High June is a five piece alternative rock band hailing from Greenville, NC. The band started out as a “college band” and released their first single, “Crazy ‘Bout You” in July of 2023. The band now is touring the United States with bands such as Dexter and The Moonrocks and The Black Crowes.
High June consists of Hayden Church on the drums, Will Sain on the lead guitar, Jack Flowers, as the lead vocalist, James Barbee on the rhythm guitar and Ryon Gerringer on the bass guitar and accompanying vocals.
I was fortunate enough to be able to set up an interview with four of the five members: Hayden, Will, Jack and James.
How long have you been together?
JACK: We’ve had this lineup a little over two and a half years, coming up on three in like a couple months.
How did you get this lineup?
HAYDEN: We had a- like a previous version of the band that wasn’t releasing original music and we wanted to. I mean that’s what we really wanted to do cause who doesn’t and we just knew we needed um the right people in the circle and the other people that were with us just weren’t cutting it for one reason or another. And we had a flyer to find him (Jack). We found him (James) just kinda out on the town drinking and having a good time and you made your argument pretty good (speaking to James). And then we found Jack through a friend. We were out flyering around the campus we used to attend.
JACK: They were passing out big ass, big flyers that were like “Looking for singer for a rock band.”
HAYDEN: And your friend (speaking to Jack) like walked away and came back. Cause he was like “I don’t sing.” And then he came back and he said “Wait but I know someone.” And were like “Well please tell him. It’s been like three months.”
JACK: And then I feel like Will DM’ed me and was like “Hey, do you wanna come like try out for this band?” And was like “No.” Like cause I just didn’t sing rock music. I did like slow country, pop music. So I just never- I never- I didn’t know anything about rock. It was like an alien world to me so. After a little bit of [time], a couple months later he DM’ed me again and was like “Why don’t you just come jam, like just come hang out.” And I was like “Dude, I’ll play music with anybody. Like let’s- let’s go.” And yeah, yeah I’ve been stuck with them since.
HAYDEN: Yeah and that’s actually a big part of why we liked him. Um at least Will and myself, I don’t want to speak for James or Ryon that’s not here but, is that we- just there’s a lot of rock bands out right not that are very much just trying to be what they love, which is you know there’s no hate towards that but it feels inauthentic and we thought having someone that wasn’t from the space and wouldn’t be trying to copy someone that they looked up to could add a unique twist. But also just the songwriting style of pop music, trying to layer that in, or you know slow country, but trying to layer that in with rock instrumentals could lead to some pretty cool sounding songs.
How did you pick the band name “High June?”
HAYDEN: That was actually Ryon’s-
JAMES: Yeah that was our bassist. He- some lyrics from a Led Zeppelin song, um “Kashmir.” It’s like “the dust that blows high in June.”
WILL: Something like that, yeah.
HAYDEN: We were 311 for a short bit.
JAMES: Cause that was their dorm, like their dorm at ECU, 311. And then it was No Quarters.
HAYDEN: And then- but we got told 311 was a rock band. I really liked 311. That was a good one. It was simple and short, but it’s already a band so who cares.
JACK: And No Quarters like, this was all before I was here but No Quarters, the like one of the ECU slogans, um and so they did that for a while. They probably would have gotten sued.
HAYDEN: Yeah. I don’t think any of us actually liked it. We just couldn’t come up with anything.
WILL: We needed a placeholder.
HAYDEN: We were just like well what else. At least then people will know we got school spirit or something.
What would you say inspires your music the most?
HAYDEN: Wanna take that one? (Speaking to Will)
WILL: I really don’t know. I mean it’s always like when we’re writing we’ll just kinda mess around and see what sticks and if it inspires the group we’ll work on it. If it doesn’t, we’ll- everyone will kinda tell him and we’ll just move on. And our songwriting process kinda starts with either I’ll bring a riff, Jack will bring a melody or lyrics or something will come up and we just crank it out.
