Columbia-based band Rochara Knight and The Honey Doves has been jamming since 2019.
The group consists of Rochara Knight and seven other veteran musicians. Their debut, self-titled album came out today.
KBIA's Kaylin Hellyer spoke to frontwoman Rochara Knight about musical inspiration, the making of a band and her hope to make an impact in the community.
Here’s an excerpt from their conversation.
Kaylin Hellyer: Your band has an album coming out soon. Can you give me any sort of details?
Rochara Knight: We’re really excited about this actually because this is sort of a long time coming really. Our band kind of came together toward the end of 2019, and so we were really just starting to get our sound together and figure out who we were. And we had our first show in February of 2020, and then the whole world shut down. And so then there was like a year and half hiatus where we couldn’t do anything. We were meeting via Zoom, and for us to finally have this album done and being able to put this music out, the music that we’ve been sitting on for a while is just like, ‘finally.’
Kaylin Hellyer: Is there anything that inspires the band as a whole? Any sort of musical inspiration?
Rochara Knight: You know, some of our songs have a lot of that doo-wop type vibe from old-school motown era. Like in our album that we have coming up we have some jazz influence. Oh gosh, I feel like our sound is very eclectic. We are in the soul realm for sure.
Kaylin Hellyer: How does being a band living in mid-Missouri affect your music, if at all?
Rochara Knight: A lot of our songs have a very socially conscious vibe to it. Tear it Down is one of them, Broken Record is one of them. And a lot of it is written just because of where we are. And the world that we live in. Obviously Broken Record is written because of a more specific incident, but it’s also just related to more broadly the type of world that we live in and the type of incidents that were happening around police brutality in that moment. And it was written about just like the time that we currently live in. One: living in mid-Missouri, but two: just in the nation as a whole.
Kaylin Hellyer: What do you hope people take away from Rochara Knight and the Honey Doves?
Rochara Knight: I would hope that people would take away that we’re not just a fluff band. I would hope that when anyone listens to our album or comes to our show that not only do they have a good time. We want you to have a good time, we want you to party. We want you to go away sweating and feeling good. But if you actually sit down and listen to our album in your car, when you flip on Spotify or Apple Music or whatever and you actually start listening to those lyrics, we also want you to really think about that stuff. And we want you to feel things and we want you to really resonate on some of those lyrics. So, yeah, that’s what we hope you get from Rochara Knight and the Honey Doves.
Rochara Knight and the Honey Doves will be celebrating their debut album with a CD release party tonight at 9 p.m. at Dive Bar, 1116 Business Loop 70 E.
