Kobe Miyake was in his dorm room at Belmont University when he heard someone playing Led Zeppelin down the hall. It was a guitar player from Annapolis, Md., named Jake Robuck. Both of them started at Belmont as music business majors and then changed to songwriting after getting involved in the music scene. They started off sharing mutual influences like Jimi Hendrix, Prince and D’Angelo and then started BEAN. as a duo. They convinced their friend Harrison Finks to move to Nashville to play keys and enlisted Mateyko Jazwinski from Chicago to play bass.
They are a band full of creative fervor right now, using the supportive musical scene of Belmont and the trust they have in each other. The music that they are creating sponges up the musical moment and creates a vibe that has a confident and gravitational aura.
You could argue that music has always been about creating a vibe. And the most effective music expresses the feeling of the moment. BEAN. has captured the ineffable feeling of now in their new handful of songs.
“The chorus of ‘Happenings’ has like seven different lead vocals just in different parts of the room that we recorded it in in our house just blended together,” says guitarist Robuck.
“It makes me feel really safe and that’s one of the things we were trying to capture was that safe feeling to just release.” says Miyake, who is BEAN.’s lead singer. Finks hit the bigger picture, “We knew we wanted to translate emotion using production.”
That is a noble pursuit and one that musicians have been trying to do that since the beginning of recorded music, but there is no simple formula or knob you can twist on a board that will easily dial up humanity.
The first thing that BEAN. did to be emotional in front of each other as young men was to get really comfortable playing their instruments around each other. Before they even released their first EP they played something like 50 shows.
Most bands with no songs out in the world, no audience, and no presence are relegated to a basement or practice space. But because Belmont’s music scene is so supportive, BEAN. was able to play in front of audiences consistently. “That’s just the Belmont scene man,” they said almost in unison. They played house shows, they played the corner of the room at Betty’s Bar and Gill, and at The East Room. Through that they all improved.
“That’s where the trust in each other comes from. We know that each one of us cares so much and is so obsessed with doing our thing and how our thing translates into what we are trying to say in the song with tones and textures. And above all we are just best friends who see each other every day.” says Robuck.
Maybe the biggest influence on the band right now is Mk.gee. The band saw him twice on the last tour.
“He completely blew our minds. I mean the songs, some of them you don’t even know what instrument is playing what. You are just so in the universe,” Robuck says.
Mk.gee is an incredible new guitarist. In fact, when an interviewer was recently talking to Eric Clapton, about Rolling Stone’s Greatest Guitarists of All Time List, Clapton — who is ranked number two all time — said, “Where is Mk.gee on that list? He has found things to do on the guitar that are like no one else.”
Last September, Mk.gee played at Marathon Music Works in Nashville. Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman were at the show. It was packed. There was a rarified air in the crowd. And at the show Mk.gee did something I have never seen an artist do. He played one of his songs, “DNM,” eight times during the set. “I have a heart condition and I was wearing an EKG monitor and I got a reading of the 24-hour thing and like the highest BPM rating was when DNM was playing for the third time and everyone is moshing,” says Jazwinski
Mk.Gee plays guitar for the musician Dijon, who is also an influence on BEAN. in the way that he used production to capture emotion on his album and film “Absolutely.”
“With both those guys, they are able to let the music — and the way the music sounds and feels — take away the lyrics for a minute. Just listening to the music you can kind of already understand the emotion of what they are saying in the lyrics. These guys have totally figured out how to just put you in a song. That’s the secret sauce.” said Finks.
On their most recent songs, BEAN. has taken those influences, learned from the technique and heart, and they’ve made it their own. “When I’m singing at my most free I don’t really care about pitch and exactly how technically proficient the tone is and stuff, it’s just how it makes me feel,” says Miyake.
BEAN. hasn’t released an album yet. But here I am talking about them because they are creating something new. And they are taking the time to let it reveal itself.
“None of us are in too much of a rush with it. I think everyone believes in the project so much that we’re okay really taking our time with it. Obviously it would be amazing if big things happen tomorrow but I think that all of us just really believe in it. We’re okay with just really really really doing it right,” says Finks.
“We want to build a foundation that is built to last and that takes time,” says Robuck.