Roll of the Dice: 10 questions with HAHA

Maria Taylor (Azure Ray) and Mike Bloom (Jenny Lewis, Julian Casablancas, Richard Edwards) have announced a new project together, known as HAHA. With the release of the debut single, “Only Gets Better,” on Taylor’s own Flower Moon Records, the duo have announced their arrival in a major way. As a long time fan of each of their individual works, I was over the moon to participate in a Roll of the Dice interview with both members of HAHA.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on this new project! What can you tell our readers about HAHA and how and why you two came together?

Mike: Thank you very much!  Well, we’ve been circling each other’s orbits for many years, and had this mutually unbeknownst respect and admiration for each other’s work, as well as a long-standing, if somewhat peripheral, friendship.  One that involved the occasional drink from the other’s wine collection, or a dollop of hummus on a cracker from the other’s pantry.   Then one day, a simple and innocent proposition of a song.  It was Maria who asked if I’d be interested in trying something.  It was I who jumped at the chance.  I sent her a batch of half baked ideas I was excited about but wasn’t sure what to do with.  A couple of weeks of tumbleweeds and crickets later, the lightning bolt struck and then we were off to the races.  Maria has such a wonderful and unexpected sense of melody and song, and we realized early on that our sensibilities melded in this interesting way, and that maybe our various skill sets served as worthy foils for one another.  An exciting time, indeed, making something that was familiar and super satisfying to us both and I think we sort of resurrected a latent love of a certain kind of sound and energy in each other..

You’ve both been in this scene for a while, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?

Maria: I have a few regrets, but 2 that stand out in my memory are these: Once when I was 31 years old, I was on a long 6 week tour with our best friends (Whispertown 2000) traveling with us in a big 15 passenger van with a trailer attached. It was a non-stop party from the moment we woke to the moment we passed out in our hotel room (crammed with all of us.)  We would usually forfeit showers and sleep to keep the fun everlasting, so rides in the van were where lots of us got our tiny bit of rest. I remember rolling into a big city and our tour manager told us we had an afternoon performance at a radio station. I assumed it was just an audio taping since it was a radio station… so I rolled out of the van, just waking after an all nighter and in the same clothes I’d had on for days.  After we set up and were about to start playing, I saw the cameras set up around me. Turns out it was a very popular intimate concert series that I love…  I would definitely turn back the clock and do that differently, if I could. I would have gotten a little more sleep, changed clothes and maybe even washed my face AND put on some fresh makeup;)
Now that the memory wheels are spinning, there were also a few Morning Becomes Eclectic live performances where we stayed up all night the night before. Load in was always at 7am and always after an LA show. In hindsight I would have had those scheduled after a day off!!

Both of you have been part of such influential acts and mean so much to so many of us. Does the high bar you’ve set for yourselves in the past help, hinder or affect your creativity today and to what extent?

Mike:  Well, that’s very kind of you to say. I hadn’t really thought of it that way. If I may speak for us both, I think the only real bar we set for ourselves is making sure the thing we’re focused on is the best possible version of itself.  That’s always the trick, right?  Knowing when you’re moving in the right direction and, more so, sensing when the carving is done and the work complete. Sometimes it’s overtly obvious, and other times it’s a struggle and seems like you’re circling the drain until something happens, like a light bulb showing you the path. Then it’s just kind of getting out of your own way.  But in terms of how whatever we’ve done in the past affects our process now, I’d have to say it’s all, ultimately, a force for good.  The wild times, the seemingly endless lulls, the miles logged, the deep and familial friendships, the successes and failures of relationships and, of course, of the music itself…these are the ingredients in the soup. I suppose it’s all part of growing and learning, and it feeds the work forward.

How does songwriting in HAHA differ from some of the previous acts you’ve performed with?

Maria: I very rarely write with other people. Actually, almost never. I’ve had friends help me when I get stuck with lyrics, but typically if I have ever tried to sit down to write a song with someone, I just go blank. I remember once ( years ago) my friend Andy and I smoked a bunch of pot and sat together on the floor with a pen and paper. After about 4 hours we decided to share our written thoughts and I think I had a total of 3 words on the page. Haha. I just freeze up and draw a big blank. Writing songs with Mike is the first time I don’t feel nervous sending a melody sung really poorly on my phone with lyrics that I dreamt up or even just mumbles that aren’t words. Mike is such an amazing producer so when he sends me a piece of music, it’s already so realized that it instantly sparks ideas. The first few months we started writing together, I was literally waking up at 3 am, setting up my recording gear and whispering ideas ( so that I didn’t wake up my sleeping family) to send to Mike. We were constantly sending ideas back and forth and It was truly unlike any musical relationship I’ve ever had. We have known each other for more than 20 years and I can’t believe we never really worked together until now.  Better late than never 🙂

What’s the state of the scene from your point of view?  We are living in a “just deal with COVID” world and everything about this timeline is some level of completely fucked.  What impact, if any, do the current cultural and political landscapes have on the two of you and your music?

Mike: Instinctively, I wanna say that it’s liberating. As deep and dark as things got, as they currently are, and as any prognosis of the future purports, there is something that shakes you about it all. Something that grabs you by the throat, throws you against the wall, slaps you a few times, and commands you to wake up. There is a hell of a lot to be frightened of and confounded by, on a level that is almost too much to think about or focus on. The flip side of that, though, is that the model is so broken and open-ended that it makes less and less sense to hold on to the things you may have previously identified with so hard. The word surrender comes to mind..

Between the two of you, there’s been a lot of time spent in some of the indie music hotbeds (Athens, GA; Omaha, NE; LA, etc).  How have those locales played into your music over the years?  What is it about those cities that nurture innovation and musical brilliance?

Maria:  The first time I played a show and spent time in Athens, I felt a distinct difference in the music scene there. There was such a supportive music collective in this tiny college town. Every band was rooting for each other and the success of one band only helped the others. Everyone was building each other up and it was truly beautiful.  Soon I moved to this college town and realized immediately how important this move was to my inspiration and creative output.  I traveled so much during those years… probably around 8 months out of the year.  It wasn’t until we started playing with Omaha Bands and spending time there that I felt that same exact feeling once again… But this time it was slightly different.  It was a record label that was the glue holding these bands together, not the city itself. We fell in love with the people, the bands, the music and the friendships…so after living in Athens for 6 years, we (Azure Ray) moved to Omaha, Nebraska and released many records with Saddle Creek Records.  This was around the time I met Mike. Rilo Kiley put out a record with Saddle Creek and Mike was playing with them at the time. Fast forward twenty years and Mike and I have found ourselves 7 minutes away from each other on the eastside of Los Angeles…. And I’m feeling more inspired than ever:) 

One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?

Mike: Hmm. To cite anything here is to necessarily leave out a million other things, but I’ll rattle off a few people whose current writing and voices feel close to my heart for various reasons: Richard Edwards, Weyes Blood, Elvis Presley.  

What can we expect from HAHA this year and further in the future?

Maria: Mike and I have been working on an EP for several months now.  We felt like “Only Get’s Better” was such a fun summer single and it was the first one we wrote together so we decided to release it as we finish up the rest of the EP. ( and we’re real close:) 
And after that……..Who really ever knows, but I imagine more music in our future 🙂

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Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.