Stay Homas: "You spend years working on it ... and in the end you succeed playing with a scrubbing bucket"

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Stay Homas . Rai Benet, Klaus Stroink and Guillem Boltó secluded themselves in their Barcelona flat as three young men looking for a living in music and will leave with a contract with Sony, a concert in the Apolo room with tickets sold out in 15 minutes, collaborations with Pablo Alborán and Michael Bublé covering them. This has been the phenomenon of his confination songs from the terrace and with a scrub bucket as an emblem.

P. From any crisis there is someone who benefits, the surprising thing is that there are three kids who share a flat in Barcelona and not some evil genius.

Guillem : You see. It has not given us time to rationalize it, this is freaking out and little else. We thought it was going to be a couple of weeks spending a couple of Play games and, suddenly, the madness.

Q. How did the idea of ​​composing and recording a daily song about confinement come up?

Rai : The first day of the confinement we were having a vermouth on the terrace and we took the guitar, we sang a little ... It is something we used to do before to hang out, the only difference is that we decided to post it on Instagram. The colleagues were funny, it was cool and the next day we did another one, which already got out of hand. Everything went wild to infinity.

Q. And did you already see that this could become profitable?

Klaus: There was not a specific day when we made a decision, it dragged us along as everything took on a very crazy dimension. Every day a little more and a little more. One song was shared by an influencer , the next went viral in America ... At the end of the first week we decided to create a Stay Homas Instagram account, because we were pulling our personals, and in one week we had 100,000 followers (already They go for 400,000), Michael Bublé covered us, the New Yorker interviewed us . .. And since we were already in the maelstrom of uploading a new topic every day, we didn't even have time to think about what was happening. Almost better.

You had been fighting for years to live off music, playing in groups in Barcelona, ​​and suddenly, in two days, you are a worldwide phenomenon and Sony signs you for what started as a joke. Deep down, it almost rages.

G: It is true. We honestly don't know how to justify this success. We don't know how many years we have been working on it, recording discs, trying to make quality music, that sounds good, studying a career ... And suddenly you succeed with some mobile videos playing with a scrubbing bucket and you throw everything else on the floor. The truth is that it is the host, but, hey, welcome.

K: I think, or want to believe, that in these songs our studies and our previous preparation are reflected, that it was not in vain to study from the age of 8 to 25. But you do think "damn, this is chance". It's curious. But, well, the important thing is to reach people and transmit beyond whether a song is well recorded or not. That is what has impacted us the most. We make songs for fun, we vomit what we feel in this situation and that can more than have a wonderful production. It's cool.

Q. Are you making the kind of music you like to do?

A: With our groups, we used to do pop before this. Sometimes more electronic, others more miscegenation, but pop. But with Stay Homas I don't know how many styles we've already done, all of which are adaptable to guitar and cube.

K: Rai and I have studied jazz and we are in Buhos, which is more rocker, and Guillem has studied classical music and is in Doctor Prats, which is more electronic, but really all that is not very applicable to playing on the terrace. It is hard to think of everything you have learned that has been useless when you have been successful.

You must be one of the few who are happy to continue in Phase 0.

G: On a professional level it gives us a little more time to prepare what is coming, but on a human level we are already crazy and it begins to be reflected in our songs. When we thought it was going to be a daily topic for two weeks, it was manageable, like doing a little album, but it took two long months and the brain was fried. We are saturated, like hamsters in a cage and wanting to go out into nature and stop seeing the same buildings. And doing that will be good for us so that Stay Homas can continue in the future.

K: We don't even know what to say in the songs anymore. I think I want to go out and see my friends, but I just don't remember what I feel when I see my friends (laughs).

The only thing clear that the Klaus, Guillen and Rai who leave the house are going to have a radically different life than those who entered. Are you ready?

A : We don't know if life has changed us so much. We are still the same three pressed on the floor, the only thing now we see some high numbers on the mobile phone that seem crazy to us and we still do not know what they will translate when we go out. Until we are away we will not discover if people will continue with us after the confinement, what form will the project take with a multinational. We know very little about our future.

If it were up to you, what would you want to do in that future?

G: On a musical level, breaking with the limitations of the terrace, which are fun and we have made them sound decent, but having instruments in good condition and a studio already appeals. Evolving these themes motivates us a lot.

K: Until now, the eclecticism that we have wanted to give to songs has prevailed over everything else. If we want to do a tango, we do it; If you have to do a bossanova in Portuguese, we will invent it; if you have to send the bucket to hell, it is sent. It is having very little shame, but it is for the interest in doing many different things and we will keep it the same in a studio as on the terrace.

G: And we will also have to change the subject, because we will not be able to continue writing about confinement. Although in the last songs we have already been going off on a tangent and we have talked more about the consequences on a social and personal level of this situation rather than the situation itself. We can't be saying "coronavirus" all the time in the chorus.

Are you worried about being a passing phenomenon that ends with confinement?

A: It is our challenge: to get out of the terrace and out of the circumstances. It is evident that the pandemic and the confinement have supposed the beginning of the project, but we cannot remain there.

G: We do have a certain concern with being pigeonholed: "Ah, yes, those of the confinement". Although of course we are also called Stay Homas, we haven't done much on our part to avoid it. But that we come from such a situation does not mean that there is no project beyond. we will have to fight and work to make it so. I think if we are calm and chipping stone, it will not be a temporary phenomenon. We will have to sow our future. But we must continue with the hard face that we have had all along. In two months we have gone from 0 to 300 per hour and now we will have to take charge of all this. But we are fine, I think we can.

Taking into account that in the initial balcony boom everyone started projects and stories that ended in nothing, why do you think yours triumphed?

K: We have thought about it several times and, since we never came to any conclusion, we started to do another topic and we continued on without knowing what was happening. It is the history of this project: any reflection is crushed by events and by our rhythm of work. We are already comfortable in that situation, we are not much to rejoice in the praise and positive inputs . As we had such a good time, whatever happens has to happen.

Yes, but between song and song you will have thought ...

K: Yes. The first thing is that people are bored with the phone longer than ever. That's for sure. If people were working, they would be less on Instagram. But I think that, apart from making the cube and the terrace graceful and such, the themes have a freshness, that immediacy of writing and recording them immediately, that has hooked people. In plan, "let's see what these have today." And there is a bit of humor in the lyrics that is appreciated at a time like this, when almost everything that comes to us is hard because the situation is shit and people are dying. As musicians the only thing we can contribute is to stay in our fucking house and give away our music.

A: And that we had a good time doing it and it shows. We are in the bubble of this terrace playing the fool and we enjoy. That is transmitted. And at the level of lyrics, we say very mundane, very everyday things that make people empathize because we are all in the shit. People can be taken for granted with what we have.

K: There was a moment at the beginning, when we had about 10 songs, when we did scratch with this. It works? What do people want? We compared the numbers of the songs and tried to draw conclusions. What if you had to put a joke at the end, what if when we make it bigger and modulate it, we do better and so on ... Until we give up. There is no formula. The most absurd song of all, I tell you, Jimmy , was the one that asked for the most and for that there was no possible explanation. And we reached the really satisfactory conclusion that you have to do what you want, because even God does not know what will work and what will not. He lifted a great weight off us.

From now on, roommates and co-workers. That is dangerous.

G: We have to find a bigger apartment so that when we get angry we don't have to stand in line to enter the bathroom. Because the terrace is very beautiful, but the floor is tiny. In addition, some have already discovered where we live and a couple of times they have suspiciously called us. They have made a triangulation watching the videos and the terraces until they were right, so it will have to change.

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

• Final interview
• culture
• Stay at home

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