How Hembree's Isaac Flynn explored the darker corners of his mind for the band's new album

“You just brought up a great memory in my mind, actually,” he tells me, with the innocence of the moment Flynn is recalling shimmering in his eyes. “A real distinct memory of Garrett [Childers], who's our bassist now. He would come to my house when I was in sixth grade and he was in eighth grade. We would jam Nirvana's ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on an endless loop. And we'd finish and be like, ‘Do you want to do that again?!’”

This trip down memory lane – into a cluttered bedroom, amps pounding with a scraggly attempt at harnessing a revolution serves many purposes. Mostly, however, it’s to trace the wire from the bulb of ideas that began sparking throughout Hembree in 2015 – including their latest offering It’s A Dream! – back to their source; a pulsating electric outlet of familial encouragement and childhood intrigue.

Things for Flynn feel perpetually like the small town of Lawrence, Kansas he grew up in (“a college town...like an arts community.”) He mentions having “so many opportunities to play music at an incredibly young age, we would play at so many different venues.” Even as he progressed, moving to Kansas City (“you can get a really strong sense of what it's like to live in kind of a large city, but then also have this amazing small community too”), and eventually Los Angeles a few years ago his close-knit world continues radiating through his persona. Even his band is made up of a pair of brothers (guitarist Alex and drummer Austin Ward), and Flynn’s own brother in law (keyboardist Eric Davis).

Talking to Flynn is immediately as if talking to a new acquaintance hell-bent on becoming an old friend. He’s warm, opening, exudes the same spectrum of positivity as featured on It’s A Dream! It’s his outlet in Hembree that offered Flynn a chance to explore the darker side of his mind, admitting that on their first record 2019’s House on Fire “I complained a little bit more,” on its follow-up comes a switchback into his natural state of being.

“I'm definitely pretty extroverted and tend to be a pretty optimistic, positive person,” he says while inadvertently beaming. “I think what's been amazing about songwriting is that it does allow me to show the other spectrum of emotion that I have, because I do think my personality tends to be pretty outgoing and that I do try to be pretty positive. “Sometimes, I think if I were to all of a sudden come across as just completely down, people would be incredibly concerned about me, but I think that somehow you can do that through songwriting, and people don't worry as much.”

On this, he offers: “My mom has stopped asking me if I'm okay,” he brightly chuckles. “She was pretty worried at first. She would send me texts, like ‘Take care of yourself. Drink water’.” It’s his mother as much as his hometown glory that's is etched within Flynn’s DNA. “As wild as that sounds, she’s maybe the most extroverted, sweetest person in the world who calls every person in the town and checks up on them,” he says proudly. “But I also think that there's something about being from the Midwest – people can always tell. I do a lot of songwriting sessions and people are immediately like ‘You’re from the Midwest’. I don't know if that's just because I'm quick to open up and dive into a conversation, but there's definitely something about the American Midwest and how hospitable and polite everyone is.”

Confirming this, our Zoom today opens with the kind of conversation that you’re hard-pressed to get out of the closest of friends. Immediately hospitable and driven by a genuine curiosity, Flynn’s acknowledgement of his way of being comes from being removed from the environment that generated this. Upon returning to his homestead he says laughing, “It's almost to the point, having lived on the West Coast, you come back and you're like, what, give it a rest everyone!”

"I would say it's a regional thing for sure," he continues. "One of the reasons I think that people live there is there's a lot of really amazing and kind people who care a lot about their community and look after each other and so I think that just kind of is something that you're brought up in and if you're lucky, it sticks with you and you don't get too jaded and discouraged as you move about the world. But yeah, I think it is has a lot to do with my upbringing.”

Growing up in a musical household – both of Flynn’s parents are musicians – he first found the band-bug biting when he was 12. “I was the drummer initially and then I moved over to different instruments as I got a little bit older,” he explains. There’s something magical about finding a few friends, strapping some instruments on and attempting covers of your formative year’s soundtrack. Even if it’s the sloppiest thing – close to falling apart as you feel the beat trundle chaotically forward – it’s yours.

This takes us back to Flynn’s clattering cover of the Nirvana classic: “We were doing a terrible job playing, but in my head, it felt like ‘We rule. That’s the best cover ever.’ But it is funny that he and I've been in the band together for so long and stayed so tight. I feel super fortunate that the guys in the band are just like the sweetest people and so talented. It’s a good crew.”

