Moxy: The Band Opens Up About Their Debut Album 'Dream Feeling'

Interview by Tiara Grace

Moxy: The Band is composed of Michael Franzino, songwriter Amber DeLaRosa, and producer/engineer Dryw Owens. The 80s-inspired band is based in Sacramento, California. Their debut album, ‘Dream Feeling’ is out now and available to stream on Apple Music and Spotify now! We spoke about their favorite songs, the writing process when crafting the album, and how 80s-exercise tape inspired “The Feeling of Letting Go” music video came to be.

EU: I just want to start off right off the bat. How did Moxie, the band, come to be? What is your origin story? What do you guys each do for the band? And give us a little bit about that.

MF: So Moxie kind of started in the previous band, a lot like Birds. I kind of just started writing a bunch of songs, kind of aimlessly, not really knowing what I was going to do next. I collected about 40 or so that were just in every direction possible, wise, and kind of just didn't really know where to go with it. And I hit up through who I had worked with a lot and just kind of showed him all the stuff and asked him if he wanted to make something of it, and he kind of narrowed it down and whittled it down into something that made a lot more sense. And we kind of went along for a while not really knowing what we were going to do about vocals. We were just kind of freely writing and then we brought Amber on and it kind of solidified as something we thought we could do something with.

AD: Yeah, basically, I was doing my own soul music at the same time, and they were often producing and engineering it, so it's kind of like I don't know, it kind of just started naturally gravitating that way. We just started realizing that we were capable of making a pretty big sound between the three of us. And yeah, I felt like Michael was sitting down and asking me to marry him when he asked me to. Seriously, he sat me down to the table. It was like, the most serious question he'd ever ask me in his life because it's basically like, this whole world of crazy composed songs that were really cool. And I had no idea, like, I was around the writing process while he was composing the songs, and I had no idea what vocals are going to go to it at all. So it's just kind of funny than being asked to be the singer, but I don't even know what I could imagine writing to this. I don't know if that makes sense.

EU: And Dryw. What about you?

DO: Yeah, I think Michael pretty much it. I mean, he had a bunch of stuff that he'd written in the wake of his previous band. They were, like, basically, like, sniffs in kind of varying shades of structural completion. He brought them to me and we just kind of made them into full songs. And there was, like, one of them that I originated and we just kind of finished writing the thing together and we were just kind of both scratching out vocals because we didn't really know what was going to happen. But it just became super clear that Amber was the obvious choice. She was close to us available, and obviously we resonated with her style and what she was doing. So it just came together nice.

EU: I was actually poking around your socials, and your guys'visuals are amazing. It really drew me into learning more about your aesthetic and your sound. And you all definitely know how to illustrate your sound of your audience kind of getting into the album, listening to the feeling of letting it go and the cost. Those who are my favorites, I look into The Cost on repeat like Today, Yesterday, and I just really love I really vibe with the 80 cent mix with the pop elements. I wanted to know what the inspiration was for that song specifically and what kind of drew you to creating that type of sound.

MF: Dryw can take this one. This is kind of his brainchild.

DO: Yes. ‘The Cost’ is kind of my baby. I just had this idea that I've been kind of kicking around in my head for a long time of just, like, these two chords that were just kind of had, like, a dreamy thing, and I had sort of, like, a really chill vocal melody over it that I sort of let that go. And I think Amber ended up coming up with something, like, way more compelling and interesting. But, yeah, I don't know, the whole synthesis, like, 80s classic style is just like, I was born in the don't know if that has anything to do with it, but that style just resonates with me. And, yeah, I just decided. I think when Michael and I were trying to write the album instrumentally, I felt like this field for this thing that I had in my head sort of filled an emotional space that the album didn't have previously. So we just started working on it together and just kind of layering it up. It kind of went the way a lot of the album did, which is like Michael and I just throwing layers basically into the computer and just anything we could think of and keeping the things that stuck and getting rid of the things that weren't working. We ended up with sounds that was really dense and definitely got to the point where we had to start kind of, like, thinning things out. But, yeah, The Cost is just sort of one of the results of that process and, yeah, that's a really special one to me.

