John Benoit, founder of post-hardcore band Resilia, talks with Dying Scene about the band’s origins, influences, and what 2024 has in store for the band.
DS: Who is Resilia? How and when did Resilia form?
R: The band is me on guitar, Daisy Chamberlin on vocals, Ethan Cate on bass, Grant Dickerson on drums, and either Gray Trainer or Owen Robinson on guitar. Gray does a lot of work with pop artists writing and touring so we have Owen a lot of the time too and he also helps do a bit of writing so I consider him in the band.
I started writing/recording the first Resilia tunes right before moving out of Boston to LA in 2018. I sat on ’em for a while because I couldn’t find a singer, but then I recruited Gray and Ethan from my old band and put out the instrumentals for “Royal Flush” and “Gambit”. When the pandemic hit I put out feelers for guest vocals and discovered Daisy, who ended up singing on those tunes, and shortly after became a full member of the band. Grant came into the picture a little while later, I believe in early 2022 or late 2021 and we immediately knew he was the guy! I love everyone’s musical personality a ton and I’m super lucky to work with them through Resilia.
DS: What are some key musical influences that have shaped the band’s sound? Are there any specific artists or genres that have had a significant impact on your music?
R: I’m most influenced by Coheed and Cambria, The Fall of Troy and Van Halen. They all have so much personality in their music and playing which really speaks to me. I love all kinds of music though, stuff like Frank Zappa, Taylor Swift, video game music, etc. Pretty much anything can influence my writing. Jazz and even classic rock are definitely some big influences on the approach I try to take towards my guitar playing but at the end of the day it’s all filtered through Coheed and TFOT for me. The rest of the band also have really varied musical backgrounds too. Grant never really even played this kind of music before joining but has absolutely killed it. Daisy and Gray are both huge fans of The 1975, Ethan has a background in marching band bass and listens to everything imaginable, and Owen leans heavier and will someday maybe get us to sneak a blastbeat in there somewhere.
DS: Can you walk us through the band’s creative process for writing, composing, and recording Well Intentioned: The Name of the Game and more generally? How do you collaborate on creating songs?
R: The way it went for all the songs on the EP is I would write the entire instrumental on a music notation/guitar tab program called Guitar Pro. Most of the songs only have a handful of parts that I actually wrote on guitar first. Once I had drums, bass, and two guitar parts ready, I’d see what the band thinks and if we liked it we’d start working on the parts and everyone starts putting their own spin on things. We also had Brody Taylor Smith from Invent Animate and Satyr program the drums since we were already working on the album before Grant joined. Brody absolutely killed it and was a pleasure to work with.
DS: Tell us more about Well Intentioned: The Name Of The Game. What inspired it, and what can listeners expect in terms of themes or musical direction?
R: Musically I think it’s just grass-fed farm-to-table progressive post-hardcore. I wrote a lot of the music during the pandemic before most of the band fully came together and I was trying to blend a few things like classic rock in “Hey There Pretty Girl…”, the more Coheed approach in some parts of a few songs and other stuff into my general idea of what progressive post-hardcore is. As far as the title for the EP, that came from the demo title for “Bad Lemon/Anjou” and it doesn’t really mean much I just made it up when I was writing the song just to call it something, but I ended up getting attached to the title because I liked the sound of it and we eventually decided to make it the title for the EP.
DS: How do you approach the visual representation for your music? How did you settle on a Gator to serve as a symbol of the band?
R: All of our cover art has been made by one of my close friends from college, John Rego (@johnrego1234 on Instagram). I’ve always loved his art so I just reached out and asked him to do whatever he wanted and he came back with the gator art for “Royal Flush” and “Gambit”. We all loved the gator so much and they’re actually Daisy’s favorite animal so we wanted to keep him involved. Later on when we were looking for art for Well Intentioned it seemed natural to go back to him. We definitely want to continue working John as much as we can for future releases.
DS: What do you enjoy most about performing live? Are there any memorable or unique experiences from your live performances that have made a lasting impact?
R: Performing live has pretty much always been my favorite part of playing music but we’ve unfortunately not done a ton of gigging just yet on account of the band being split up in a bunch of different places. In the two tours we’ve done so far the best part has been seeing people really enjoying our music and singing along to songs I wrote sitting alone in my bedroom in Boston unsure of what I was doing with them. Since we don’t get to do it super often it’s always really special to get to play with the whole band so I think that’d have to be my favorite part overall.
DS: If Resilia could collaborate with any artist, who would it be and why?
R: Some more “in genre” collaborations that would be a dream come true for me would be Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria, Thomas Erak from The Fall of Troy or Anthony Green from Circa Survive/Saosin. But, to be honest, my real dream is to get Yung Gravy to rap over a post-hardcore breakdown.
DS: What are Resilia’s plans for 2024? Can we expect any new music or tours?
R: I moved to Florida a few months ago so Daisy and I could write the next batch of tunes and we’ve got some stuff cooking! We’ll hopefully start recording some of it soon and start putting out singles at some point in 2024. We don’t have any concrete tour plans at the moment but we’re interested in trying to play some local shows in or around Orlando in 2024 too!
Photo by: Caleb Klusmeyer
