Ginkgo Balboa was founded by Mike Bednarsky and Ben Masbaum in 2019. Ben is the quiet genius responsible for the band’s genre-bending sound, and Mike is the sultry singer and scribe who gives a face to the name. Bring together Ben, the multi-instrumentalist, with Mike, the wordsmith, and you have some cool indie sounds!
With eight singles between 2020’s debut EP GinkgoBalboa, and the band’s forthcoming EP, Balloon Duty, Ginkgo Balboa has developed a following in praise of its nuanced, contemporary sound. We had the pleasure to catch up with the duo to discuss their latest project and more!
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. For readers unfamiliar with you and your background, what drew you to a career in music?
Mike Bednarsky: Thanks for having us! I grew up in a family of musicians, so it was what was normal, growing up, and therefore, never felt out of reach as a career. My dad was a jazz guitarist, and my two older brothers sung, danced, played guitar, piano, drums, etc. We were known locally as the musical family in town to the point of the music teachers at my school gave me and my siblings specific attention related to those crafts. My hometown was quite supportive of whatever we aimed to do artistically. I have fond memories of childhood. My musical journey, though, hasn’t been streamlined. I gravitated to writing rather than playing instruments at first, and I think that’s mainly because I possess an “overactive imagination,” as my teachers used to say. My life experiences were so vivid in my mind, and therefore, writing seemed like the appropriate way to communicate those neurological experiences to other people.
Benjamin Masbaum: Very early on, I was participating in one artistic endeavor after another. It was observed and noticed that I was “naturally” creative. Creativity was something that was harnessed and nurtured in me as well as encouraged by my mother and father, who were respectively a painter and a musician. I was given the “hyperactive, attention deficient, learning-disabled” title, which was reflected in my grades as well as my overactive energy and imagination. But regardless of my comprehensive shortcomings, it seemed like art was the only thing I seemed to be good at. From as far back as I can remember, I had a box of charcoal and a sketchbook and I was always drawing and sketching and, if I’m being honest, I kind of impressed myself. By the time I reached the 7th grade I was given an electric Harmony guitar (Strat body) and, let’s just say my fate was sealed at that point. Just as it was with drawing, I had the creative bug, and since I wasn’t really good at much other than that, I knew exactly what I was gonna do. After that, I started playing drums in a band with a couple of friends from high school and I learned pretty much every rock instrument I could. But it wasn’t technical skill on any particular instrument that set me apart. It was the songwriting and composition. For me, I’ve always found that instruments are just tools. I’m an artist before I’m a musician, and music is really just the medium I chose.
Who were your early influences and how did they impact your career?
Mike: I was introduced to the likes of Eric Clapton, Beatles, and Steely Dan at a young age, thanks to my dad. And because my brothers were involved with musical theatre, I became familiar with the music of “Oliver!” “Les Misérables,” “Phantom of the Opera,” etc. My late grandmother, who played classical violin, also introduced me to composers and their works, most prominently as a child, “Peter and the Wolf” by Sergei Prokofiev. I should also mention the ornate hymnal music I would hear at Catholic masses on Sundays. Faith aside, the music was gorgeous. All of these experiences encouraged an expansive mind, whether or not the people in my life even remotely considered that they would affect me as deeply as they have. As for collaborations, having to work with other performers in my childhood helped my problem-solving skills. In adulthood, I was accepted into the University of Iowa’s coveted writing program, the undergraduate leg, and the writing workshops I participated in were quite intense but helped me dissociate from my ego and rather look at writing objectively— any writing at all—so I nowadays aim to utilize what I had learned during that period of my life when working with the band, if it makes sense to. It’s exciting to build things with other people, and when there’s a perspective you become aware of, one that didn’t occur to you initially, real collaboration takes place. It’s a freeing feeling.
Ben: I didn’t naturally gravitate to my parents’ music right away. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that and started appreciating underground and classic music like the Beatles (Thx Mom), Steely Dan (Thx dad), Pink Floyd, and the Zep, as well as some of the underground stuff like Slayer, Mastodon, Faith No More, and Slint (at the time for me, that was “underground”), just to name a few. But I would be remiss not to mention Radiohead and how much their music has influenced me throughout my entire life. There was an old movie theatre-turned-venue a few blocks from where I grew up that welcomed underground metal mostly and showcased a heavy swath of local acts including guys that I would look up to for having gone to the same high school prior to my being there. I made so many friends in my early teen years by going there, watching music, and meeting so many people in the local music scene. And yes, I would later play the venue several times with a couple of different bands I was a part of. After high school, I would make friends with a guy who ran a small record label in Indianapolis called Joyful Noise. My band Lafcadio (Math Metal, as we liked to call it) joined the record label and it was in those days that I really gained so much understanding and insight into a lot of great underground music and musicians that helped to shape the kind of musician I am today. I’ve played shows with bands like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Don Caballero, Marmoset, Of Montreal, and Deerhoof.