JACK: Yeah. I think a lot of the- uh like it’s different every single time. Cause I mean you know we might be talking about something, I always think back like there was one time we wrote a full song about like a widow that our bass player had met one day in like a coffee shop and just like started talking and we’ll like start writing about that. Our EP that has “Coming Home Soon” and “Heartbeat,” “The Chase,” those songs on it um I had just like gotten out of a breakup so that was like perfect. “Hey we’re about to go make our first EP.” And that was like prime-time. Yeah they (bandmates) make fun of me cause I very rarely write music that isn’t about some girl somewhere. But yeah I mean a lot of the times it’s just us sitting there and if something happens, it happens. It’s like lightning strikes. And if it doesn’t, we move on.
HAYDEN: I think- I think it’s really interesting though cause we all have such different, maybe not so now I think we’re kinda starting to blend together a little bit but especially when we met we had such different tastes in music. And like we kinda knew that could lead to some conflict but at the same time we were like “If we can harness it in the right way-”
WILL: We all had to learn how to compromise.
HAYDEN: Yeah it can make some really cool- cool stuff cause I like I’m a metal drummer and that’s what I learned to play drums to. And then you know James over here, you’re (Speaking to James) a big Eagles guy.
JACK: And yacht rock.
HAYDEN: Yacht rock so. Yeah especially like those two with metal drums and slow country and we (Gesture to Will) fit a little bit better because you’re like Foo Fighters and-
WILL: Guns N’ Roses.
HAYDEN: Guns ‘N Roses which isn’t metal but it’s kinda adjacent at least and trying to get five dudes all who think that their taste is good and they’ll never admit that it’s good but you can still compromise on it and make something work I think which is really a challenge but lead to some cool moments.
WILL: We also try not to like constrict ourselves to the genre. Like all of our songs I think sound different but all sound like us if that makes sense. If it sounds good but it might be more country or it might be more metal or might be whatever. If it’s good, it’s good to us and we’ll work on it.
When looking for members, were you exclusively looking for men or did you entertain the idea of women or people of different identities?
HAYDEN: That’s just kinda how it worked out I guess. It wasn’t that we-
WILL: We had a couple females try out for singers.
HAYDEN: Yeah we did, I forgot about that.
WILL: Yeah, but once we found Jack it was like “We gotta go with him.”
What does a writing session usually look like?
JACK: So usually it’s I mean we meet mandatory four days a week to sit and write music. It’s not always writing music. Sometimes we’re putting together like a new setlist for shows we have coming up and running through that and going through different gimmicks or things that we have in there. Sometimes it’s business and we have to sit down and have meetings. Sometimes we’re just getting content. But when we sit down for a writing session, again a lot of the time it’s just somebody brings and idea whether it’s a riff from one of these two guys (Gesture to James and Will) or a drum piece or I just come up with some lyrics and I’m like “Guys I love this melody.” Um we just kinda start from there. Recently, we’ve kinda switched it up a little bit.
HAYDEN: Last couple days.
JACK: Yeah, last couple days. Just because we looked back at a catalog of demos that we have and we were like “Man we’ve got like 30, 40 songs here that we just aren’t working on.” And so we were like “Let’s go back.” And so what we’ve done, which I really think is funny, is we listened to every single demo and then everybody in the band gets one vote, 1 out of 5 and we then take that, average it out, and you know you get like a 4.8, we had one 5.
HAYDEN: We had one 5.
JACK: We had one 5 and everyone was like “We have to work on this one.” But out of all the songs, that went down the lowest was like 2.8. And so we just started with the top five, we worked on those to get those like down the best we could. And then after that, someone would be like “Hey, pick a number between 1 and 30” and then whatever number they pick, because no one has memorized the list, so then you just go back, you go to that number on the list of the ranking and then we start working on that whether it’s the lowest ranked song or the highest ranked song. I feel like they all have potential in their own ways. One person might think it’s their favorite, one person might hate it. So just kinda forcing ourselves to work through it and you know we’ll start working on it. If it lasts 10 minutes and we’re not really feeling it, we move on. It’s all about the vibes and like making sure that energy is still in the room. And then other times, we’ll be working on one song for two and a half hours straight and trying to figure it out.
