[Photo courtesy of Alice Falkowski]

By Martin Bradesca, Local Music Coordinator

Guy Music is an alternative slacker rock band based in Athens, Ohio. Recently, they took part in the Battle of the Greens, and were the victors in ACRN’s annual Battle of the Bands. The band consists of lead singer and guitarist Henry Cohen, lead guitarist Finn Shannon, drummer Miles Weaver and bassist Matthias Weaver. I was able to speak with them before their victory about their performance and plans for the future.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]

Martin Bradesca (MB): I see your earliest goes back to 2023. Have you guys been around that long or are you a new band?

Henry Cohen (HC): It started with me writing in high school, but the band started in like September.

Miles Weaver (MIW): Henry was writing songs solo. We had nothing to do with that, and then we formed this band. We’ve learned our own parts.

MB: What year are you guys?

HC: Me and Finn are freshmen, and then the brothers are juniors.

MIW: It’s kind of just like tongue in cheek, pop rock to loser rock. So there’s a humor element, but then there’s also some heaviness and some seriousness with how we actually go about creating the songs.

MB: How are you guys feeling playing at the Union for the first time? 

MIW: For three out of four of us, it’s our first time playing at the Union. 

HC: I mean you, you’ve played there with Safezonefire right? 

MIW: Yeah, I drummed in other bands, and we would play around here and elsewhere. I think everything as of now has been kind of building to this, it’s pretty significant. It’s the first time we can reach a wider audience.

Finn Shannon (FS): Yeah, I definitely think that this is probably the best ploy to get us out there, and even if we don’t win tonight, there’s great bands playing. I think that it’s definitely going to get people to notice us and therefore come to our shows if they like us. We have a very explosive energy, and I think that people are going to appreciate that.

MB: You guys are talking about how you think this could bring you to a wider audience for your future shows. So what do you guys have planned for the rest of this semester and the future afterwards?

HC: We have a show at Side Bar with Learner, I believe, coming up in December. We have about two shows at Donkey in January, and that’s all we’ve got planned. But we’re gonna try and get out there as much as possible.

MB: So my last question, this is pretty open ended, what else besides music, Cardi B and Maroon 5 inspires you guys and makes you get up out of bed every morning?

FS: I’ll go first. I think music for a lot of my life was this thin. Music for a lot of my life was kind of all I had. And being in bands and writing songs was how I express my shit. So I think just having that again is very great.

MIW: As a drummer, I really have not focused much on top or more like just standard songwriting where you’re not being super flashy. I have experience being flashy, but I don’t have a lot of experience being tight. So I’ve really enjoyed getting into old punk groove records, fusion, James Brown, just like some of the early jazz dudes, and that’s been outside practicing these songs and working on groove drum chops.

Matthias Weaver (MW): I’ve never played in a band or played other people’s music and I love these guys. This has just been so fun to try and help as much as I can creating, I don’t know, work on my bass playing, and just trying to make good music

HC: I’m just very thankful for anyone who puts time into me as a person or like me creatively, because whatever you put your time into is what you value. I’m really thankful for everyone who does that, and I’m really thankful to these three for being really talented musicians, really funny guys and very genuine people. They’re some of the most genuine people I’ve met, and I don’t really meet that many people who are like that, so it’s really inspiring. From a music standpoint, yeah, I don’t know. I think whoever makes me jealous at that moment.

MB: Do you have any final messages to share?

MIW: We just had recording sessions, so music is going to be coming out sooner or later. I hope people continue to look out for our shows and come to them and check us out.