Hasting & Co. Give Your Hangover A Big Smile With A Blast Of A Country Banger, ‘Brunch Drunk’
It’s the anthem for when Saturday night lasts until Sunday afternoon. We’ve got the EXCLUSIVE premiere of Hasting & Co.’s ‘Brunch Drunk,’ and the band — Kate Hasting and Josh Beale — talk about the song, ‘honest’ songwriting and more.
If your Sunday morning doesn’t start until 1:30 pm ET and comes with a Bellini and a side of bacon, Hasting & Co., have written the song for you. The country music act – featuring founding members Kate Hasting and Josh Beale – has penned the soundtrack to every mimosa-soaked piece of avocado toast until the end of time. “Brunch Drunk” is a slice of country joy served sunny-side up. It’s a song packed with witty lyrics written that comes with a side of cheese grits and a shot of honest fun.
“When you’re looking like a hot mess/wearin’ last night’s dress / when you’re making best friends / with the bachelorettes / if your vodka’s chasin’ / your eggs and bacon / if you’re already callin’ in late for Monday / because you’re in the middle of / Sunday Funday!” sings Hasting, right after a killer guitar solo. It’s a song that is guaranteed to leave you grinning, which is incredible considering that both Kate and Josh have experienced some heartbreaking sadness. In the past year, Kate’s parents were in a fatal car accident that killed her father, and Josh recently lost his father to cancer.
Kate and Josh spoke with HollywoodLife about “Brunch Drunk” and how they found smiles after so much sadness. They also christened their music – “Nash Trash” – revealed why Lizzo is such an inspiration and revealed why it’s definitely going to be a “White” Christmas this year.
HollywoodLife: Well, first and foremost, we have to congratulate you. You have written a song that will be played at every Sunday bachelorette gathering and at every drag brunch from here to infinity.
Kate Hasting: Thank God, right? I mean, dreams are coming true.
While listening to this, we can imagine all the drag queens that will be performing this. It’s going to be great.
Josh Beale: That’s music video number two.
KH: Right. Our music video is going to match the song and just ridiculousness. We were just tired of writing sad songs.
This is a very fun song — which is incredible because it starts off with a hangover. Is this based on personal experiences?
KH: Well, I think for at least our co-writers, yes. We aren’t huge partiers. I mean, we stay out really late, but we have just watched the brunch trend take over Nashville and I mean, as much as we aren’t partiers, we’ve all had the hangover on Sunday where you’re like, “The only way to fix this is to drink again.”
JB: The hair of the dog.
KH: And probably because we aren’t partiers, we need this song more.
Do you guys have a signature brunch order when you find yourself “Brunch Drunk?”
JB: Well, I’m in love with any breakfast food period. I mean, French toast, definitely eggs, bacon-
KH: But you’ll probably drink beer with it, right?
JB: Yeah, a beer-mosa.
KH: A beer-mosa?
JB: I’m a little bit white trash.
KHL The band used to … we would come back to my parents’ house if we would play gigs in Ohio when we first started out, and we would just have Bud Light left over from the night. And we were like, “You know what’s really classy is if we mix this Walmart,” what’s their brand, “Sam’s brand orange juice with this really nice Bud Light that we have leftover.” And that’s how we would do it at the farm when we stayed here. So maybe that would be our drink of choice.
It seems like you’ve just invented a drink.
KH: I mean, it’s bad. I’m not going to recommend it to anyone that has money in their pocket on a Sunday. But if you’re broke, that’s your drink.
There was a line in this song, “Hot mess in last night’s dress.” I have to say, the lyrics on this song are really infectious and incredibly witty.
KH: Thank you.
JB: Ever since I started working with Kate, honestly, she’s one of the quicker, more sarcastic, and witty people that I know, and I just have honestly been trying to keep up with her.
KH: But I think for me, especially as a songwriter, I’ve always been really, really, really lyric-driven, and Josh is very sonically driven. So you’re more sonic on the instrumentation, how things are produced, how I would say the meter thing-
JB: Get the vibe of the song, really.
KH: Yeah. And so the ideas, how we write a lot of times is I will just send Josh a lyric nugget, and then he will start the song, and then we like to take it to a girl named Priscilla Block and another girl named Sarah Jones and they seem to be our best writing fit that we found in town right now. We like to call our brand of country Nash Trash –
I love that!
KH: — We’re really, really hyper-focused on the craftsmanship of the Nashville writing style. Country music writing, it’s such a formulaic way of writing, and there are rules you have to follow to be competitive. But at the same time we both grew up on farms, we’re both trashy. I am not afraid to wear my nightgown to lunch. I really don’t care what people think of me. And so it just became a little more authentic to start putting parts of that into the challenge of the well-crafted song.
Would you say that this new track is an honest portrayal of who you guys really are — because you’re breaking out of that regimented songwriting discipline?
KH: Absolutely, absolutely. And we both lost our fathers within a year’s time. And I think the shift that happened for me, I really can’t speak for Josh, is I just really stopped caring as much about what people think about me. I’ve let that go, which is so freeing because you just realize the intensity of how short life is. The original idea behind all of the music we’re releasing is I was going to release a comedy album, and I was like, “Well, if it’s really well written and people are relating to it, why can’t it just be the album album?”
JB: And speaking of relating, out of all the songs we’ve ever written and people will come up to us after a writer’s round or a show, and they’ll be like, “Oh, I related to that one song so much, thank you.” We’ll ask, “Is it American Love,” or something that’s really serious. They’re like, “No. Brunch Drunk is my life.”