AD: Yeah, definitely. For me, The Cost had one of the most done writing processes. I don't know that I can fully put it towards. Hopefully I'll be able to get better. First of all, thank you for listening. That's so sweet. but that song specifically, I think, kind of reminds me of writing this album because I think that was one of the first songs I really felt like I attacked and trying to go, okay, how do I write to this? Honestly, those first chords that drew just, like, they were not close to any melody I'd ever sing along to. I know that sounds so weird, but it just wasn't something I would ever choose to start with. So it really felt like thinking backwards. But also at that same time in my life, there was so much going on in our lives personally that just heavily impacted the song and impacted the lyrics of the song. I was developing a condition around the same time that I took on the task of writing to this project, which was so I developed epilepsy right at the beginning of all this. And I was adjusting to a lot of new medications. I was adjusting to what that meant to have seizures, losing my license, et cetera, et cetera. And so I really banged my head against the wall with the cost. I wrote so many different lyrics to it, so many different versions to it.

AD: And back in that day when I was writing that song started on a huge ramp. I basically was like riding my scooter back and forth across midtown Sacramento because when you first start having seizures, if they're uncontrolled, they revoke their license. And I would have to ride this scooter, rain or shine, try to take myself to go watch this little girl named Moxie at the time. And I would just listen to the instrumental of this song in my earbuds and I would just ride my scooter back and forth for hours. And I was just kind of lost in town on medications and trying to get home and just having so much going on and also trying to write this song at the same time. And I think some of the lyrics that eventually made the song didn't even quite make full sense to me then, but they make full sense to me now. I think I was starting to understand kind of what a tremendous toll everything was taking on my life and how much trying to synthesize that into art or something like public was taking this huge cost on me and my health and everything that I was losing or everything behind the curtains was just taking a huge toll. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but yeah, that's all just reminds me of just kind of really reckoning with the fact that I was going mad and everybody in the world was just like, going mad. Everything was kind of falling on its head and crashing down and joy, as we knew it, was kind of changing and it was all coming out of big cost. Yeah.

MF: Yeah. I'll add this to the beginning. I was just going to respond to something that Dryw said, which was that, like, the way I remember it starting was just that Dryw is kind of like listening back to the songs and you're just like, we need we need a vibe on this album. Like, we need like a mood setter and he said he had this idea and I thought that meant just like, he had like a riff or like a melody or something. And I was building a studio at the time. So I went out and started working on something and then I came back in and I was just like, oh, you had a whole song. And he really just, like, busted out the majority of the song while I was working, which I thought was cool and love the song. And also an interesting thing we did with some of these tracks was that we kind of worked off of a feeling that we were trying to describe musically. And on this one, was this the one that was a dream or was.

DO: This yeah, I had sort of this concept in my mind of like I've had a lot of people that I've known pass away, including my mom long time ago. And I had these really dipid dreams where I would see people that have passed away and I was trying to kind of figure out how I could basically write a song instrumentally and convey the feeling of seeing somebody in a dream that isn't with you anymore. And this is kind of what came out of that and ever kind of put her own meaning and the way that she made her feel to that. But that's kind of how it started off for me, emotionally.

EU: Got you. Yeah, that really puts it into perspective. I went in and watched the music video too. After replaying it, I watched the visualizer also for the feeling of letting go. I wanted to ask, I guess in terms of, like, the creative of that, like, was the song inspiration, how did that kind of bleed into the visuals for these songs on the album?

