In an interview with KGNU’s DJ Jules, Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch discuss their music, upcoming show, and creative process. The band, consisting of a 10-piece ensemble with horns and singers, talks about their inspirations and shares plans for recording their upcoming album (Interview date: 5/20/2024)
DJ Jules: Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch are here in studio and they are ready for all of you. Hello, everyone.
Boogie Lights: How are you doing, Jules? How’s everyone doing today?
DJ Jules: Oh, my gosh. So good. So happy to have y’all here. Thank you for being here today.
Boogie Lights: Absolutely. We’re delighted to be here. Got the Boogie Bunch together. It’s gonna be a good time.
DJ Jules: Love it. So, hey, what brings Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch in studio today? What’s going on?
Boogie Lights: This Friday we are headlining Bluebird Theater in Denver. Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch, an amazing lineup. We’re gonna have DJing with a 10 piece band, horn section, singers.
We got about half of us here today, and we’re gonna give a nice little taste of Friday.
DJ Jules: Oh my gosh, 10 piece band, this is gonna be a great time on Friday. I’m so excited that we get to share a little snippet of it with the KGNU listeners. This song that you are gonna start with, is this gonna be one of the songs they’ll hear at Friday’s show?
Boogie Lights: They will indeed. This song is called “I’m Feeling Good Today”. It features Hiramai on vocals. He’ll actually be singing it live on Friday, but he wasn’t able to make it here today. It’s just a simple, feel good tune about feeling good and having a beautiful day.
DJ Jules: Oh my goodness. I am so happy to have a saxophone in the studio right now. This is so great. You guys feeling good?
Boogie Lights: We are feeling good. And yeah, Ty Martinez is pretty much the star of the show when he gets on stage.
Cause whoo! He moves around. He’s a good time.
DJ Jules: He’s moving around and shimmying with it and having fun. And KGNU cuties, I wish there was a visual happening for all of you so you could see them enjoying themselves. Smiling, laughing, having fun, and just feeling it. It’s so great. Is this how you guys always are?
Boogie Lights: That’s why we’re the Boogie Bunch honestly. The one thing is positivity and vibe and just having a good time. When we’re on stage we definitely like to show up for sure.
DJ Jules: That makes sense. How much of a letdown would it be if you went to see someone called Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch and they were just boring and not having any fun and so serious?
Boogie Lights: That would be lame.
DJ Jules: Yeah, we’re not going to do that. What else is on the calendar for Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch? So these KGNU listeners know where they can find you if they cannot make it to Friday’s show.
Boogie Lights: Yeah, so we have a couple big announcements coming up for June.
We’re going to be doing a pride event later on and a couple other things later in the summer. But this main one at Bluebird is the biggest show of our career. We’re all gonna throw down for the best people around.
DJ Jules: I love that so much.
All right. Do you have another song in store for us that we can all keep dancing to?
Boogie Lights: Absolutely. So today we’re going to debut a brand new track called “Universal Language” featuring Mr. Deezy Le Phunk, who’s here in studio. We wrote this song a couple of months ago, and it’s about putting the love out to the world and hopefully you’ll get it right back. That’s what it’s all about. And Deezy puts the vocals just so perfectly.
DJ Jules: That was amazing. And so just to reiterate, that was a premiere right there. That was brand new for all the listeners.
Boogie Lights: That was brand new. We’re probably gonna put that out in the upcoming album in a couple months.
DJ Jules: That is so exciting. Okay. So where are you working on this album? Where are you recording?
What’s happening with the process?
Boogie Lights: So yeah, it’s mostly all home studio back in Denver and then we’ll be renting out a couple studios for a couple of the sax parts and big horn sections. We’re excited to put all this together.
DJ Jules: That’s a really exciting thing. Congratulations on that.
Boogie Lights: Thank you. I appreciate you Jules.
DJ Jules: I would love it if you could take a moment and introduce who these members of the Boogie Bunch are to all the KGNU listeners.
Boogie Lights: I would love to do that. So right here you just heard Deezy Le Phunk on vocals with that last track, “Universal Language”, and we’re gonna hear him in a little bit too.
Then we got Ricky Ferrera on guitar, the other half of Ricks and Boogie, which is a second side project. We’ve got a couple songs, we just debuted one last Friday, which we’ll play in a little bit. Then we have my man Shando on keys, Dan Shando, who’s also an incredibly talented keyboardist and producer and DJ. He does a little bit of everything, and we got a little superpower going.