Respectively, of your many accomplishments, what are you most proud of and why?
Mike: This Ginkgo Balboa journey is very important to me, and I’m going to be emotionally moved, regardless of where it ends up. All of the creative elements of the band, and our experiences, are all so enriching. It’s not about being lionized, even though being celebrated for your craft, on a grand scale, would be a great honor. A specific accomplishment though? We released a song in 2021 named “Jackie McMullan,” after a famous now-retired sports journalist, and about a year later, she sent our team an email, addressing me personally, praising the song! We’ve become online pen pals since then, and it warms my heart that she both heard the song and took the time to reach out.
Ben: I can’t really pick a “most” proud moment.
Please share with us how and when did you decide to form Ginkgo Balboa?
Mike: I had moved to Los Angeles in 2017 in pursuit of a music career. Up to that point, I had released a few solo studio albums, and a poetry book, performing readings of my book in New York City, rather than performing music. I was in pursuit of a creative writing MFA (Master of Fine Arts). I thought that maybe I could teach songwriting and poetry. It would be more stable than pursuing a career as a music artist, and ideally, I would be an adjunct professor or associate professor who would work at a school in one state during a given year, and then would move to a different school and state, or city, the next! I’m a rolling stone, so traveling is one of the ways I keep my life from being monotonous. But, no matter how hard I tried, I could never rid myself of the strong desire to pursue music, in what I considered to be a big way, so I moved to Los Angeles. And that’s where I met Ben, in 2018. I was looking for more ways to meet people in the LA music scene, and wanted my work efforts to be in fun, people-centric environments.
I landed a logistics position at a beer festival company that featured live music, and that’s where I met Ben. Ironically, that’s where I began my journey within the events industry, which is likely where my career will go if for some reason Ginkgo Balboa doesn’t work out. Event-planning and coordination, sponsorships and activation management, spearheading tours for brands of various industries. I’m passionate about all of that, and such roles usually allow me to travel a lot! I ventured into a whole new world when I moved to LA, personally and professionally, on so many levels! And Ben, as well as Ginkgo Balboa, as a whole, is forever linked to that. We officially formed the band sometime in July or August 2019, embarking on two singles, and a six-song EP together, in a few short, productive months.
Ben: I moved to Los Angeles with my then-wife several years back in search of a career in film. I wanted to put performing music on hold and ultimately become a narrative writer and director. In addition to songwriting, I’ve always enjoyed the art of storytelling. I never took a break from songwriting and working on solo projects recording and honing in on the craft of producing music. After my divorce, I was wandering aimlessly, when I met Mike at a beer and music festival where the both of us were working in logistics as the hired muscle. In talking with him, we noticed a mutual love for math rock and, in particular, Slint.
Please walk us through the process of composing your latest track Palm Trees off your forthcoming album.
Mike: “Palm Trees” was musically based on a bossa nova guitar melody that Ben had composed, I believe in the summer of 2020. He presented it to me right away, and I loved it, but we shelved it for a couple of years. To me, it was a departure from our synth-heavy sound, so I didn’t want to work on it until we had enough songs out that represented a distinctive vibe. I didn’t want to venture into something different until I felt as if we had earned it. The lyrics are romantic, emphasizing a weekend getaway between lovers, which was my instinct to pen when initially hearing the crisp, flowery music. But there was an edginess in the composition that I perceived, and that led me to make the lyrics playfully foreboding. It’s a guy/girl pair, and in this situation, the girl is going to be an accessory to whatever rebellious, questionable decisions the guy decides to make during that getaway. But it’s exciting, and she relishes that. Plus, he’s self-aware enough to poke fun at himself and the way his brain works. It’s a happy song, essentially, but in a twisted way.
Ben: I like that description. One of the ways we write our songs is that Mike will do a great deal of the lyrical to what I have already produced musically. Then I may interject with a lyrical suggestion in order to propel the song in a certain direction and, vice versa, Mike will occasionally interject with various melodic suggestions. We usually write probably a majority of the lyrics each of us respectively sing but with “Palm Trees,” I don’t actually sing in this one, and I really liked the direction Mike was going with the sense of confidence that one gets with the right partner, to want to do nothing but to participate in self-indulgent behaviours. For instance, when Mike wrote the line, “We can buy a house in Spain, live on mountains of cocaine,” he didn’t intend for that line to particularly go past the “scratch vox” stage. He was mostly just freestyling at that point, but I personally loved it and insisted he keep it in and we work on that concept. I added the lines, “maybe I’ll take the blame and go downtown” and “Bonnie and Clyde, just a little dream of mine,” to really drive home the message of lawlessness and invincibility. Musically, this song was supposed to be bossa nova but I’m not sure it really ended that way. I think that I naturally utilize my influences almost unconsciously because, while it wasn’t intended, I can’t help but hear a little bit of Steely Dan. That could be just me and I’m fine with that if no one else hears it. But since our music, like most rock these days, isn’t guitar-driven, rather synth-driven, we wanted, after some deliberation, to change it up just a bit and make this one more guitar-heavy so as to not lose touch with our roots, so to speak. It really is different than the rest of our music but not all too unlike us, I think.
