Nashville indie pop trio Moody Joody are a band you can party out hard to at the bar, without being ashamed of taking a break to shed a few tears in the bathroom. 

Stream: “OOPS!” – Moody Joody

We want people showing up at our shows and screaming or crying the lyrics back to us and just letting it all go with us.

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“There’s always a yin to the yang” and “There are always two sides to a coin” et al. are cherished expressions… but maybe getting a little overused at this point?

If you’re looking for a more updated idiom that captures the spirit of those old ones, here’s something you might try: “There’s always a Moody to a Joody!“

Such is the guiding philosophy of this three-piece band featuring Katie Forbes on guitar, Kayla Hall on the keyboard, and Andrew Pacheco as the supporting producer. They hail from different parts of the USA – St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and New Jersey, respectively – but all wound up setting up shop in Nashville, as many aspiring musicians do. After crossing paths in Music City, they decided to form a group which would pool together their various performing talents, while also being able to shift freely between more serious and more playful lyrical terrain so as to cover a maximal amount of thematic terrain.

“We want to tell the stories that are more lighthearted, and then we want to talk about the things that are deeper,” explains Hall, who shares lead vocalist status with Forbes. As she and her bandmates see it, it’s good to make songs that are either “Moody” or “Joody” that’ll get listeners alternating between thinking and parting hard, allowing them to ultimately achieve a complete and compelling listening experience out of each of their records.

That general mantra has given ride to both the band’s name (“Moody Joody”) and the two-pronged approach to songwriting that has characterized each of their principal projects, starting with their first official single, “Velvet Connection” (2023), and debut EP, Dream Girl, the following year (which was featured in Atwood Magazine’s Best EPs of 2024 feature).

Their two most recent singles carry on tradition: “OOPS!” is an upbeat ode to living the celebratory lifestyle, while “Loretta’s Last Call” is a solemn, though energetic ode to moving on from past romantic faux pas. These two songs are a collective warmup for both the band’s as-of-yet unnamed debut album, due later this year, and springtime tour alongside Arizona rock band, The Maine. (Yes, a little confusing. But they are a cool band!)

Atwood Magazine spoke with all three members of Moody Joody to hear their thoughts on the critical nascent period the band is finally on the verge of wrapping up right about now.

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A CONVERSATION WITH MOODY JOODY

Katie Forbes: We all have very different musical backgrounds. I love indie rock bands, like Arcade Fire, The National, and Band of Horses – that kind of realm. The War on Drugs is always my most streamed artist on Spotify. But I also love so many other things. I love pop music – ’80s pop, Depche Mode. It’s all over the place.

Kayla Hall: I grew up listening to a lot of country music, like top artist Shania Twain, and my parents always had Tom Petty and the Eagles playing in the house. And then my older sister was like the cool indie. She was the one who would show me artists like Jax Mannequin and the 1975, and she was always finding these bands or artists before they were big. So I have a lot of musical influence from her. That’s kind of what I grew up on.

Andrew Pacheco: My first favorite band was the Counting Crows. And then I got into more emo, alternative-leaning stuff for a while, like Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional. Then I got into indie pop music when the 1975 and Bleachers first came out. So, yeah – we all love everything. We all love all kinds of music. And I think that the band has just become like this melting pot of all our different influences and tastes. We all do love a lot of the same things, so it just kind of works out that we’re each able to kind of sprinkle in a little of our own tastes. We all love it, and it just becomes a Moody Joody song.

Kayla: The start of the band was honestly like kind of an accident. Katie and I had talked about starting a girl band for years before we ever actually formed a song together. And we brought the heat to Andrew and asked him, “Do you want to finish this song with us? We don’t know what to do with it.” And so, we put the song out.

Katie: It was all so quick. We didn’t have any other music at the time. We just threw a song out during COVID, and people started asking us, “Are you going to put more music out?” We were like, “I guess we should.” And so, we would write a song, put it out, write a song, put it out. We’ve always wanted to put out a record, like a full album, but it was kind of just playing catch up. So, we made the EP first. We’re very conceptual people, so we wanted to have Dream Girl be somewhere where we could land in that world. And then after Dream Girl, it was full-scale album mode.

Andrew: So, we just finished an album that’ll come out this year. But yeah, like she said: Before the EP, it was all just singles. But we just love albums. We’re such album people and not just pop-single people. So, it was really important for us to like get to that point, and we’ve finally been able to build that world.

Kayla: We want to be able to give people a top-to-bottom listen, for sure.

