I’ve said it countless times before, but I’ll say it again - we are so intensely lucky to be able to do what we do. We are so lucky to have met the people that we have met through this immensely weird, grossly affectionate, always amazing community that Philly music calls home. Recently, Isaac Clark and Josh Glauser of Honeytiger have become two of our favorite friendships that have come out of this journey, and after seeing them play a handful of times, we decided it was finally time to hear their story. This electric duo has been around for about three years now, and the mark they’ve left on the scene is pretty hard to miss.

Isaac and I chatted over email, because, while I love in-person interviews, sometimes it’s easier to just let the subject sit down and really think about their answers without having the pressure of a vocal response pushing them to say something before they’re ready. Isaac is a really cool articulate guy, and I didn’t edit down his answers at all. He does all the talking, and it’s one of the most insightful interviews I’ve had the pleasure of writing in a long time.

Tell us about Honeytiger’s beginning?

Isaac Clark: Honeytiger started sometime in 2015 I think... We don't do a very good job at keeping track of these kinds of things to be honest. I went to high school with Josh's longtime partner Katie as well as our mutual friend Eric, but Josh and I only met a few years ago, a few years after college. Eric casually mentioned that Josh was a drummer and I was looking to pursue music again in some way and from the first time we played together, we pretty much knew that we were going to be in a band together. It seemed like the luckiest thing because we really didn't know each other and we connected musically right away. It was easy from the start.

Where did your awesome band name come from?

Isaac Clark: We actually were originally called Swimmer, which came about when we asked that same friend, Eric, to name us and we gave him a deadline. So at midnight on New Year's Eve 2015 he texted us the name Swimmer, which we eventually released [our 2016 album] Half Clean under, but Spotify kept putting us in other people's artist profiles and putting other artists' music on ours and we decided to change our name because of that and because how many "swimmer" and "swim" related bands there were. There are a lot!

We even have to put electric tape over our CD packages where it says Swimmer and write in Honeytiger. DIY-chic I guess? From that experience we wanted to make sure we had a name that wouldn't get confused with a bunch of other bands and we felt like already having Half Clean (and more music), we had a better sense of who we were to name ourselves. As a two-piece and in our songwriting musically and lyrically we felt there was this cool dichotomy between the rockier, punchier, harsher verses and the clearing-out falsetto-led choruses that we really identified with and wanted our name to reflect that in some way.

Honeytiger provides that dichotomous theme, looks cool, and we hated it the least of the options. There's a lot of self-loathing involved in naming your own band because everything seems contrived and fake or self-glorifying, but people have really taken to Honeytiger in a positive way which helps reassure us it was the right move.

Who are you as individuals? What should we know about you outside the band?

Isaac Clark: Josh and I both grew up just outside of Philly in neighboring suburbs. We went to “rival” high schools and were even in the same grade, but we didn’t know each other. I went to University of Michigan and got my BBA from Ross School of Business there. At this point, I'm the marketing manager for an ecommerce company out near Lansdale, but I live in Sooouuuth Phillllly babbyy. Josh went to Temple University and does some fancy finance thing at this big company that I won’t name for extremely top secret privacy reasons I’ve already said too much. All I know is that he wears slacks and button-type shirts with collars to work.

What inspired the first two Honeytiger EPs?

Isaac Clark: We took a weird ass backwards route with Honeytiger in regards to our recordings. We immediately had some songs I'd written acoustically that we could re-work when we started up Honeytiger. We quickly wrote some more and recorded Half Clean in Josh's parents' basement with my brother, Jamie Clark, before we ever played any shows or really knew who we were. Half Clean kind of felt all over the place for us and we legitimately did not have a plan with it; we just recorded all the songs we had written and made CDs. I think when it comes down to it, Half Clean was about us figuring out our dichotomous nature (you can hear that chorus changeup in almost every song on the record) and unintentionally was held together lyrically by the theme of fucking up in love.

After Half Clean we played what felt like a billion shows in Philly and decided to actually get in a studio to record the next batch of songs for the EP that we eventually named Tangerine. That record had a darker and heavier vibe, which looking back isn't surprising after what our country collectively went through. Now that we're removed from the songwriting process of Tangerine, I view it as a glimpse into how I myself, or we as people self-medicated through our American apostasy. A mass disillusion event took place throughout the 2016 primaries and general election and for us, it turned out a Honeytiger record that was darker than we had intended. I think it showed us that our music draws deeply from our current emotions and we can't or maybe don't want to change that. Music is an outlet for us and if we tried to manufacture songs or “vibes” we lose some of our authenticity, which in the current state of the music industry, Josh and I both value. We try to make sure that the music we put on records, we're able to play live with just the two of us without it feeling empty. We think our live show should be better than our recorded music because music is naturally live, it's only technology that has allowed us to listen to any music that isn't in fact live. This was a tangent.

We heard some killer new tracks at The Foundry the other week when you opened for The Academic. What are you working on right now?

Isaac Clark: We were just in the studio this past weekend at Retro City with Andy Clarke who we worked with to record Tangerine as well. The dude has a killer ear and is fun to be around. We also brought my brother Jamie Clark and our friend Dan Taney in who make our lives in the studio so much easier with their brains and ears and hands and musical and technical know-how. When we did Tangerine we jammed five songs into three days and burned ourselves out and we really wanted to learn from some of those mistakes. So we put down two songs, a single and a b-side in the same time we did all of Tangerine. You'll be hearing those songs in the next couple months! I won't reveal too much about them, but we think it's easily the best recording Honeytiger has ever done. We're still in the mixing stage so we aren't sure who will be mastering these bad boys. The only definitive upcoming music from us is these two songs, but we’ve got more new music and will be writing to hopefully get more than that released in 2018.

What are your favorite places to play in Philadelphia?

Isaac Clark: Philadelphia is such an amazing music city right now. We are so lucky that we could start a band and start playing shows all over the city at cool spots; it’s all right here at a musicians disposal in Philly. We love that we're able to play in packed, sweaty, south philly DIY basements, bars with legit stages and sound equipment, as well as specific music venues built for it. There are so many great ones, but to name a few that we've had the most memorable times at are Tralfamadore (that welcoming south philly basement where dreams come true) and The Greenhouse in West Philly, Ortlieb's and Boot & Saddle are top notch bar/venues that treat musicians well and are great rooms to play in. And our recent show at The Foundry was really special. There are so many more amazing spots too. I highly encourage people to go to random shows at these places and discover new music in a live way! It’s so much more meaningful to see and hear the music being made live and experience it with friends or strangers lost in the music. But then again, I don’t have to explain to you what a concert is ;)

If you've never seen this duo in action - you must. From bars to basements to big stages, these guys bring the vibe like no other. The amount of talent the two of them have is really refreshing, because that bond that they share is so evident while they're playing. It's a whole different experience when a band is completely attuned to each other, and that's what you get with Honeytiger.

Honeytiger on: What it means to be genuine