WILL: We’ve also recently started recording everything we do. We used to not do that and then we’d forget a riff or forget a melody line. So now we’ve kinda eliminated that problem, which is nice.
What does a writing session look like physically? (paper, tabs, software)
JACK: No one writes any- we don’t have any sheet music. None of that. So we record everything through stims. Like we have everything through Logic Pro.
WILL: It’s multi-tracked.
JACK: Yes, so we multi-track it so like if we want to go back and listen to it, I can mute myself and just listen to one bit playing a million times over.
JAMES: And another thing too is as soon as you listen to it, it comes right back to you. A lot of these songs, you forget about them for a couple months, you listen to it one time, you know exactly what you’re playing so just bring it back up and we’ll write on it for an hour or two.
HAYDEN: Yeah, I was gonna say on that note like what’s nice about listening back too is like I don’t know if y’all ever listen to other music and you’re like “Why are they doing it this way? Like I would have done it this way.” You almost get to do that to yourself where you’re like “Why? Why was I playing that?” when it’s so obviously this instead. And so that happened a couple times the last few days where I’m listening back and I’m like clearly I listened to something that I was trying to like replicate or force into that song where it’s so clearly a completely different direction.
JAMES: And everything acoustic has helped with that too.
HAYDEN: Hundred percent.
JAMES: Where we can hear everybody.
HAYDEN: We switched to that the last couple days and I don’t think that’s gonna be a main stay but we’ve been-
WILL: The weather’s been so nice outside we’ve just been outside for hours playing acoustic guitar.
HAYDEN: Yeah on the front porch, jamming.
How did you as a band get to the point you’re at now?
JACK: Honestly just not stopping. I feel like so many people wait for something to happen and for us like you know we were lucky enough to you know all really be passionate about this and have this be something that we wanted to do. We all met at college here when we were all still students and so you know we all talked and our first dream in life was to play at Pantana Bob’s in Greenville and we were like “If we can do that by senior year, we’ve made it.” And which is like crazy to look back on. But with that said you know it was just you know once we played one show and we met one band that was a little bit bigger than us and we would just be like “Alright like if we could just get to that level” and so it was just a constant grind and we’re still at that point where like you know we’re constantly meeting bands that are bigger than us and we’re like “Alright if we just get there” but we still know in the back of our head that it’s never gonna stop and so we want to grow this as much as we can but it’s just being consistent.
WILL: I was gonna say, a lot of self reflection too. Like we’ll play shows and the second we’re off stage we’re all going “What could have gone better? What could we do next time?” Same with songwriting like you’ll go back and like I don’t listen to our songs personally but if I do I’m like “I wish I did that instead” and you kinda have that in mind going forward.
HAYDEN: Yeah, I think really just working hard enough to allow the possibility of luck or fortunate events to take place cause I really think you, I mean obviously occasionally people just get lucky on a whim but most of the time the luck was a result of putting yourself in the right positions and places consistently over time.
There’s a certain vulnerability to that, how did you overcome that?
WILL: I think we all just kinda have each other as our own support system. Like we kinda view it’s like us against the world like I don’t know.
JACK: Hundred percent.
What about when you first started out?