While the various bands from his youth dissipated, Flynn’s taste for the behind-the-board aspect of recording grew from it. With his own “really minimal recording setup in my house”, he became the default producer for his friend's bands. Eventually moving onto more serious projects, including inevitably touring, the first success story came from Quiet Corral. However, Flynn wasn’t the one leading the group in terms of songwriting. In fact, he didn't begin writing any of his material until the age of 23. “I’d always been producing and always been writing parts and melodies and stuff for previous bands, but I was never the primary songwriter.

“And then I just kind of fell in love with it after one of my previous bands ended, and it was like, ‘Oh, this is a whole thing that I can do for the rest of my life’. And I almost regret not starting it sooner. Like why wasn't I doing this when I was 15 or 16, you know? But I do think that's such a cool thing that you kind of go on this journey and at the end of it you have something that hopefully you release into the world and it will exist for a long time after you're gone.”

Those moments of inspiration, interpolation and invigoration were all bubbling away, ready for the right moment. “I was always into bringing songs to the table but they were never fully complete,” he says of previous endeavours. “Or I would write a few songs with my buds, but then it was always really collaborative and I was never the solo songwriter.”

Fully establishing himself as a songwriter, “out of necessity when one of my bands ended,” Flynn found the results to be instantaneous. "All of a sudden I was obsessed with it," he tells me, "and now I don't want to do anything else ever. So I feel fortunate to have found that love for writing music.”

Which leads us down the yellow brick road to Los Angeles. A songwriter gun-for-hire, Flynn is now where he needs to be. Unlocking this ability in him – finding a way to make a living from the synapses in his mind (“In my iPhone voice memos there's a big backlog”) – is the ultimate childhood dream come true (the other being “professional baseball player.”) But Hembree is where the maker meets his melody.

Undoubtedly masters of a crushing wave of summertime anthems, hoisting choruses and shimmering guitars, there’s something decidedly rhythmic about how Hembree bolster themselves. “I think it spawns from the fact that I grew up playing the drums first,” he ponders. "So everything that hits for me is always really rhythmic. I got super into Talking Heads on this last record. Growing up I was really into The Police, who are super reggae-influenced. That made its way via them to me.

“Anything that has a great sense of melody, but then it's also packed with a really heavy groove underneath it like I'm sold. I've been super into Paul McCartney and the song ‘Coming Up’ it's just such a relentless groove. Such a cool little melody, really unique and kind of off the wall. That's the stuff that really hits me for sure.”

On the entwining of melodies and memories, Flynn offers “The Whole World” by OutKast as the song that’s just “perpetually in my head.” His elementary school days, for the 30-year-old, are long gone but those fresh-faced years still ring true with the tinny sounds buzzing out of his Walkman. “It’s so weird how music sticks with you,” he says. “There's like Jimmy Eat World records from when we were probably in junior high I have the most vivid memories of mowing the lawn too.”

Additionally offering more anecdotal evidence, he explains, “I once met Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, he's so awesome but I was just…I froze and I was like, 'I used to mow the lawn to your music!’” Flynn bursts out laughing at the memory. “I think he thought that was funny. But music does cement moments in our minds and yeah, In Rainbows for sure. The first time I heard that I have vivid memories of not even being able to comprehend exactly what was happening but I knew I liked it.”

There are moments on It’s A Dream! that proudly echo these inspirations. “Operator” offers up a rhythmic metronome, which he admits is a “straight-up giveaway” that he was listening to some Talking Heads. “I was just thinking about how the groove was just so relentless, and the song just didn't stop and kept moving and the momentum was so good. And then they would stack these awesome melodies on top of it and I was like, this is how you do it.”

Attributing the turn-of-the-century hip-hop explosion to being another inspiration, “Our age group,” he says nodding to me, after figuring out we’re the same age, inevitably establishing more common ground. “I feel like hip-hop was just massive for all of us. So that got me into loops, and looped music.” Given the Super Bowl happened a few days before our chat, it would be remiss for a certain name to not make an appearance in such a conversation. “Dr Dre is the master of just the most brilliant groove and loop ever. We learned so much from that era of music. Oh, you can just loop something over and over and it feels great, [and then] build on it.”

