Hawkns

New Haven, CT natives Hawkns blends soaring guitars, thunderous drums, and melodic bass lines along with the catchy infectious hooks that you’ll hear in contemporary pop music. The band embraces an ever-more genre-bending indie pop-rock aesthetic as they continue to captivate audiences with their musical virtuosity.

The three Frank brothers’ musical journey began quite early when large crowds would gather to see a young Joe Frank play, as he would test out guitars in his local music store. Trouble later ensued as Ricky became bedridden from a rare muscle disease. Fortunately, he recovered and the brothers began to pursue their career in music.
At a young age lead singer, Hawkns French struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction even after having been through four different rehabs in Los Angeles. Soon after recovering, Hawk realized music was a getaway for him and eventually he ran into the Frank brothers at their Connecticut recording studio, which is how the band began.
Within only their first year of establishing themselves, their debut single “Lights Off” has generated over 114,000+ streams on Spotify. Their talent has been praised by music legends like Eddie Money, Noel E. Monk (former manager of The Sex Pistols and Van Halen), and Michael Caplan (former VP of Sony Music).

Hawkns has performed on countless major stages across the East Coast. Notable performances include Mohegan Sun Casino, The Bitter End, Foxwoods Casino, and The Pleasantville New York Music Festival.
In Pleasantville, the band shared the stage with illustrious acts such as Blues Traveler, Suzanne Vega, and Living Colour. They will also be headlining at the Toyota Oakdale Theatre before the end of the year, along with releasing more singles during the fall of 2021.

So Hawkns, tell us how you built up the tune for this song.
This song came to us in a practice session very late at night. Our guitarist Joe came up with the opening riff and music, then Hawk put a verse and chorus melody together pretty quickly, we then recorded it that very night! The song went through many changes as we began to discover our own sound while crafting it.


Tell us how fans are reacting to your music.
So far we’ve gotten over 114,000 Spotify streams on our debut single “Lights Off”, and it’s been a lot of love from the fans. We appreciate everybody who’s been listening and also coming out to support us at our live shows! Now that “Sober” has been released, we can’t wait to follow it up with another single!


Tell us your point of view on the quality of production of today’s songs to old songs and point out what you think has changed.
Pretty much all of the older music we’ve grown up on is all created using analog equipment, and nowadays everything is so digital. We’ve always felt there had to be a happy medium when it came to our own production.


Tell us any interesting experience in your music career that is significant.
We got to play at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, CT in November of 2019. Getting to be backstage where so many legendary musicians had been before and being able to sign our name up on the wall where all of their signatures were, was a very surreal and unforgettable experience for us as a band since we grew up seeing shows there!


Tell us how you came across the lyrics of this song.
The song is a reflection on how our singer Hawkns French has struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction after having been through many different rehabs in Los Angeles. “Sober” uses sobriety as a metaphor to express the cravings of love and the negative aspects it can have on those trying to hold on to a stable relationship while being torn between a vice. A lot of the lyrics we developed together as a band on this track, but when we began writing it Hawk had a vision for it from the beginning of where he wanted to take it.


Discuss how you plan to create a piece of timeless music that your fans can cherish forever.
Our writing process is not to create something that we think is “timeless”, but what goes through our mind is about telling a story, and putting our personal lives and feelings into a moment, and sharing that moment with our listeners.


Tell us what triggers your creativity.
Art in any form really, sometimes we can look at some of the greatest artists like Basquiat and their work and a song can come to us just from staring at some of their pieces. Life inspires us, the good moments and the bad ones… That’s what music is all about, being able to connect with others who feel the same as you do or did at one point in life.


Tell us how you generate musical ideas for your composition.
We first create the skeleton of what will be the track pretty roughly as a team with everyone throwing in as many ideas as we can come up with. We try every single idea we have possible to keep our momentum up and not stay so idle in our writing sessions, that was a piece of advice that Nathan Dantzler from The Hit Lab gave us. So after trying every concept, we then sort through our favorites and discard the ones we feel weren’t a good fit. What remains is what we begin to work with from there and build upon.


Tell us your greatest song and state the reason.
As a band, we all put in so much to make something we all feel resonates with ourselves, and the listeners of today. With each song we create we always lift the bar of our creativity, we believe our greatest song is always yet to be made!


Discuss how you composed this song.
We had several versions of the song originally. It came down to about two after some point, then we sent them to Eddie Kramer and his team and a lot of friends of ours to see which one everyone vibed with most. In the end, we ended up using the version that felt like it was the best…


Elaborate more on the song.
This song was so much fun to make and in the production process, we grew a lot while producing it as a band. We grew up enjoying so many different genres as kids so our taste is very eclectic. One day we’re listening to upbeat pop/rock music and the next day we could be vibing to hip-hop, jazz, or electronic music. What we tried to do with “Sober” was to incorporate guitar back into contemporary pop music, which we’ve always felt has been missing from today’s radio, along with us including certain elements out of all of the different genres we love. So the tune really is an amalgamation of everything Hawkins is within one track.


Elaborate on your artist’s name and the title of the album.
That was an idea that our bassist Ricky came up with originally. When we began to discuss a name, we wanted it to be simple but also stand out and that’s what we felt “Hawkns” did for us since we never had met somebody personally with the name before. Rather than an album, we’re just focusing on releasing more singles as of right now. - BroadTube