MF: Yeah, we found this team we almost moved to La specifically to find these people, not knowing that we would find them. But we found this team that has become our good friends called Cumuluminati Films and Zeb, the director is just like, he's incredible and we love all his work. And we weren't even entirely certain what the singles were going to be. We had an idea for four or five and hadn't narrowed it down yet and we kind of just sent them to him and asked what was resonating because we'd rather just go with something he had strong feelings for to make a video with them than not because I've done it the other way. And it kind of turns out like this weird thing where they're trying to try their best to make something happen, but they didn't actually have a solid idea. We sent him all the songs and the cost was specifically when I was standing out as popping up a lot of ideas in his head. And we wrote out the general ideas of the song and what the lyrical concepts were and what the themes were and tried not to be specific, to give them as much room as possible. He just came back with a treatment that was that video. Like, he just wrote out the whole thing and we loved it.

AD: It was super great because it definitely paired visuals to what I was feeling when I was writing the song. It's great feeling for me because, like, with a lot of these songs, I didn't fully know how much my thoughts and emotions would actually convey through my lyrics. A lot of them are super vague and mean a lot to me. But, yeah, it's just great to see that portrayed because there's just like kind of a lot and there's just a lot of reflections on childhood and loss of childhood.

MF: ‘The Feeling of Letting Go’, that one was kind of more like Amber's strong idea. And then Steve kind of just made it happen It happen for us, really

AD: for that. It's just like the song the lyrics are really sad on this song overall, but 

EU: There's some like levity, yeah.

AD: And I don't know, it reminded me of my mom when I was younger, like a really little kid. It's just very nostalgic to me when she used to work out to these 80s workout videos. And I would try to keep up with her and do all the target toning and ridiculous stuff. And one video in particular. Denise Austin's. 30 minutes. Target toner. And I used to listen by these big stereo speakers that we had. And I would listen to it would just be these songs when it comes through the workout video. And I would try to write lyrics to it as a kid because I didn't play any instruments or anything. So I would just literally rewind that workout video to try to sing my own lyrics over the workout music. And I would like, daydream about like, Monday I'm going to be a singer and I'm going to meet people that are going to help me make music anyways. I play instruments and stuff now, but I'm nowhere near being like the musical space astronauts that these engineers are. When I heard that song in full, I had this kind of funny realization that I had actualized a dream when I was a kid, like as early as three or four of being like, whoa, at my earliest moment, dreamt of maybe one day I'll make a song like that.

AD: And it felt like it had all that kind of diva power. And I was reluctant at some point to even put all those big runs in that song. But they really encouraged me to belt that out and push that out. So it's just cool to see that come full circle into fruition. And we most likely plan to do I mean, who knows? We're independent artists, so we do all this on our own budget. But will most likely do a more in depth video to this song in the future just because we do feel so much for this song. But as far as this visualizer goes, we just felt like it was kind of perfect to pay homage to that. I felt that thankfully, they were on board with, like, letting us bother them down in baby oil and all that. But, yeah, it was funny. I got a phone call from I didn't tell my mom it was out, but I just kind of waited and I got a phone call from her the other day and she was like she knew the exact reference. She's, like, loved your target toner, honey. It was funny.

MF: Yeah. I was going to say, the funny thing about that video is that all we wanted to achieve with Steve was, like, a canvas for Spotify. So that's 7 seconds. And then we just started filming and having all these ridiculous ideas, and we had so many ridiculous ideas, we were just like, all right, we can make a video out of this, so we may as well. But we had already a full treatment written by the same team that did the other videos that we want to do eventually, but we kind of wanted to just like let because the album is coming out so soon, we wanted to let the last video we do kind of earn it, like by the response, so we may end up doing it.

AD: But, yeah, it was funny because I was more reluctant to kind of the way more ridiculous stuff. So I felt like it was truly the feeling of letting go because, like, I had so much of my pelvis out, the boys were putting on eyeliner. It was just like, okay, we started smoking on set. Like, anything goes. I was just trying to get out of hand. My inner corporate was like, you guys, but we just let go and just let it be funny. And it's definitely one of my favorite things we've ever made. I think I was genuinely, like, tackling when we bought the first cut of it back.

