The Habits ― Excited About New Music And New Era

The Habits are feeling the love from their hometown and it’s a great thing.

The band made up of singer/guitarist Wolf Bradley, 29 and drummer Andrew Macatrao, 30 has been riding high with a newly released song Don’t Need A Hero, an EP to come and a South-West U.S. tour through California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

If that’s not enough, the engaging duo has been filling up its calendar with plenty of noteworthy local gigs — San Pedro Music Festival and the Fortnight Concert series, held in the tunnels of the historic Leary Gun Battery located at Angels Gate Cultural Center — to keep it performing its own brand of endearing alternative-pop. That tour, Bradley said, was great because the people in all the cities they visited knew all the songs they played and people seemed excited to be out at live shows again.

Bradley and Macatrao met at the San Pedro Ballet School, which Bradly’s parents own. Dancing since he was 3 years old, Bradley said dance has always been a huge part of his life — he often forgets that other people don’t dance. He recounted how his father used to teach dance at San Pedro High School. He explained a bunch of guys from the school decided they wanted to take ballet and all of a sudden “a lot of guys” were in the school. He and Macatrao met and became friends slowly. At first, they were “ballet rivals” because they were the closest in age but they became friends when they discovered they both liked music. Eventually, they started writing songs together.

Bradley recently told Random Lengths News it had been a few years since it performed in San Pedro, but the band is feeling lots of support from its hometown. But this is no time to rest. He discussed what’s coming up next for The Habits, as they embark on their “new era.”

“In anything, whenever you plan things, it never goes as you planned — as much as you would want it to,” said Bradley.

The duo aimed to release its EP this year. But as 2022 progresses, Bradley said things tend to get lost in the ether of everything during the holidays. Very soon, The Habits will roll out new music. They recently released Don’t Need A Hero, a song co-written with Dave Rublin, from American Authors band, whom Bradley met over Zoom during the pandemic. American Authors formed in 2006 at Berklee College of Music in Boston. It’s clear why Bradley, who seems to be an actor at heart, as well, and Rublin made a good connection; the New York-based pop-rock outfit describes its craft saying “We write stories and read them through music.” 

“Writing during the pandemic was interesting,” said Bradley. “I’m used to writing songs, whether it’s for The Habits or for others because I’m a songwriter. I write for other people all the time. I used to do that three or four times a week. Then the world shut down.” 

Once people realized the shutdown was going to last for a while and people couldn’t be in the same room together, Bradley said everyone started doing their writing sessions on Zoom.

“It’s awkward, trying to meet somebody and then you’re trying to be vulnerable with this person,” he said. “You’re writing a song and having to be very open about what’s going on in your life.”

To break the ice, Bradley had a joke he’d tell in these sessions, “let’s take the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and let’s make it catchy, tell everybody and see if you can make a living doing that.

“It’s so much weirder to do that over Zoom,” he said. “There’s a delay, or it cuts out and then you’re asking, ‘did you hear that’”? 

The Habits stayed busy and finished a five-song EP called What’s The Worst That Could Happen — the day before the quarantine started. They were excited, and they were getting lots of radio play. Then the universe answered.

“Everything was going great and then the world ended,” Bradley said. “We waited a while, [and] we realized this [pandemic] wasn’t going away, so we just released the EP. It turned out great. It was the most successful [one] we released.”

Because of that Bradley started doing more work on Zoom and their music circle grew. Through that he met Rublin. They emailed and talked on the phone and just became friends first. That helped. Later when they had a Zoom session together Bradley said it was actually very easy. They wrote all the chords and verses on a song in less than an hour. They continued working together. Aside from that, Bradley didn’t do many other Zoom sessions. 

“I quickly realized this is not for me,” he said. “We didn’t play shows for a long time. We wrote songs [but] we couldn’t play them live. We had a show at the Whiskey but then it got canceled because the headliner we were opening for got COVID. That was my year last year.”

A New Era
Bradley noted it may be an old-school way of thinking but when artists and bands put out new EPs or albums, they call them eras. This certain sound he explained was the tone, the theme and esthetic for this “era.” When they put out the next one, they’ve moved on. 

“Our last EP did really well for us but we’re ready to move on to this next era,” Bradley said. “It’s the next step for our band. I’m excited about that. Don’t Need A Hero was kind of an introduction to that — a year ahead of its time almost.”

In the last few months, The Habits have found their “intro to start releasing music again.” They’ve released another great single (Hero), a timely number in this period of taking stock and emerging anew — it celebrates self-assuredness. They created an adorable, cathartic video for it. They remixed and remastered the song and have gotten the whole package exactly where they want it to be. 

January will mark the big rollout for The Habits new music. The five-song EP is called I Think I’m Fine But I Don’t Know. They’ll release a single each month along with a release show for each of the singles, and eventually the entire EP. Bradley noted the venues that they choose to play in are very personal to them. One of those venues will be in San Pedro. He said this usually doesn’t happen but everything that he’s been planning to do of late has gone just as he hoped. He’s very excited to release this project. 

“[The title] is very apropot to my whole existence and I’m very excited about it,” Bradley said. “It’s very much grappling with what’s going on for everybody. It’s been great though because even though we haven’t been able to release as much music as we’d like to, we’ve been playing so many shows. That’s good to get back to. Now we can play the songs we released during the pandemic and we can play them for audiences.”

Details: thehabitsband.com and www.instagram.com/habitstheband