Meeting in undergrad at Louisiana State University, four students came together as The Bends to release their first song, \u201cMakeup,\u201d as seniors in 2024. A year later, the group performed at Austin City Limits Music Festival following their first EP, Leeward Drive. The Bends are set to return to Austin on Friday at the Historic Scoot Inn, and they will release their first album, If You Insist, on Sept. 18. The Daily Texan sat down with frontman Hayden Field to talk about the band\u2019s progression, upcoming releases and advice for students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Daily Texan: What did it feel like to perform at ACL last year?<\/p>\n
Hayden Field: That was surreal for us because that was the first big live show opportunity we had gotten. \u2026 I remember two years prior I had been a fan attending and thinking it was the best weekend ever, as somebody just there watching music. \u2026 It felt like one of those moments where you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, yeah. I\u2019m always going to remember this, and this is a milestone for the band. We\u2019re playing a major music festival.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: Y\u2019all are coming back to Austin on (Sept.) 11. Does that bring any good memories back?\u00a0<\/p>\n
HF: So excited to come back to Austin. I think as a band, we spent a decent amount of time in Austin and every time we love it. We try and stay longer, like as long as we can, not just for the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: Your album comes out after your Austin tour date. Are we going to be able to hear some new stuff at the concert?\u00a0<\/p>\n
HF: We\u2019re gonna do some unreleased songs, some songs from the album, which will be exciting and fun. Also in that context, you could hear this stuff next week, people know we\u2019re coming out with an album. It feels like playing unreleased music is intentional, but it\u2019s going to be like finding that good mix of songs that are out that people know and can sing along with, versus \u201cwe got this album coming out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: Y\u2019all are from LSU, so how did you feel being around campus and hearing your songs with other students listening?\u00a0<\/p>\n
HF: It\u2019s kind of nerve-wracking, making music and then putting it out. It feels like you\u2019re putting yourself up for potential ridicule between your peers, especially in a time like college where you\u2019re young. But I remember the day that we put out our first song, I remember Ian (Marmande), our guitar player, texted in our group and was like, \u201cI heard somebody leaving class. I hear them driving down with their windows down playing our song.\u201d That was such a huge confidence boost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DT: A lot of your fans are students, so do y\u2019all write through their perspectives, or do y\u2019all tell your own stories?\u00a0<\/p>\n
HF: We\u2019re 23 and 24 years old. \u2026 I think the experiences that we\u2019re going through and I\u2019m going through and writing about like you said, happen to imitate what other people are going through. \u2026 There\u2019s a lot of changes when you\u2019re this age. There\u2019s a lot of loss and meeting people and losing people. I think the circumstances can be similar so where some of the topics of the songs can be relatable to people our age.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meeting in undergrad at Louisiana State University, four students came together as The Bends to release their first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-429493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}