JACK: I mean it was the same thing you know. When we started out, it was “Hey we all wanna do this, we all wanna play music, we want to you know play loud guitar in front of a bunch of people who wanted to listen to us.” And so we played many a shows that there was no one there or no one was listening or no one cared and it was like you know it just became this thing of kinda taking that as a chip on the shoulder like “We’re gonna make them listen. They’re going to hear us by the end of this.” And you know like reaching out to people like I still to this day will reach out to five to ten bands that are way bigger than us. I do that probably once a week and you know we’ll hear back from maybe one or two of them if I’m really lucky but you know it’s always just trying to like its just taking that chance and again you know you gotta kinda make fun of yourself because you know we look back on all the worst shows that we’ve had or all the biggest mistakes like that’s what we joke with each other about the most and being like and then when we have those amazing moments being able to look back and be like “Hey how crazy is it? You remember when we were playing that show and that place and there was no one there and no one cared and now we have this” and it’s obviously we still have a long way to go but-
HAYDEN: I think a lot of it also boils down to just at least my mindset for the longest time especially early on facing a lot of rejection whether it was from the scene and other areas or through venues or whatever it was just how badly you want it and that was the question that repeatedly had to be asked because you go to post a TikTok and you feel embarrassed about it and it’s like “Do I want to be in a successful band more than I don’t want to be embarrassed” and you just kinda have to have that in the back of your mind. “Do I want to risk being annoying to that person you know more than being in a successful band or am I repeating the same thing the tenth email even though they might you know I mean who cares if I annoy that person? I’m in pursuit of something that we really want to do.”
How do you get along outside of the music?
HAYDEN: We don’t. We hate each other.
JACK: We hate all of our members. No I mean it’s definitely a lot sometimes cause you know we live together. James lives with his brother like half a mile down the road.
HAYDEN: James gets to escape. James gets away.
JACK: James gets to get out of here.
JAMES: It’s awesome, I don’t have to see these guys if I don’t want to. I can come back anytime.
JACK: He’s here six days a week but-
HAYDEN: He has an escape.
JACK: He sleeps on the couch on the weekends.
HAYDEN: When we moved in we signed a lease the four of us before everything really started in terms of like actually being a national touring band and having a fanbase outside of Raleigh and maybe Greenville. So we signed the lease and we were like “This is gonna be great. We’re gonna get to work together all the time.” And we had the goal of hitting 100,000 monthly listeners by this upcoming June and doing so by living together. Then everything happened like two months after we signed the lease and now we tour together, we’re roommates, we work together day to day. So, we get along but it’s definitely not without its-
WILL: We have arguments but we get over it because we know we want to-
JACK: I always say any band that tells you that they like all love each other and their friends all the time is lying. Those guys actually hate each other. That’s actually bad.
HAYDEN: We’ll get into some arguments.
JAMES: We have like a brotherhood.
JACK: Exactly like we’re brothers in this and we’re family and like our families would become kinda our extended families of each other like it’s that’s how it is. But yeah we meet some bands sometimes that are like “Oh we love each other, we never argue or fight” and I’m like those guys hate each other.
HAYDEN: Those guys are lying!
JACK: Like those guys are actually just waiting to scream. But we will just scream. And then we wake up the next day and we dap each other up and we get back to work and that’s how it has to be. Cause I mean you know when we-
HAYDEN: We’ll go out drinking together and stuff.
JACK: Like yeah let’s go get a couple of beers and let’s call it a day.
HAYDEN: And we’ll go bowling couple times.
JACK: Yeah we’ll have family outings.
What was your favorite performance?
JACK: I always say um it was the Louisville Palace in Kentucky, we opened for the Black Crowes and it was a sold out show and yeah I had some family there and I remember like looking out and I saw like my parents who like- it can be tough to like go to college and then tell your family “Hey I’m gonna be in a band.” So obviously that can be a little bit difficult but I think that that was the one where like a lot of, especially that tour.
WILL: All of our parents came to those show.
JACK: All of our parents made some of those shows and so that was like that tour with them I think was the one where they all kinda saw us have the ability to be able to grow into that space and really be able to flourish within the industry and so when it comes to- but yea that one for me.
HAYDEN: James? (Gesture to James)
JAMES: I’m gonna have to go with a little smaller than that and say the State Theatre show. We just recently did a headliner at the State Theatre and I’ve always just been partial to those shows cause it’s like a good time. Everyone was rowdy. Greenville’s an insane place to play.
JACK: Yeah.
