This Wednesday, MisterWives will perform at the High Noon Saloon with openers BØRNS and Handsome Ghost. Most well known for their hit “Reflections,” MisterWives has sold out the upcoming show in Madison. Last Friday I had the pleasure to chat with the talented Garrett Borns, better known as BØRNS. The interview was really enlightening and he came across as a very genuine musician.
Garrett Borns hails from the state of Michigan, bringing with him his ethereal voice, talented guitar skills and alternative pop style. At the age of 23, he was very honored to be partnered with MisterWives on their Our Own House tour. Madison will be the sixth stop on their tour and Garrett’s first time performing here.
“It’s really cool. They’re super cool. It should be pretty fun to share an audience with them,” Garrett states in regards to performing with MisterWives and Handsome Ghost.
For being in his early 20s and going on a pretty big tour around the United States, Garrett has been receiving a lot of recognition.
“It feels fantastic, I recorded this EP with some really good friends of mine and it’s something that I’m really excited to share with the world so it’s cool to see people responding to it in the way that they are. I didn’t do it for a particular audience, you know, I just had fun making it.”
Candy consists of four songs: “Electric Love,” “10,000 Emerald Pools,” “Seeing Stars” and “Past Lives.” But it was a process to get it down to just those.
“I had a lot of songs and a lot of half-written songs,” Borns said. He wanted most of the songs on Candy to have elemental qualities and feelings of electricity, water, stardust and air. He stated over and over that he wanted this EP to be fun.
I asked Garrett about how he came to the decision to naming his EP Candy.
“Candy is the first lyric in the first song [Electric Love]. And it’s just fun to look at; a little dessert before the meal, you know the main course before the full LP is out.”
Borns’ favorite part about performing is feeding off the crowd energy because he loves interacting with them, and he gets a different energy from each audience. He doesn’t have a set process when writing his songs; he just lets his words flow out his mouth, writing different bits and pieces at a time.
“A lot of times I’ll just have certain words, or phrases, or melodies. I rarely write a song from start to finish […] and then we sort of put it all together in the studio,” Borns says. “I listen to what people say. I guess you could say I’m a sucker for words.”
When he is writing, he gets a lot of inspiration from other music.
“I listen to a lot of different type of music, a lot of doo-wop 50’s style music,” Borns said. “I like Leslie Gore, who sang, ‘It’s My Party,’ and has another one, ‘You Don’t Own Me.’ Really anything that strikes me. I listen to a lot of old stuff and a lot of new stuff.”
Even five years ago as Garrett was just graduating high school he always knew that he wanted to be touring and performing, and now he is doing just that. Hopefully at some point you will be able to catch up and coming artists like BØRNS living their dream.