And then we have our man Ben from The Hip Snacks coming on bass. He joined in the last couple months, and he just hit the ground running and so excited to feature him for the Bluebird. And then our man Ty Martinez on saxophone, he’s the lead star of the group most of the time. And my name is Mark Henricks with Boogie Lights.
DJ Jules: Amazing. Thanks so much for letting all the KGNU listeners know who Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch are. All right. I don’t want to take up more time with talking because I could just get carried away with words. I want to hear more of your sound and style. What’s coming up with this next song?
Boogie Lights: Yeah. So this is a very special tune called “Ask the World”.
And it’s about a story that happened when I was bartending at Applebee’s, probably 2013. I met this gentleman, had a great conversation about music over a couple hours. Somehow, out of the kindness of his heart, at the end of the conversation, he handed me $200 to buy a certain bass that I was planning to buy in a couple months. He decided, “Hey, I wanna give you this $200, follow your dreams, never give up, and buy that bass tomorrow”.
So, this song’s about that.
DJ Jules: I was really hoping that I’d be able to get on air right now and be like, I have the Applebee’s guy on the phone.
Boogie Lights: One day, one day.
DJ Jules: Did he ever come back? Did you ever get a chance to thank him to his face?
Boogie Lights: I never did, but I have his business card and it’s somewhere in my safe. If I don’t have it we’re gonna have the internet try to find this guy.
DJ Jules: The internet creepers and creeperettes out there will definitely take care of finding the Applebee’s man for you.
That’s amazing. I love it. So where does your inspiration come from? We heard that story, but where are you gathering your inspiration for writing these songs from?
Boogie Lights: Honestly, probably a lot from my mom, from her perspective of just showing the world love and showing kindness and just showing your true self.
But then for musically, Grizz has always been a huge inspiration. Similar language of show love spread love and just spreading good vibes and that portion of it. For the live band aspect of it, honestly James Brown back in the day. Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” has been a huge inspiration of what I want to put on in a performance. This show on Friday is literally the entire vision when I started this project about eight years ago.
DJ Jules: That is a great visual right there. I love it. Okay, well then let’s keep honoring all these amazing artists and musicians and your mom and experiences and jump into this next song. What do you have in store for us?
Boogie Lights: Yeah, this is a brand new Ricks and Boogie tune. It just came out this past Friday.
It’s called “Vybe” spelled VYBE in honor of Vibrate Your Best Energy. They’re an amazing dance community, flow arts community from Denver that spreads the same language we want to do. This one just dropped on Friday. It’s a Ricks and Boogie tune, and this is probably the first time it’s here on the radio.
DJ Jules: That was amazing. I love hearing the guitar shine through in that one. Seriously.
Boogie Lights: That is Ricks on guitar. That’s the other half of Ricks and Boogie. We are producing a bunch of tracks nowadays and that one just came out.
DJ Jules: Oh my gosh. It must just feel so good to get together with people that you have fun with and make fun beats, a great sound, a great vibe.
And now you get to share it. You’re playing it for the first time on the radio.
Boogie Lights: It’s literally a dream come true, playing with these musicians and these friends and just the vibes they bring and I’m really excited to get everyone together this Friday.
DJ Jules: What a great thing. How much energy you’re gonna have on stage and how much energy the crowd’s gonna have on Friday as everyone is vibing out and just loving life while getting down to what you guys are doing?
It’s really neat. I’m super excited for all of this. If you are just tuning in to KGNU right now, we have got Boogie Lights and the Boogie Bunch live in studio playing for us. And we do have one more song for today’s show. What do you guys have for us?
Boogie Lights: Yeah, this is a brand new tune. It’s another debut called Rise Up.
It’s a collab with our friend Mocha Music, who’s an incredible kind of funky bass producer. We started this together. It’s going from a house beat into a bass beat, and then we got our friend Deezy Le Phunk to come on and just absolutely put on the vocals. This song is about rising up together.It’s about rising up and conquering the day, conquering what we can and fighting together.
DJ Jules: Awesome. All right. KGNU listeners, let’s enjoy another one from Boogie Lights, ’cause this is such a treat.