Andrew: I think that – sonically speaking, at least – we’ve kind of just settled into what makes us “us” at this point. A lot of our early songs were made before we were even playing live shows. So, one thing that’s kind of influenced the new music a lot is touring – being on stage and getting to hear our songs with live drums in a room. A lot of the new music is a little more organic and leaning on live instrumentation and live drums mixed with synths. It’s still not a complete departure from our early stuff, but we’re just exploring new things and kind of giving ourselves the chance to make a whole project, not just singles. I think that, at least in terms of the music and production, it’s definitely kind of settled into this fully realized vision that we had from the start, in a way.

Kayla: Yeah. And just musically, it’s about being able to show up in full confidence. We talk about how owning your humanness has been a big ethos for the band since we started. And I think, since we have been in a band for six years, we just have such a chemistry now that it’s really easy and organic to write songs that are vulnerable and about our real lives. We’re able to show up in full confidence and achieve the embodiment of the messages that we want to put out into the world with this album.

Kayla: Andrew is always kind of categorizing our songs into “Moody” songs or “Joody” songs. I would say that “Loretta’s Last Call” is more of a “Moody” song. It’s a little more vulnerable; it goes deep into a breakup and a longing and yearning and that more “feeling” side. And then, on the other side is “OOPS!,” which would be like a “Joody” song, which is the more lighthearted party. Going out, dancing with your girlfriends, funky – that kind of world. Again, we were drawing on that concept of “owning your humanness.” We want to tell the stories that are more lighthearted, and then we want to talk about the things that are deeper, like heartbreak. We are very strategic with how we want to showcase the album as all of those things.

Andrew: There are those two contrasting sides to a band where we love exploring a full spectrum of emotions. So, I think it was important for us to put out a song like “OOPS!” and follow it up with a song like “Loretta’s Last Call” to kind of keep people on their toes and ensure them that this album is going to cover a lot of emotional ground.

Kayla: There’s a little bit of everything on that album. There’s a lot of variety. That’s awesome.

Andrew: That’s how we kind of think about it, honestly, Conceptually, we’re like, “It’s a ‘Moody song’ versus a ‘Joody song.'”

Katie: It’s completely done as of about a week ago. It feels so good to have it done. We’ve got all the visuals done and we shot another music video just a couple days ago, so everything’s finally coming together, which feels incredible. I think our biggest wish is just that people feel seen when they listen to this album. We cover a lot of ground and a lot of different emotions, like Kayla said, and we would just love to reach people in a way that makes them feel less alone.

We want people showing up at our shows and screaming or crying the lyrics back to us and just letting it all go with us, because this album very much is like a declaration and it’s very vulnerable. It feels like a new chapter for us, just reaching new lengths of vulnerability.

Kayla: Yes, we get to play at Nashville – a hometown show – and every time we’ve gone on tour, we’ve gotten to play a different venue. So, it’s been really cool to just see the progression of getting to play all these different venues.

Andrew: There are a few spots we haven’t hit yet that we’ll get to hit on this tour, like some new places in Texas and some in Florida, where we haven’t played before.

Kayla: Yes, we have two Florida shows. I think just getting to play the new music live for the first time [will be fun]. For instance, this will be the first time that we’re bringing “Loretta’s Last Call” into the live show. So, finally getting to play some of these like album songs and bring a whole new energy to our shows is going to be really, really fun for us.

Katie: I feel we’ve been pretty hyper-focused on this album. We’ve been one-track minds, trying to finish it.

Andrew: But now that it’s done, we’re just itching to play it live.

Kayla: We were, like: “Deluxe version, question mark?” I’ve got the writing itch back for sure, because I think now it’s like, “Oh, I’m miss writing.” But we’ve definitely been working towards this as a band for so long, and now we’re fully leaned in, locked in, and ready to go on this album. Knowing us, we’ll be right back in the studio soon, as we’re always working on something. We love a new project.

Katie: Coffee.

Kayla: We do all bond over coffee.

Andrew: Yeah, we love trying new spots,

Katie: Yeah, foodies and coffee.

Katie: Oh yeah. We were definitely born over coffee.

Kayla: Wait, did you say you’re Boston-based? Have you been to the bar, Loretta’s Last Call?

Katie: Cool. Well, that’s the bar that inspired the song’s title.

Andrew: We were playing at the House of Blues on our last tour. It’s down the street from there, right?

Kayla: Something like that. What happened was that we were in Philly the show before. My ex’s sister was our tour manager at the time, and her family came to the show. Her mom, her other sister and I just had a really big crash-out over my ex. And then the next day when we were playing in Boston, I was walking with his sister to get coffee and debrief the crash-out over her brother. And I looked over and saw Loretta’s Last Call, and I wrote it in my notes. And then later, I wrote the song. The feeling of crying over your ex in the bar bathroom and crashing out over an ex lives in the energy of this chorus.

Andrew: Yeah, pour one out for us!

Moody Joody: Thank you so much! Take care. Bye.

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