Hot Mondy is a rising Canadian band of 5 friends. The members are Matt Rhind at lead vocals, Travis Flint with rhythm guitar and vocals, Troy Arseneault on lead guitar, Mat Budreski on acoustic guitar and backgrounds, and Matt Brannon with bass and backgrounds. The five friends formed instant chemistry pushing them to create gems. We’ve had the chance to chat with them about their new release, “Desert Moonlight,” as well as their creative process, upcoming projects, and more!
We loved your new single, “Desert Moonlight”. Can you share with us some of the pandemic-related challenges you’ve faced during the recording process?
The main challenges related to travel logistics and distance. Our producer is based in Toronto, we’re in Halifax, so it took a great deal of ingenuity to finish the EP. But it also informed some interesting choices as we built upon the bed tracks we made at Revolution Recording in Toronto a week before the pandemic hit.
What is the message and vision behind “Desert Moonlight”?
It’s definitely more of a visual story than a message-heavy one. We are lovers of music, film and art so we wrote this as a bit of an homage to 70s driving movies, with a splash of Tarantino and a general love of pulpy entertainment.
Tell us more about how the creative process takes place between the 5 band members.
We have an easy chemistry between the 5 of us, we’re all very different so we don’t have a lot of friction because two guys are fighting over territory within the creative process or what have you. We have clear roles, clear strengths and weaknesses and there’s no ego when it comes to bringing an idea to life. We throw a ton of stuff away and believe in the notion of “best ideas wins always”.
Who are some of the artists that inspire you?
Depends who you ask in the band, but bands that guys in our group care about are: Dire Straits, Merle Haggard, Bahamas, Steely Dan, Beatles, Jason Isbell, GnR, Tom Petty, The Meters, Tragically Hip, JJ Cale….and many more.
How would you describe your unique style?
Unique. Okay that was lazy, we want music that is soulful and relatable narratively or emotively, but we don’t want to pick the low hanging fruit. So we always explore ways of subverting the big idea, with interesting rhythms, maybe an unexpected music interlude, instrumentation etc. Our producer after our first prepro said “Know what I love about you guys? I have absolutely no idea who you sound like”. We love that too.
What’s next for Hot Mondy?
Full length album is nearly done and coming out in early 2022 after the remainder of this EP is released. We have a studio taping at the end of October which will be really amazing, we’re doing the 6 songs off the EP, 2 off the next album and will be creating a lot of documentary style content to bake inside of it.
Thank You!