JAMES: And they just love us here so it was really cool, we got to go out drinking with your friends afterwards.
WILL: Mine was Verona in New York with the Black Crowes and that’s because it was connected to a casino. That was a wild one. That was-
JACK: Yeah he was up after. Not all of us were.
HAYDEN: I’m gonna say honestly I haven’t said Verona but I was thinking about it while we were sitting here. That was one that like maybe the crowd wasn’t necessarily the rowdiest or anything but I remember we were the third show in on the Black Crowes date and the first two we were kinda nervous, it was new and that third one I remember we just walked up on that stage like we-
WILL: And we owned it.
HAYDEN: Yeah we were just we had fallen into that rhythm and we were so ready for that and we got to go gambling which was great.
WILL: There was like security guards there that were driving us around in their vans.
JAMES: That was fun.
JACK: I was thinking you were gonna say Pittsburg.
HAYDEN: Pittsburg was great too, I really like that one.
JACK: That was our last tour with Dexter and The Moonrocks.
What’s next?
JACK: Well we have- so honestly we’ve just been recording as much music as we could, or writing as much music as we could so we’re kinda just putting together our release plan for the rest of the year and seeing how that’s gonna be working out. We just recorded our next single which we’re hoping to release some time in April.
HAYDEN: I think last year we only released four songs and we weren’t- I don’t think any of us were happy.
JACK: That was not okay.
HAYDEN: We were happy with the music we released but not necessarily the amount over the time period because I don’t know we were just sitting here like “If this was a band I was listening to, I’d be kinda pissed off right now.” We need to get some stuff out so we’re trying to get-
JACK: As much music out as we can this year. On top of that we also we’re doing a small little tour for the end of March with Cigarettes @ Sunset. And then we’ll be coming back I think we’re doing one or two frat shows at the end of March and then all of April will be on the road hitting-
WILL: Oh we’re doing Rocklahoma. We’re doing a big festival in Oklahoma. We’re excited for that.
HAYDEN: It’s a busy year and I think it’s good cause all this stuff kinda happened last year with the online videos doing well and kinda getting us to where we are at now and then we all just kinda- there was all this craziness and then there was like three months of “Well all the touring for right now is booked so you’re gonna be touring for a little bit and you don’t really have the money to do an album.” So we’re gonna get some singles out. It was very boring and this year we’re kinda finally getting back into the groove of being able to tour, release more music and really make the most of the people who are giving us the chance to do that.
JACK: As many shows as possible, as many songs as possible.
Do you ever get nervous/still get nervous?
HAYDEN: Everytime.
JAMES: Yep.
JACK: Every single time.
WILL: It’s always like the first song for me and then once we’re past the first song on stage, I’m locked in.
HAYDEN: It’s the first song.
Whom would you like to collaborate with in the future?
HAYDEN: Ooh I would love- I was gonna say Brent Smith, he’s the singer of Shinedown. I just feel you two would go well together. (Gesture to Jack)
JACK: Oh yeah yeah. I feel you, he’s a killer singer.
HAYDEN: Like getting him on a verse or something. I don’t know if rock singers do that or not.
JACK: That’s the weird thing is like you know I feel like when you think about like rappers or like pop artists or country, I think there’s so many people who collaborate on stuff and I feel like rock, it’s kinda weird because you have two full bands so I feel like usually it’s like “Oh we’re gonna bring in the guitarist from that place and they’re gonna do a solo for us or we’re gonna bring in a singer and he’s gonna do a verse and a chorus and harmonize on the third.” I don’t know, I always think that collaborating in the rock scene, it’s not down as much as I wish it was. We’ve talked to a couple people about trying to do some stuff and nothing has like followed fully through. I think we all probably have artists that we love that we’d want to work with. I’ve talked with them (the band) and we’ve all kinda agreed we would want, in 20 years from now when we’re off touring for a couple months, James goes plays in a yacht rock band and gets to do that, and I get to go sing in a country band and you know he (Hayden) gets to go play for a metal band you know for the couple months he has off. We want to do so much within the music industry and right now High June is our outlet for that and we all love it. I mean James and I are gonna go play a show tonight at a bar right down the street, just us playing, we’re gonna be playing country music and piano and you know like slow originals and so.
