadow of the great Garth Brooks kind of thing. Being from Oklahoma, it’s an interesting place to live, partly because it’s not super interesting, so you sort of make your own adventure in some way.”
The upcoming tour supporting Cold War Kids makes a local stop in Oklahoma City at The Jones Assembly on Nov. 13 and will be the longest tour for Husbands to date. Following the tour, the plan is to write the next album over the holidays in the new studio, the one responsible for the giant hole Davis had to dig in his backyard. Hopefully it’s completed while the band is out on tour.
While the goal with Cuatro was to “write big songs to fill big stages,” the next album is going for something more “groovy and chill.” While “Mexico” serves as a good taster for Husbands’ music, Davis insists more is to come.
“I’m inclined to say that the newest thing I’m working on is the best representation,” he said. “Just ’cause it’s always changing a little bit.”
He hopes to get the other guys more involved in the writing process to accompany the new sound.
Some bands have big messages that are a part of their identity as artists; Rage Against the Machine came to mind in our phone conversation. But for other artists, it’s just not that deep. I asked Davis what he wants people to think of when they think of Husbands.
“We have a song called ‘Try Not to Worry’ and I think that pretty well encapsulates the vibe,” Davis said. “In Husbands’ music, there’s an acknowledgement that there’s a lot of bad things that go on a lot. There’s a lot of good things that go on a lot. I guess, just try not to worry and try to enjoy your life while you’re living it. … Not to say, like, ignore what’s going on; just don’t forget to smell the roses.”
This article appears in Bigger than basketball.