Hubris doesn’t come naturally to Flynn. While the aforementioned era of hip-hop was all about bombast and braggadocio, Flynn and Hembree instead found satisfaction internally, while knowing that it’s out there for all the world to see – much like a prim and trimmed suburban lawn. A markedly commendable stance given the rough ride being involved in music can be in 2022; Flynn also mentions that he created the band's TikTok account just yesterday. “It's so strange to see the state of music and how things are blowing up through a 10-second song clip on TikTok," he explains. "It's just kind of foreign to me. When you grew up wanting to write the best full album or the best full song,” he pauses briefly. "We’ll see how it all shakes out though. I try not to be too much of a naysayer with it.”

In his endeavour to write the best album he can, it would seem he’s achieved just that. “I think this is my favourite thing I've ever done,” he says quietly. “And so my relationship with it is that I'm genuinely satisfied and super thrilled with this album…I’m happy with it because I just really enjoy it and I think that’s maybe because it's the first time, as an artist, I fully just made whatever I wanted, and we made as a band, whatever we wanted.

“I think that goes a long way – you should always do that. But it goes back to a bit of our conversation about the music industry. You always feel like people are nudging you to do one thing or go a different direction. It's probably a combination of no outside noise because the world was insane, and then also just getting a little bit older and being more comfortable with who I am and who we are as a band and not feeling the need to please anybody.”

When a young band first discovers the ability to fall into a synchronised cacophony, the first thing they want to do is show their nearest and dearest. That doesn’t change as the bands get bigger, more serious, and certainly more focused. "It's just super thrilling to see it start to resonate with people," Flynn explains. "It's funny because I think this isn't necessarily the easiest way to tell how something has resonated with people, but I've had more friends and acquaintances reach out to me about this record than anything I've ever been a part of before. So that's got to count for something.”

A part of the magic for a young band comes from naivety. As Flynn mentioned, his cover felt like the best thing in the world, simply because it was to them. But as the stakes get higher, this naivety can get often lost, sometimes for good. “I think there's definitely something to that youthful inspiration of not overthinking things,” he says. “There are times I think if you are trying to say something and you want the lyrics to be super impactful, then definitely sit with them and take the time to perfect them. But there are certain times you’ve just gotta let it happen.

“One of the biggest examples for me was one of our first songs that did anything was a song called ‘Holy Water’. It spawned from jamming on a bass riff and that opened up a whole lot of doors for us and for myself too. And it was all based around just having fun. Sometimes I think it's important to not lose sight of just enjoying it.”

Throughout his career as a songwriter, Flynn mentions he’s been in rooms where “you can tell the air is a bit deflated and people are feeling a little worn out,” his way of reinflating such scenarios is to simply pick up a brand new instrument – surreptitiously building a path to that naivety. “I write a lot on the piano because I think it does simplify things in my mind,” he mentions.

Climbing those internal mountains is where It’s A Dream! focuses itself. Noting that “we all have our own internal difficulties…but I didn't want to sit around and complain on this record after kind of thinking about how so many people have it a lot worse than I do,” the positive rays do indeed shine. Nobly burrowing through the moments that “you feel like you can’t carry on,” Flynn wanted to take the journey through to its end, leading “towards some optimism and some hope because if it didn't, you know, what's the point?”

For all his positivity, the one thing the is happy to go on record as naysaying is motivational music (somewhere Pharell’s “Happy” feels a cold knife in its back). “I have to admit, motivational music is like my least favourite music on the face of the earth,” he smiles. “I just can't stand ‘We can all do it music.’ I'm definitely more introspective and wrestling with things but then trying to come out on the other side of it and telling yourself that it's okay to be frustrated and it's okay to just feel completely gutted by the state of the world at times, but you’ve kind of got to carry on, so I'm so glad it translates that way,” he says when I mention his albums exploring of the elements of positivity with no discernible direct-line to answers. “Because I didn't want it to be like you said, that we're all having fun and this is awesome.”

There’s a case for nature vs nurture with Flynn. Growing up in a musical household, he was bound to wind up on the path he has. But the purity of which he reached his current end, that’s all him. That’s why Hembree’s music has a delightful balance of realism and a warming embrace. It’s the same embrace that he felt all those years ago striking up those chords. “When you start playing with a band, you feel that camaraderie in that community,” he concludes. “I was just like ‘It doesn't get better than this’. That's why I'm still in a band.”