DO: Yeah, that video was surprisingly difficult. I'm 6’2” and Michael and Amber are not 6’2”. On the exercises where I had to bend my knees, I had to bend way down to be, like, in the same universe as they were in. And I got so tired. I really underestimated the video. Like, my quads were burning and I actually got kind of nauseous when I got home and it was just a reminder of like, oh, my God, I am very out of shape. So, yeah. Brought the people that do actual exercise videos because they're not as they look.

AD: People think that some of their spaces were over dramatic. That was, like, their genuine and, like, a lot of times my awkward smile was because my face was really that tired from holding a smile for out.

EU: Yeah, I can imagine.

DO: Yeah, there was some part of us that were like, we definitely enjoyed it. And the video encapsulates the fun part of the song that you hear, but there was like, physically, you're maybe having a little bit of a miserable time.

EU: Again, kind of going back to your general aesthetic, I feel like hearing what you guys kind of had to go through in terms of writing, creating the music video, executing it. It all kind of brings it back to, like, since this is your debut album, this is kind of culminating all the work that you guys done and kind of pushing a boundary. But I wanted to ask you guys, do you each have a specific track that's your favorite or do you all kind of like I know some artists are like, they're all my favorite, but I'm wondering if for each of you, if there's one that really stands out.

AD: They are all my favorite. I'm currently so stoked on ‘The Feeling of Letting Go, especially since it's out. It's a favorite. But my favorite standout, one that I really want people to listen to on the album, would be overgrown. I think it's a really beautiful world that they created compositionally. And for me, lyrically, I was really dealing with a lot of pain that I didn't know how to bear or how to deal with it. And that song allowed me to kind of just like however the lyrics come across, whatever that may be, for me, it helped me just, like, kind of take the steps off of some of my grief and just lay my pain really bare and just kind of walk through it. That song feels really cathartic for me. Yeah, I think listeners will find it really interesting, cool they could speak more to what they did to it musically. But the song starts out with this really cool effect that they can explain more that just sort of uses like, spices, pieces of my voice as they enter into the song. And for me, I feel like it's sort of like walking the listener into a piece of my heart and mind space for a second, which at that time was a really vulnerable, strange place.

MF: But I think the Cost might be my overall favorite. But I think the song of that is personally just, like, special to me is You Feel it Too. And that is because that was kind of like the first song that actually felt like it could do something that I'd written in that huge series of songs. It kind of felt like it was touching on a vibe that I wanted to work within. Like, I was really, really apprehensive about locking myself into a sound for this record because I had determined a whole decade of my life when I was 18, when I started my previous band, and that's like a pretty young age to box yourself into something. And I found that I grew out of it but was sort of stuck when I was writing these tracks, I was kind of, like trying to scratch every genre itch I could to try to find what I would feel comfortable sitting in for a long time. And this was sort of the first one that started to nail it and the first one that kind of was almost complete and it went through so many revisions and changed so much by the end. But where it landed, I'm really proud of just the feeling that it gives off. Well, that song too, and every vocal performance on it is probably my favorite.

DO: Yeah, for me, ‘The Cost’ is special to me. It kind of conveys this emotion that I had sort of wanted to get out and put into musical terms. And especially when the last chorus hits, there's just kind of a release and it really makes me feel a certain way and I hope other people get that too. And like Amber said, there's a song called ‘Overgrown’ that I think kind of has sort of a similar kind of occupies a similar emotional space and I just really like the feeling that that kind of produces in me. ‘The Feeling of Letting Go’ is a really special one. And that song was being kind of written right up to the very end of this process and it was the very last one to really get done. But one that we haven't mentioned is, [laughs] What did we end up calling ‘Softboy’ again?

MF: ‘Live Without’

DO: ‘Live Without’ is a really cool one and that kind of also has sort of a dancey kind of thing that happens towards the end of the song and that also features sort of a vocal duet with Michael and Amber and it's kind of a different thing on the album and I really enjoy that one. I think that's a special one.