KH: And we’re like, “Wow.” I mean it’s funny, we’ve spent so much time writing serious songs, and maybe the lesson learned here is authenticity. I love to be the life of the party. I love people, I love bringing people together, I love parties. I’ve never met one I didn’t like.
After coming off of a pretty bad year, for both of you, this song seems like it was a cathartic release.
KH: Oh yeah. I think everything that we’re releasing from now on, I don’t know. It’s funny, I was thinking back, for me personally, I haven’t had this much fun in the studio or in writing rooms as the next batch of songs that we’re releasing. And again, I think it comes down to cathartic writing and being able to release some of this stuff, but also just letting go of who maybe we thought Nashville wanted us to be and just kind of coming into our own and being willing to let the music do what it does.
KH (cont’d): I think there’s a cool thing going on in country music where country music is sort of taking itself back, at least lyrically. We’re writing, we’re getting honest again, and it felt like maybe for a couple of years we hadn’t done that. And so I think maybe there’s a place for it now and it just ultimately feels right. I think it ultimately again comes back to that idea of when we say Nash Trash, the focus is on the Nash. Nashville has such a way of crafting a song. And so I think if you’re honest to that and you’re really, really, really pushing yourself to write within these boundaries that are country music, wouldn’t you say that in its own you can almost write anything you want as long as you figure out how to write it within those four walls.
JB: Be as relatable as possible but-
KH: Yeah, but be willing to honor the craftsmanship: the hook, everything in the verse, leading back to the chorus. I think that gives you some wiggle room as far as content, but it really is a challenge to write within the parameters of great, great writers that came before you, sort of set the stage for it. So I think there’s a balance, and I think Brad Paisley‘s a great example of someone that can really check you for ticks and then turn around and write a million songs for his wife that are also super relatable and chart worthy. So yeah, I think there’s some wiggle room as long as you’re being honest.
Because of this honesty with your fans, do you think this allows you to bring in different influences? “well, on this song, we’ll bring in a bit of hard rock, and over there, perhaps a dance beat!”
JB: Absolutely, and I think we both love country first and foremost, but we have multiple influences.
KH: I think we’ve always talked about the lyric essentially now, it’s really hard to say what country is. It’s become a little bit genre-less in the sense of what you can do on a track. You can have really crazy solos, you can have a really cool track whereas maybe 10 to 15 years ago, it wasn’t as much of that. So now I think the lyric is what ultimately is what is going to bind people back to country.
JB: I think country music has also always kind of had the finger on the pulse of — country music’s gone worldwide at this point. It’s becoming bigger in the UK and Australia, but it’s always been a very uniquely American genre. And I feel like it’s always had its finger on the pulse of where America was. And it’s always been changing just like everything else. But at one point it was very Western, very cowboys, and not that it isn’t that or can’t be that still, but America as a country has changed and so it wouldn’t be authentic to not mirror that. So genre-wise, I feel like pulling from different influences serves that purpose too.
Speaking of being honest and fun, Instagram is pretty hilarious, especially the memes of you guys.
JB: Uh-huh (affirmative).
KH: [laughing] What, are you referring to the SpongeBob? [laughing] I just think it’s like … I want to reference someone from a different genre, but I think there’s something so incredible happening with the artist Lizzo because essentially what we’re finding continually is people want to have fun, and they want to feel good.
KH: And it’s okay to write the breakup song because that gets people through a breakup. It’s okay to write the love song because people fall in love every day, but that isn’t always what’s going on. There are also people dying. There are also losses. You lose your job, you lose your car. I mean, my God, there is war all over.
And so I think it’s important to write the sad songs, the deep songs, but I think it’s just as important, and America is continually saying, “We want the fun song.” And just because they’re a fun song doesn’t mean they have to be any less well-crafted or any less honest. But I think you’re watching the phenomenon of ultimately the public speaking out with what they want. I mean, I don’t know the exact thing on the “Truth Hurts” song, but I know that it took a really long time to do what it did.
Yeah, it’s two years old, and suddenly it’s the biggest thing ever.
KH: Right. And so it’s less about her and the song as it is about … It was very eye-opening to me because I think the people are very clearly telling the record industry what they want, and sometimes maybe that’s not heard.
What’s next after this? A new EP, an album? Are you going to get some avocado toast?
JB: Yeah. We’re in the studio recording a few songs right now that we’ll release one after the other over the next few months of the year.
KH: Yeah, so we’ll release this track now. We’ll release a Christmas song. Should we tell him the name of it?
JB: Sure.
KH: It’s “Here Come White Claws.” So it’s sort of just, which will be obviously a parody on “Here Comes Santa Claus,” but everyone in our friend group and fan group really like White Claws, which is the phenomenon sweeping the country much like Santa.
You guys are going to be SO popular in Brooklyn!
KH: But after the Christmas holidays, February 1st, we’ll release the video to “Brunch Drunk,” which is, I promise you, equally as trashy as the song.
JB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Yeah, but it’s my kind of trashy, so I’m looking forward to it.
KH: We were meant to be friends. This friendship has been brewing.
We’ll make sure to have a couple of Bloody Marys for you guys when you come up here.
KH: Oh, we’re coming.
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This utterly delightful interview has been edited. “Brunch Drunk” hits all major streaming services on Oct. 25.