HAYDEN: So that being said, who would you want to collaborate with, Jack?
JACK: Treaty Oak, I love Treaty Oak. I’m just gonna say them as well.
HAYDEN: James, you?
JAMES: Derek Trucks.
HAYDEN: Who’s that?
JAMES: He’s a guitar player.
HAYDEN: From who?
JAMES: From Tedeschi Trucks Band and a couple others.
HAYDEN: I’ll look em up.
JAMES: You should.
WILL: I have never thought that, who would I want to collaborate with.
JAMES: Well all my, all my heroes are dead or dying.
*All laugh*
JAMES: So I don’t know. I mean Pearl Jam would be awesome. I love the way that their guitarists play. Especially Stone Gossard kinda just- yeah.
JAMES: Oh! The band Sticky Fingers!
What is your favorite song on your own?
JAMES: Oh. Skip me. We’ll circle back.
JACK: Well, I really- I really love “Coming Home Soon.” Like I know it’s our top song but that was one that we made and I don’t know I feel like that was one I got everything out I needed to say.
WILL: Right now, and I think I say this every time it’s a new song but “Girl Next Door” is my favorite, so.
HAYDEN: I’m not- um “What I Need” I think. I would change a little about what I’m doing on it but I still just love the rest of it, the guitar and vocals and everything. Um James?
JAMES: Probably “Someday,” is my favorite. It’s fun to play live and it’s fun to listen to.
HAYDEN: It’s got a bit of a deep cut too.
JACK: Also again that’s why it’s so weird some of the stuff that we do on it.
WILL: Yeah it’s different, it’s really different.
JACK: Yeah that’s fun.
Do you consider yourselves successful? If yes, when did you cross the line into being a successful band? If not, what needs to happen for you to consider yourselves successful?
HAYDEN: I’d say happy but not satisfied, so whatever the equivalent of that in success is. We’re successful but not without it’s concerns. You know we’re not to the point where we can just kinda do whatever.
WILL: I think for me it’s been building the team we have around us. Like getting the manager we have, the booking agent, attorney. It’s nice knowing that there’s outside people who have great experience in this industry and they believe in- they call us a “baby band” all the time, which we are, but they truly do believe in us and then I think that’s- I don’t know that just motivates us.
JACK: I think being like “Are we successful?” I would say yes for where we’re at.
HAYDEN: It’s all relative.
JACK: Yeah it’s all relative but like for where we were a year ago today, the videos, I see the shows that we were playing and the way that we were working and how hard we were working, yes we have definitely taken it up a notch for sure. But, yeah I don’t know this is one we’ve kinda talked about where, like Dexter and The Moonrocks, like we love those guys, they’re insanely talented but when we go play those shows with them, I kinda wanna- I’d love to ask them that question and be like “Hey, I wonder like how do y’all feel” cause you know you have the bands that are their size, then you have the one million, two million and then you have the people that have 60 million monthly listeners who are like the Coldplay of the world and like that are just crazy like the Taylor Swifts the whoever it is. So I don’t know I feel like that in the music scene there’s so many different levels to this and all are in their own way successful. But yeah I feel like we’ve talked about it that until we get a couple million monthly listeners we’re- everyone’s driving their favorite cars and we’re you know playing the music that we love for people who love to hear it, I don’t know if we’ll ever stop.
HAYDEN: We are able to do this on a scale that most people don’t get to and we can recognize what that means for where we were a year ago, like you were saying (Gesture to Jack) and what that means to other people, but at the same time we have a vision of where we want to be and we’re not there yet. Successful but still working. Working toward that goal.
It was an absolute privilege to interview these guys and I hope you enjoyed this interview.
— dj dragonfly