AD: Yeah, I definitely take more of a backseat vocally in that song compared to the other songs. It's still got deep moments at the end and stuff, but it was also a really strange thing for me vocally that throughout every song in this album. They really helped me just explore different styles and ways of singing down to literally just like, exploring how does it sound if we open my mouth this way, compared to this way, compared to being breathing over it, compared to, I don't know, just all these different things. And the song that he's mentioning, which Live Without, it's funny because I'm singing so, like, calm and serene, but it like winded when I sing that song because it requires so much breath to sing in this soft tone that they've helped me land on for that song. In a lot of ways, the lyrics can be very sacking but at the same time they kind of end with don't fuck up. So it's kind of this very sweet duet but also holding each other accountable and, yeah, I feel like it has a very soft and sweetness to it, but then also the musically at the end of it just like, pops into a banger. So there's just this kind of push pulls to it that I really like.

DO: Yeah. And just to tag onto something that Michael said with the song "You Feel It Too". I would say that Moxy: The Band began with "You Feel It Too" Like that was the pilot kind of for this project in a lot of ways. It was the most developed idea, as I recall, going into this.

AD: It definitely gives me the clearest path of understanding what our sounds could possibly be. I think none of us like Michael knew at all other than having specific songs, that where we were having conceptual or musical goals in mind. I don't think any of us knew what we were making or what it would possibly sound like because nothing was locked in to a genre or to any sort of standard or stereotypical melodic structure or timing signature or whatever it may be. Yeah, that song was really fun and I feel like that was the first song I kept taking really honestly, really bad passes out a lot of the songs. Like, just the other day, we were looking through my dropbox of all of my XYZ failed writing or failed passes at those songs. Some of them have some good lyrics, but I'm like, all right, we should use that for the next album. But some of them were just so ridiculous or just so funny because I had no sense yet of really what that song would be or where we would go. I don't know how to explain it. It's just like a weird Frankenstein of all of our experiences, perceptions.

EU: Awesome. I know you guys are based in California. I'm assuming live performances are planned. Do you see yourself ever traveling cross country to perform these songs? I feel like the East Coast would, like, love you guys live. Like, I definitely would, but what's the plan for performing live?

MF: We have a tour plan that fell through. It's kind of tough when you don't have an album out to really get this kind of stuff because nobody really knows what it is or how well it's going to do.

AD: We did have two tours, though, but like, ‘pandemi’ and all that stuff. Just like, keep things booked a year out.

MF: Yeah, we actually, like, planned the whole thing or planned our whole release around the tour that fell through. But the hope is just that once it's out and people know what it is, that we'll have an easier time because being an independent artist is kind of tough. Like, all the contacts I have. To Really break into the touring world are in a separate world than where we.Exist

AD:  like genre wise and all that.

MF: I don't think it makes a lot of sense to stay in that world. So we're kind of just like, waiting for what's right.

AD: But we're definitely open to it. Yeah, I am.

DO: We're trying.

AD: We'll definitely be in LA so we'll be over here. But, I mean, I plan to get us out there as much as we can. We wrote these songs so massively that it's almost kind of awkward to play. We need subs. We need, like, a bigger room. We bit off a lot more than we could chew.

MF: Yeah. It kind of requires a decent sound system to have the full effect, which is tough when you're starting out because I came from a rock band background where it's just like, give us a megaphone in our camps and we pull off the set. But with this. Yeah, but yeah, we're trying.

AD: Same, I'm all about backyard shows and like, living room sets, but we do want to do these songs justice. We put so much into every organic instrument and every texture and everything, so they'll definitely be intimate stuff from us as well. But we're definitely looking for the opportunity to actually play these songs as they're meant. And thankfully, we've been given a handful of those opportunities around us here locally and stuff.

EU: This was awesome. I'm so excited for everyone to listen to this album. And I'm sure that you guys are going to go on tour and kill it. I'm really excited for you guys. I really love your music.

AD, MF: Thank you so much.

DW: Thanks for talking to us.

Make sure to listen to Moxy: The Band's new album, Dream Feeling, on Spotify or Apple Music and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube!