Dying Scene Exclusive Interview with Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, Thalia Hall, Chicago, Illinois (03/2024).

On 09 March 2024, Otoboke Beaver headlined a sold-out show at Thalia Hall in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, with Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, and Ovef Ow opening the show! Here’s how it looked!

Prior to the show, Dying Scene (Fleurette Estes) and Kyle Decker interviewed Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, where they also took some photographs. Check out the interview below and go check them out!!!

Interview has been shortened for clarity and length.

Dying Scene: Tell me about Drinking Boys and Girls Choir. Introduce yourselves and who you are, where you’re from, and your members.  

Myeong-jin Kim (MJ): Drinking Boys and Girls Choir is from South Korea, and we’re based in Daegu City, South Korea. I’m MJ and I’m from Daegu City. I was born in Pohang but currently live in Daegu City. I play drums and sing. 

Meena Bae (MB): I am Meena, I’m the bassist and I also sing. 

Megan Nisbet (MN): My name’s Megan. I live in South Korea, but I’m from Glasgow, Scotland and I play guitar and sing in the band. 

MB: Yeah, we write our own songs, and every member contributes. 

MJ: Yeah. 

MB: There is no main songwriter. 

DS: So, how did you all meet? And were you friends before joining this band? 

MB: Yes. MJ and I were friends from around 2007. Yeah, she was young, just 20, and she just joined the university. At the time she was in a band named the Odeum Starz and it was a cute pop punk band and they just started making their own songs because they couldn’t play well enough to cover other songs. So, it was really kind of cute, but they ended the group because…  

MJ: Army service in Korea and the job career thing. After that, we started a girl band, Chicken and Mayo ABC. 

MB: Chicken and Mayo ABC. A few years later we decided to do a band again. It is Drinking Boys and Girls Choir.  

MJ: Yes. 

DS: Do you still play and do things with the other band? 

MB: No.  

DS: Do you ever want to try to relive that one? 

MB: No. We’re done. That’s just our memory. We don’t want to make it again. We want to make new things. 

DS: How would you describe your music? And who are your influences? 

MB: We really like Sum 41, NOFX, Blink-182, The Offspring. We went to the Bouncing Souls show in Chicago last night and it was very beautiful. And yeah, Alice in Chains… So, many American punk bands really inspired us. 

MN: We describe the music as being fast, aggressive guitar sound, intense drumming, and a powerful bass tone but with angelic vocals over the top of everything. Three-part harmonies. 

MB: I really like harmony. I just sing by myself, and they just start to make harmonies every time, every time… 

MN: I go low, you go high. 

Kyle Decker (KD): For the choir part… 

DS: So, you have been on tour with Otoboke Beaver. Did you know them before the tour? How has it been becoming friends with them on the tour? 

MB: Yeah, we are label mates. We are signed to Damnably with them. The Damnably label is based in London. The first time we met them was in 2019 at South by Southwest and then we started doing tours together.  

MN: Yeah. With this lineup, we’ve done two tours with them. We did the UK last year in May and then this year here in the US for the first time. And we get on very well with them. They’re very friendly, lovely people. 

MB: Yes. We really like each other. 

MB: Yeah, we’ve done more shows with them, we even did a show in Korea with them. Before Megan joined, we went to Japan to celebrate their new album. In 2019 and 2020 we toured together in the UK and the Netherlands. So, we really love our songs and our vibe and really respect ourselves and each other. It’s a really good vibe. 

KD: The scene has shifted since I left Daegu City, I know that, but what is it like being the only punk band in a pretty conservative city? How many people come out to shows? 

MB: Yeah, Daegu City is conservative, and my parents are super conservative. Nowadays, almost all young people really just like K-pop music, the K-pop scene, and K-pop culture. And in Korea, as you know, the mainstream doesn’t play punk music. They just stream the K-pop music, K-pop things. So that’s why young people can’t know about their taste in music. Do you know what I mean? 

MN: They don’t have many options for different types of music to listen to because it’s pretty much K-pop or bust. So, they don’t know how to find new artists to listen to and stuff like that. So, at our shows, the audience is, on average, older, late twenties, early thirties. 

DS: So, I heard you guys are paving the way for K-punk.

MB: Yeah, so we use the “K.” Actually, we really hate the “K” things, but we started to use the K-punk because it makes it easier to find our music. And so, we are trying to reach out to younger audiences. So, when we put on our own shows in Korea, we give free tickets to underage youth. But yeah, it’s hard to get a crowd. We never get a crowd of even 100 people in Daegu.

KD: Do you feel like you’re getting more audience response in the United States and Europe than in Korea? 

MJ: So, we’re getting bigger in US, Europe, and the UK but not in Korea. 

MB: So, sometimes we get invited to the (Asia Cultural Center) World Music Festival in Korea and so many members from the audience have told me, “Oh, I didn’t know you are from Daegu. I live in Daegu, but I don’t know you.” So, every crowd has told me that. I don’t know how we can grow our audience in Daegu. Yeah, I don’t know. 

DS: I’ve been following you on social media and so many of the shows are sold out. What does that feel like?  

MN: It feels like a huge opportunity really for us. And so far, the audience response has been positive. They come to the merch table, and they tell us how much they enjoyed the show and it’s really encouraging. So, I think we’ve done the right thing coming here.

DS: I absolutely love the fact that every time I look on my Instagram page you’ve had another sold-out show. I just think that’s lovely. 

MJ: Yeah. 

DS: Tours can be busy. Have you had time to do any sightseeing while you’re in any of the cities? 

MJ: Actually, we drive ourselves so we can see a lot. 

DS: At night? 

MN: Actually, during the day. So, when we were driving through Salt Lake City and places like that, we got the full view of everything. Beautiful, snowy mountains and everything like that. So, it’s been lovely. As for sightseeing, we had time in Seattle because we started the tour there and we visited pretty much most of the tourist spots in Seattle, like the Space Needle and MoPOP museum and everything.  

MJ: The Sub Pop store. 

MN: The Sub Pop clothing store. 

MJ: And KEXP. 

MJ: And the market.  

MN: The seafood markets. Pike Place. 

MB: Pike Place Market. Chicago is really the second city we’ve been able to stay in for a few days. Earlier in the afternoon, we ate a really good lunch with Kyle at Bang Bang Pie, and I really liked that quiche and chicken pot pie and the other dessert pie. I really liked that. And maybe tomorrow we have lots of time before the show, so I hope to go to some good place and maybe I believe that he will introduce us to so many good things there. 

DS: There are so many amazing places to eat and to see. Besides playing amazing shows with great crowds, what else do you want to accomplish while you’re in the States? 

MJ: Maybe work on our next tour… 

MN: While we’re here now, I want to have a good bond with the four people in our party…make some close relationships. I want to make some fans in every city and make a good impression on people by being very kind and friendly and open. That’s what I want to do. 

DS: Being from South Korea, do you feel responsible for representing your country?  

MB: Yes. 

DS: What do you want your audience to know about South Korea? 

MB: Yeah, Korea is not just K-pop. Yeah, I hope for them to know about that. We have so many subcultures. And really everything is small because Korea is small, but I hope the audience knows there’s more to Korea than just K-pop. I want the audience to think about Korea a little bit positively. 

MJ: Yeah.

DS: If anyone were to visit your hometown of Daegu City, what are the top three recommendations you have for them to do or see? 

MB: Yeah, like our song that we call the “BIG NINE, Let’s Go,” we introduced three locations. The first one is Daemyeong-dong…it’s really a music neighborhood…in the music scene. There is Club Led Zeppelin. And there is a famous beautiful university there called Keimyung University. Even New Jeans’s music video (for the song “Ditto”) was filmed there. And so many famous Korean dramas were filmed there. So, I want to introduce Club Heavy. They remodeled it and the rooftop is beautiful. Sometimes we have acoustic shows on the roof when the weather is good. Because we have the four seasons and the summer is extremely hot and winter is extremely cold, so we cannot do anything outside in the summer or winter. So, we have just a few days we can do rooftop shows. So, I want to recommend it. And second location is downtown Daegu – Dongseong-ro. And the third one, if you want to go to Suseongmot (Suseong Lake) you can take the monorail. It’s a beautiful lake with many restaurants, but it is a little bit expensive.

Actually, I say in the song (“BIG NINE, Let’s Go”), “makchang, soondae, joonghwa bibimbap.” It is really famous food in Daegu. It’s not vegan but… yeah. And so nowadays I’m trying to say the vegan food in the middle of singing. So sometimes I say different foods. 

MN: Changing the lyrics of the song on the fly.  

DS:  Tell me about your favorite performance as a group so far. 

MN: Why don’t we talk about the performance from this tour that we liked?  

MJ: As for our performance, I choose LA. 

MN: Me too. 

MB: Me too. 

MJ: And for enjoyability, Pioneertown.  

MN: Yeah. 

MB: Yeah. 

MJ: For perfection level, LA. For enjoyment level, Pioneertown. 

MN: We played well in LA. We just were on the same wavelength. 

MB: The zone! 

MN: We were in the zone, and everybody had a really good time. We felt nervous before the show, but as soon as we got up there, we just really locked in.  

MJ: So much fun! So much fun! So much fun!  

MN: Pioneertown was like this little cowboy-themed town in the desert somewhere in California. We liked that show because it was a smaller, more intimate venue, but it was packed. And, we’re used to playing in a smaller club setting, so it was more comfortable for us, and we could let go and just have a good time. 

MB: Yeah! 

DS: What’s next for you? Are you working on new music? Do you have any tours planned? 

MB: Yeah, during this tour we have had a good response from the audience and really every city’s promoter has been really impressed by us. So, they’re really starting to focus on us. So, maybe we could headline our own U.S. tour later this year. And I hope we could also tour the UK and Europe. We are also planning an Asian tour, so maybe we will visit Taiwan and Japan this year. And we really tried to make a new album, our third album, last year. We’ve already recorded eight songs, so we must finish our third album this year. 

MN: We just released a new single and I think that it showcases the new direction of the band, the new influence maybe that I’m bringing to the table, and we are pulling out of each other. So, you can hear that in the new single. Three-part harmonies. Really fast, aggressive but angelic vocals over the top. The song is called History. And then we’re working on the new album, hopefully.  

MJ: Yeah, and we have a live album soon to be released, maybe in the summer. 

MB: We just recorded the live album in January.  

DS: Oh, that would be exciting.

KD: Megan, how did you become involved in the band? Because I’ve known Drinking Boys and Girls Choir for a while, and I’ve known them to have a rotating cast, so to speak. How did you join the band and what new directions and influences are you bringing to it? 

MN: Right. So, I really love indie music and I’m a huge music fan and I’ve always played guitar. But since I was like 14. And, so, I was just watching KEXP at home in South Korea one night by myself with a bottle of wine. And, so, I’m scrolling through, and I saw Drinking Boys and Girls Choir and I look at the band name and the thumbnail and I’m thinking they look Korean. I think maybe they’re Korean, so let’s check it out. So, I clicked it, it was their session that they did in 2021.  

MN: I totally fell in love with the band, their appearance, the energy, and everything. So, okay, I followed them on Instagram and everything like that.  

MB: We put up a notice that we were looking for new guitarist.

MN: I thought I don’t have anything to lose, I might as well. So, I sent them an email and the rest is history. 

DS: So, have you guys toured Scotland, yet? 

MN: Yes, we did. 

MB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. 

DS: How was that experience? 

MJ: We met Megan’s parents, cousins, aunties, everyone… 

MB: I feel like every town was Megan’s town because people came to see her.  

MN: They were happy to meet the girls. They were kissing and hugging them. I was delighted to introduce them to my family as well. 

MB: Yeah, it was. And because we were born in Daegu and we’ve lived in Daegu our whole lives. So, our parents or family culture is not close to each other in Daegu, and I felt the love from her family. So, I was so happy to be there. 

MN: It was great.  

MJ: Yeah. Maybe more than my parents. 

MB: Yes, exactly. 

MJ: They loved me more than my parents. 

MB: Yes, exactly. Yeah, she calls her father often and every time he asks about how the girls are doing.  

MJ: Yeah, it’s like a family now.  

MB: And he bought lots of beers for us. Yeah, we had a really good time. Maybe if we can arrange our schedule for the next tour, I want to make Glasgow our last city. I want to spend more time in Glasgow after the tour. Yeah, I hope.  

MN: I would love to show them not just Glasgow but other cities and other more rural northern areas in Scotland because it’s a beautiful country. I think they would love it. 

DS: What advice do you have for musicians who are starting out? And those who are touring other countries? 

MJ: Workout.  

MB: Yes. It’s important.  

MJ: Yeah, physical workout is important. It makes you healthier, physically, and mentally. 

MB: Yeah. 

MN: What do you think? 

MB: Don’t think about it, just do it. 

MN: This is where you get the personalities of each of us, right? She says work out is a good and logical answer. Don’t think about it, just do it. Okay. And then for me I would say be personable, be friendly, be honest. Wear your heart on your sleeve and go for it. 

DS: Great. Thank you. What five bands are you guys listening to while on tour? 

MJ: For me, I like Jacob de Haan, a composer from the Netherlands. I love that man. 

MN: In the van, we listen to music mostly in the van because that’s the best time for it. So, I guess I’ve been listening to Bouncing Souls a lot. Hot Water Music… 

MB: On this tour… Smoking Goose. 

MN: Smoking Goose. I love that band. That’s a Korean band. Okay. They’re from a city called Daejeon and they play skate punk music. They’re a three-piece. They also play fast, have catchy hooks, and play three-part harmonies as well. So, I guess I love that band. And we are three girls. They’re three boys and they’re cool.  

MN. Jaurim. Good, classic Korean rock band. They’re still active today. Very kind. Nice people. 

MB: Yeah, they’re super rock stars in Korea. 

MN: Super rock stars. 

MB: We did we say five? Alice in Chains, The Offspring, Bouncing Souls…Tyler Langley. 

MJ: NOFX! 

MB: So, I’d like to introduce some of our friends in Korea. We really like Billy Carter. They are really…blues… 

KD: They’re like psychedelic blues, but they’re rooted in the punk scene, too. 

MN: They have a punk vibe as well. But it is like bluesy. 

MB: Yeah. A really good band. My friends Ohchill and they released a new album last year. And I want to recommend Smoking Goose as well. Who else? 

MJ: We’d like to introduce some other Daegu bands named Sindosi. They’re a post-punk band. There’s a legendary band from Daegu called March Kings. They’re not a punk band but we recommend them. There are female-fronted bands called Igloo and Honz.  

DS: What else would you like to share with Dying Scene’s readers? 

MB: Yeah, just come to our show when we come back here again. And please buy our merch. 

MN: Please check out our music here. Come to the show. And then if you do come to the show, come, and say hi. Because we are selling the merch personally ourselves. We love to talk to people and sign things and take pictures and everything. So, don’t be shy and just come say hello. That’s it.  

MB: Thank you so much.  

DS: Thank you. 

Check out the Otoboke Beaver, Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, and Ovef Ow Photo Galleries below and check out the link for The Korean Times collab with Fleurette Estes and Kyle Decker.