What would you say are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of making music?
Mike: The most challenging and rewarding aspect of making music is the same, to me, which is getting people to understand and buy into your music—literally and emotionally. There’s a dopamine boost when someone highlights our lyrics and recognizes a particular element of them, whether it be the wordplay or sentiment. And when people love our music to the point of seeing us live multiple times or going out of their way to buy our music rather than simply stream it? That’s everything. But it’s so hard. People accept that we’re a band and make music, but for the masses, it’s usually Top 40 radio that will present music in a way that pumps through their bloodstream via ear canal. Some people have to be tricked into liking something, just by being subjected to it all the time. That’s the most frustrating part. We want people to buy into Ginkgo Balboa, in a big way, or at least, in a big enough way that makes sense for us, personally.
Ben: Agreed. I would also add, at least personally, one of the most rewarding things is in the early stages of producing a song when the arrangement—and even structure—of the riffs are still so new to us that it almost feels like I’m hearing the song for the first time. Have you ever heard a song only a few times and then thought to yourself, “Wow, what a good song”? It actually pumps you up more than it will ever do in the future. I get that feeling every time, or else the song doesn’t get produced. After a while, and I think Mike can agree, by the time a song is released, we’ve heard it so much that it doesn’t have the same thrill it did when it was fresh in our minds. I suppose the most challenging part, probably a different wording of what Mike said, is to release the song with the same enthusiasm we originally had and in hopes that it will rub off on the listener.
What other projects are you working on?
Mike: I’m not working on any music outside of the band, currently, but I sometimes itch to make a new solo album, and there are so many genres I’d love to play with. I want to make an entire album that channels Washed Out’s 2020 record Purple Noon and Sade’s big hits—that seductive, hypnotizing sound that they both delivered so well. I also dream of making a house record sometimes. Pulsing, cerebral house music, but listenable, like what you’d hear in the lobby of a trendy hotel. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a musical, maybe a rock opera. I’ve been a playwright in the past, and I love dialogue, so there’s that. Outside of music, I wrote down a list of detailed ideas for potential romance novels. That may be something I do eventually. Also, essays. I like the idea of writing anecdotal essays. Tasteful, descriptive ones that help to bring out a memory that I hope to remember so vividly, indefinitely. I love speaking, narration, using my voice in general, so a podcast or radio show as a living would be nice. Man, I can talk about creative, artistic ideas for hours, really.
But Ginkgo Balboa fans, don’t you worry, just because our new EP Balloon Duty comes out on July 28 doesn’t mean we aren’t looking to what’s next after that! On the contrary, we always keep moving forward. An important goal in our near future? A college tour. So, keep an eye out; we may be coming to a university near you! Sounds like my adjunct professor path that I mentioned, doesn’t it? Life is funny, sometimes.
Ben: Ginkgo is going to ride this Balloon Duty wave until the 28th and then reconvene. In the meantime, I’m always writing and creating. At the moment I’m in the midst of writing some songs and hope to have a full length or EP solo by this time next year. It’s really too early to give any promises to myself or others but I have so much music that I’ve been sitting on. It’s not fair to myself to sit on it any longer just because it doesn’t necessarily fit into Ginkgo’s repertoire. I love what is going on in digital music and want to do it all. Typically, I would consider my solo stuff a little more experimental than Ginkgo. Not that Ginkgo isn’t in some ways very experimental itself—we’ve always made a point to keep Ginkgo accessible to most people. We want it to stay poppy enough. I come from a math rock background and I want to experiment with math rock from a digital synth point of view. I am also very much into Lo-fi, vaporwave, and that slinky guitar-driven, subdued digital psyche rock that’s not unlike something HOMESHAKE might do. Or whatever you would call that genre.
Where can our readers find out more about you?
Mike: You can check out our website for listening to our music via the streaming platform of your choice: ginkgobalboa.com ///// @ginkgobalboaband on the following social media platforms: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Instagram is the one we use most, so please follow us at instagram.com/ginkgobalboaband.
Ben: If I may even selflessly promote my personal solo stuff from before Ginkgo’s conception, you can visit my bandcamp page at https://benjaminmasbaum.bandcamp.com/ if the power of the devil compels you.
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