F  L  A  U  N  T

 Photo Credit: Cory Dubray [Betcha](https://www.instagram.com/betchaband/) is here to shake up the music industry, one smash at a time. Creating their own style of alternative rock, the four-member band consists of Charlie Greene on the vocals, Ben Booth on the lead guitar, Taylor Dubray on the bass and keys, and Chase Wofford on the drums. With each individual hailing from the Southeast, it was in Nashville at Belmont University when the quartet conjoined, building an inseparable bond that transcends into the music. Thanks to the support and collaborating with GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Kaleo), the young superstars recorded a series of incredible demos that eventually lead to a major label deal with Atlantic Records. Formerly known as Wilder, in 2018 the band reintroduced themselves as Betcha, an amalgamation of the first letters of each bandmate’s name (Ben, Taylor, Charlie, and Chase). The guys currently share a creative house in Nashville where they hang out, write, record, and continue to push their unique take on 21st century rock music. Most recently, the guys released their sophomore EP, _Feels Like We’ve Been Here Before,_ co-written and co-produced with songwriters and producers including JT Daly (K.FLAY, PVRIS, Paper Route), Brian Phillips (COIN, Blink-182, Saint Motel), Nick Furlong (Bling-182, FEVER333, Good Charlotte), and Nick Bailey (The Aces, Dreamers, Hayley Kiyoko). Flaunt caught up with all 4 members via Zoom to discuss the early days coming together, getting signed, the importance in performing shows, the new project, studio essentials, and more! **Coming together in Nashville, how did the city influence you guys?** **Charlie:** We moved here in 2014, it’s been super, super awesome. That was a big melting pot of music and inspiration, a lot of kids our age wanting to do the same thing and figuring it out. Up until junior year, we really started vibing as the 4 of us. Nashville’s super great, it’s got so many live music venues. It gets the reputation for being super country, but that’s more of the touristy aspect of it. It’s definitely such a big part, but hip-hop thrives here. Pop thrives here, rock’s obviously super big. It’s been great for us. We definitely think of this as our home now, somewhere we can see ourselves being for a long time. **Talk about being friends from college, fondest memories?** **Charlie:** We were stupid. \[laughs\] It was good. Ben and I met freshman year, started working on music together. Writing songs, became really good friends. We added Doobie the year after that, then Chase the year after that. Sophomore year, Ben and I lived in a party house on campus so we got to know a lot of different people. Belmont was a small pool undergrad-wise, everyone got extremely, extremely close.  **Doobie:** A dope part about us being in a band in college is we had a buddy who was a booker for a lot of frats in the South. Our junior and senior years, 2 or 3 weekends out of every month, we’d be going and driving to University of Alabama, University of Georgia, all these Southern schools paying us a fat stack to play at their frat. It was such a great experience for us because we got to technically do all of this touring while getting paid, got to test out all these covers but also throw in a lot of original songs. Get a lot of experience with no pressure, that was sick for sure.  **Charlie:** Playing those shows was great too, because playing to a bunch of drunk college kids, you have to keep their attention the whole time. Especially if you’re playing a party, what gets people going? Whenever we’re playing original songs, we’re doing a lot of writing for those. We wanted to write stuff that got the party going, per say. That was really big for us, forming the band and forming the sound we have now.  **What happened in 2018 when you guys realized you could do this?**  **Charlie:** Getting signed was definitely a confidence booster, or even a sense of notoriety that people like what we’re doing.  Going on tour, we went on tour with this band called Kaleo doing big theaters. We got to play the Ryman in Nashville, which was super huge. Being in a lot of these iconic venues and rooms, playing to people. People seem to like us, buying our t-shirts and following us on social media. Oh cool, we’ve only been a band for maybe a year and a half, but this is definitely something that’s clicking and people are vibing with. **_Feels Like We’ve Been Here Before_ out now! How are you feeling?** **Charlie:** Great, it honestly came together pretty quickly because we wrote all of the songs within the past year. We’d started recording it 2 days before COVID hit. We were hoping to have it finished back in May, but then we got back together and only finished it a month ago. It was such a strange process getting it to the finish line. Putting out a record in a pandemic, I don’t know what that scope is but we’re super, super excited. Especially the 3 songs that came out with the director are our favorite 3 as a band.  **Why are those your favorite 3?** **Charlie:** “Pleasure” is the lead single right now for the record, that’s super groovy and super funky. Very Tame Impala and Parcels-esque, which is a sound we love to listen to but haven’t really tapped into making yet. Super influential. “Talking to Myself” is really complex, psychedelic, very intricate, a lot of different parts. It almost seems like this really big song sound and structure-wise, took a lot of effort and intentionality to make. The same with “Still Love You.” Maybe it’s that they haven’t been out yet. They’re a fresh release, but we’ve been saying for a long time that those are our favorites.  **Bring us back to when you created “If That’s Alright.” What does it mean to “live it up in this life”?** **Doobie:** Behind the energy of that song, we wrote that out in LA. We just played the Troubadour with Matt Mason, that was so cool. Any time we’re on a touring cycle, we’re really inspired to write upbeat bangers. Being out in LA is always a cool vibe switch for us. Even with the 4 of us, our headspace and the creative mindset we’re in. We wrote that one with Brian Phillips, who does a lot of really cool alternative rock acts like COIN, WALK THE MOON, that world. That one, we went in, he had this little loop that was high energy. We all had downed some Nitro cold brews, ready to rock.  **Charlie:** It came because we actually played a show that night too, off-day. The whole song besides the bridge, we tracked a lot of the final stuff within 3 hours, from writing it to recording it to almost having a full song walking out of there. Us being on tour and wanting to keep the high energy songs, bring more of that to our set. After being on the road for a month, that was everything pouring out of us we wanted to express.  **How much do you miss performing? Are you sad you can’t tour the record?** **Charlie:** We’re pretty bummed. It’s weird. A rock band is what separates us from a lot of other acts, touring and playing live is our favorite thing. Being in a band, that’s what helps get you discovered. That’s your biggest outlet. Pretty bummed but in a lot of ways, we’re glad it didn’t happen a year ago. The Matinee Tour was super huge for us. Luckily, we’ve gotten to tour with a lot of great acts to get that national following underneath us. With this record, we wrote so much of it with playing live in mind. Hopefully in a year, we’ll be back out there. We can do what the Flaming Lips did, do a bubble tour where everyone in the audience is in a bubble and we’re in bubbles. A hamster wheel and everything, they did it in their hometown.  **3 things you need in the studio?** **Charlie:** Vibe lights. La Croix, coffee, and vibe lights. We need our instruments. **Ben:** And a good attitude. **Bring us back to when you created “Pleasure.”** **Charlie:** We wrote that with JT Daly, who produced 4 or 5 songs. We’d done “Falling” with him, the title track for our last EP. That’s the very Tame Impala bassline one. We went in that day, we’d written something super rock earlier with the song “Break My Heart” that might come out on a different project. Okay, we’ve written 2 really upbeat rock stuff, let’s do something super, super chill. Super vibey. Within 5 minutes, Doobie had that bassline. Oh shit, okay we’re doing a disco banger song. \[laughs\] That one came together super fast. There’s this band from Germany called Parcels, super influential for the song. It feels like the lovechild between them and Tame Impala in a sense. Very groovy the way the chord hits, that chanty “I need pleasure, you need pleasure.” \[sings\] It feels like something they’d do. Whenever we got to the studio to finish it off, after we went on hiatus for COVID, we put a bunch of guitars all over the place. We’re still a rock band so the final touches were throwing in as much electric guitar on it, wherever it made sense.  **One thing you want fans to get from the project?** **Ben:** Good attitudes. \[laughs\] **Chase:** Honestly I was telling them yesterday, the album’s a collection of a bunch of different ideas, but the whole thing has a consistent vibe. There’s a bunch of different messages to take from the songs, but it’s the music you’d put on in your car, chill and vibe out to. Really reminiscent of a lot of our influences: The 1975, Phoenix, Tame Impala, stuff that’s really vibey and can put you in a mood.  **Charlie:** We hope people listen to it a lot. They can’t come to our shows right now, so listen. **Anything else you’d like to let us know?** **Charlie:** We put out  the official music video for “Pleasure.” We did that in Joshua Tree a month ago and filmed that, that was super huge. I know “Talking to Myself,” we’re going to have a music video coming out. We’re excited. We’re already outside today, sitting on our back porch. It’s super fall in Nashville, making new music. Going to keep doing that.