Life & Work with Bena and Wyatt

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bena and Wyatt.

Hi Bena and Wyatt, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Clavicle started off as a lo-fi bedroom project. We (Bena and Wyatt) met playing in a church band together during high school, became friends (we eventually started dating), and decided to form our own project, often going to parks or graveyards to write lyrics along to Wyatt’s guitar. We actually recorded an album on our own using Garageband with just us two and put it on Bandcamp. It was from there that Elliot from MCP reached out and asked us to play a show. We ended up finding a drummer and practicing for hours, so we were ready for our first-ever show as Clavicle.

After that, we started playing more and recorded our first EP “Ghost Living” in 2018. We went on a few East Coast tours, played with a few national acts, and kept writing. We even created an event called “Make Mom Proud” at the college I went to, having multiple artists from the area of North Georgia play, including Clavicle. During 2020, the only thing we were able to do was to write and record, so we did so, and our second EP “Rest” released in Fall of 2020. After that, we kept writing, and in 2021, we started playing live again. In the Fall of 2021, we got married and even played a Clavicle set at our wedding in our full wedding attire!

This summer (2023), we released our third album entitled “Good Manners” and released a music video for our song “Every Day is Halloween.” We have played a few shows this year after the release, including Market Hugs. We have a show planned at the Masquerade in October of this year and continue to pursue writing new music, practicing weekly, and playing shows!

Clavicle is a way for us to connect and express ourselves through music. We both have full-time jobs; Bena works as a pediatric sonographer, Wyatt works as an electrical engineer, so Clavicle is a way for us to pursue our dream. Music is a huge part of our lives and our relationships, and Clavicle allows us to do what we truly love. We truly enjoy every show, recording music, designing merch, meeting new people through music, and writing as a team. We play as a full band, but the core of Clavicle remains us. It is so nice coming home to your bandmate and best friend!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely, some challenges include having full-time jobs. Balancing our work with our passion can be difficult at times, but we always seem to make it work out in the end!

In addition, it can sometimes be difficult to find a drummer, bass player, and/or second guitarist for every show. You also have to think about the practice time, travel time, etc. We are truly so grateful to everyone who has dedicated time and energy into Clavicle – it means the world to us.

Also, we have to say it, Covid really threw a wrench into the cogs of Clavicle. We hit a great stride in 2019, and we were looking forward to the future when BAM, we couldn’t play live for almost two years! It was so miserable not being able to do what we loved. It almost felt like starting over once we started playing live again. We had changed so much, and so had the world. Overall, we are so thankful to be playing again and doing the Clavicle thing once more!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We have always had a hard time defining our music. I think part of that has to do with having two of us writing songs. How it works is one of us will have an idea and the other will add on or expand upon it. The result is one song that is almost shoegaze and then another song that is twangy on one album. So, I think something that makes us unique is our range of genres.

Clavicle is also a “spooky/Halloween” band I suppose you could say? We always use a lot of ghost or skeleton imagery. We both absolutely LOVE Halloween and monster movies, and it bleeds into Clavicle. If you ever read our lyrics, you will see it there too. Our canvases on Spotify are claymation videos made by Bena using characters like a skeleton, alien, or a grim reaper. Also, being married is rare in the music scene at our age, but being married to your bandmate is even rarer. This is something we feel lucky to have!

In addition, at our live shows, we end up doing a lot of transitions. It makes it to where there is no dead sound between songs. We sometimes have audio clips from our favorite movies (like The Thing) or it may just be a guitar or keys pad playing while we talk over it. We feel like it makes the set an experience. It also makes it seem more professional, which we always try to be, regardless of where we are playing or to how many we play to. We will even set up a projector with old Halloween cartoons playing during our set sometimes.

We are most proud of our newest album “Good Manners” at the moment. Our first two albums we only spent 3-4 days working on. The newest album, we spent about nine months recording. We would work with Dom from Toast and Jam, going once or more a week for hours at a time, hammering out every little detail, making it exactly what we wanted. We truly appreciate his patience and the care he took with our songs. It has also been an honor playing with so many monumental bands and bands that are our influences, like TWIABP, The Appleseed Cast, Weakened Friends, and many more.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Every show you play is a risk in a way. You never know how many people will be there or if they will enjoy your music. But it is always worth taking a risk because you get to play something you have written. And sometimes, people will like it, and then you get to connect with them. That is the best part!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3d4eWd5oLLOWdCZRMObfIz?si=LvuXeAqqSJO7qkK7nZ38XQ&nd=1
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clavicletheband/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/clavicletheband/?ref=bookmarks
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/clavicletheband
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIZsg3eZtDQ
• Other: https://clavicle.bandcamp.com/music

Image Credits
Jared Todd Rachel E. Photography Lori Koser