Talking to the MAYSUNS outside at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub in Del Ray feels like you’re sitting in their living room.
Sitting at a table in front of a mural of iconic musicians (Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison), just around the corner from the music school they attended for years, four out of the six bandmates sat with ALXnow to discuss the latest.
The band will be recording their new and yet-untitled album in two weeks. Their next live gigs are at Songbyrd Music House in DC on July 17 and at Arlene’s Grocery in New York City on July 19.
MAYSUNS features Gabriel Harr as the lead vocalist and guitarist, Max Powell on guitar and backing vocals, bassist and lyricist Beck Moniz, drummer Nathan Argust, keyboardist Shaan Shuster, and saxophonist Kostia Howard — the only band member who isn’t a graduate of T.C. Williams High School (now Alexandria City High School).
The bandmates started playing music together as pre-teens at Rock of Ages Music in Del Ray. Since 2018, the 24-year-olds have let loose in organized fashion throughout the region. Their band, named initially Hanoi Ragmen, won two regional Wammie Awards in 2023 for best rock album and best song.
Now out of college and paying the bills with regular jobs, the band rebranded as MAYSUNS earlier this year and made an extreme move that can either make or break them.
Four band members (pictured above), in January, moved into the same house in Arlington. Their basement has been turned into a production studio.
ALXnow: Were you tortured by your parents into taking piano lessons and learning to play classical music as small children?
Harr: I started playing classical violin when I was three. I played it for 11 years, and torture is a great word. That teacher is now really cool, but when I was a kid, it totally bummed me out.
Moniz: Yeah, I think we were all subjected to some kind of lessons. Starting right at around seven years old, I was in a church handbell choir until I was like 13 or 14. Gabe (Harr) and I went to elementary school together. We played recorders and stuff in music class, and we were in the school band from fourth grade onwards. I played oboe, and he played every other instrument under the sun. We started playing rock together in fifth grade at a summer camp in a band called Blackout, and the other one was Panic Attack. Then we made our own offshoot of that, which was called Toxic Sludge.
Powell: I started classical piano when I was seven, and I did that until I was 12 or 13, and then I found out all these guys were in bands (at ROAM) and playing Pink Floyd and all the cool music my dad showed me, and I was like, ‘This isn’t what I’m doing now.’
Argust: I just was always into rock drumming, and my parents supported me. They bought me a drum set when I was eight, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
ALXnow: Where did you get the name MAYSUNS?
Powell: It’s partially a nod to the Masonic Temple as a unique piece of our Alexandrian experience. May is when we’d meet up to do summer runs after getting home from our respective colleges. It kinda felt like an annual rebirth of sorts, and getting “sun” out of the wordplay was a nice touch after looking for something elemental for a while.
ALXnow: What’s it like living in the band house together?
Moniz: It’s very loud.
Powell: Especially when we’re not playing anything… When we have an album to record or a show to play, that’s when we’re really buckling down in the basement, you know, really trying to tighten up these riffs and write our parts and make everything sound solid. I think that’s like the best, as long as there’s a goal in mind.
ALXnow: What’s the deal with the new album?
Powell: We have five songs that we’ve been working on for years, and then we’re writing five right now. We’ve been writing for five over the past month, and we’re trying to do an album in a couple of weeks.
Harr: We’re recording it at 38 North Studio in Falls Church. Shout-out to Reese Clutter. They’ve been great. We worked with them on our last three releases.
ALXnow: How do you write your songs?
Powell: The way we usually get to it is one person has the idea, and they’re like the CEO of the song, and then everyone else is kind of the board. Sometimes I have specific ideas for other people’s parts and stuff, but at the end of the day, with the final product, it is collaborative.
ALXnow: Do you all have jobs in the music industry?
Harr: I teach at ROAM, Max (Powell) teaches at ROAM, and Nate dabbles in teaching and is a sound engineer.
Powell: Shaan (Shuster) and Kostia (Howard) are the only members who don’t live locally. They live in New York City … and Kostia works for Meta.
Moniz: I’m a firefighter in Fairfax County. I graduated from the academy in April.
ALXnow: What made you pursue a career as a firefighter?
Moniz: I don’t know. I just always enjoyed it. Every day is something different. Some days it’s crazy, some days I do absolutely nothing. That’s the beauty of it. I’m pretty useless behind a desk, so driving in a big fire truck that is very red and loud and having an excuse to do it and get paid for it makes me very happy.
ALXnow: Do you, as musicians, feel that you’re performing in an increasingly outdated art form?
Moniz: Absolutely. I feel like in the DC area, something that I’ve, I’ve noticed a lot living here my whole life, especially the last few years as a working musician, the degree to which people don’t care about the arts, man, it’s a huge bummer. People will go see bands play their favorite cover tunes at a bar on a Friday night, and that’s technically catching live music, but look, man, I don’t care if you go see our show, but you should go catch a show at a venue that you’ve never been to, and a band you have no idea what you’re about to expect, because that’s the kind of music that actually matters. Those are people who are being as sincere as possible, and you’re missing it.
Harr: I know so few people who are developing a sense of what they love and like that isn’t on their phone. Live music is one of these art forms that you can actually go to a show and you can start screaming and heckling at the musician on stage, and they’ll start playing loud music right into your head. That’s actual interaction and engagement, and I feel like DC and Northern Virginia are missing out on that cool scene and experience.
Argust: Honestly, the state of live music at this point, it’s like, with music being so heavily commodified with Spotify and things like that, it’s really amazing that people still go out to shows when you can just access it whenever you want. It is a little endearing that we’re able to still bring people out and bring people together. It’s really cool.
ALXnow: What’s the plan for the band? Where do you want it to go?
Powell: It’s a complex thing to answer. A lot of my musical heroes are of the opinion that you’ve got to go all-in, that you’ve got to make music for yourself first, and that success comes later.
Harr: Something that we’ve always agreed upon and has felt like the impetus for the band is that we just want to make good records. The actual act of being in the studio together, being in a basement, and writing new music is what made this something that we wanted to do when we were kids. It’s what makes us want to do it even when we’re 24 and have jobs and personal life stresses and all that sort of stuff. This is a special band, because I’ve played with a million bands, and when I play with this one on stage, I laugh and smile and shout and scream more than I do with anybody else.
Moniz: The chemistry that we have is strong. I mean, we’ve been best friends since middle school, Gabe (Harr) and I since kindergarten, essentially. As long as this band exists, I’m in it. These are my guys, these are my brothers. As long as we’re still making music, I’m there.
ALXnow: Want to give a shoutout to ROAM?
Powell: Absolutely. I don’t think we’d be around as a band if it didn’t exist. We wouldn’t have done any of this stuff. All of us started there, we had the mentorship, we had the ability to hone our talents and get that stage presence, and get that idea of what it actually looks like and feels like to be a professional musician.
