Earlier this month, CKUT volunteers Kasen Korstanje and Mia Duddy-Hayashibara sat down with Texan
rappers haha Laughing, a duo bringing the phrase “everything’s bigger in Texas” to new heights with
their larger-than-life sound. Their sample-heavy and speaker-melting EP “BIG WHATEVER” came out in
April. In this interview, Mia and Kasen got to chat about the project, itsinfluences, and life in the
Austin scene with haha Laughing members Jay Dilick and Aby Oviedo.

Kasen: Hey everybody, this is Kasen and Mia with CKUT 90.3 FM. We’re up at FME,
Festival de Musique Émergente, in Rouyn-Noranda, and today we’re with haha Laughing! Thanks for
joining us.

Jay: I’m Jay, Haha.

Aby: I’m Aby from Haha Laughing.

Mia: Are you Laughing?

Jay: No, they’re Baby Basco

Aby: I’m Baby Basco.

Jay: They’re the first ones to get a stage name. I only did Haha ’cause I didn’t have one. Like it was Haha Laughing was me before. I’m Jay, and this is Aby.

Kasen: Nice to meet you guys

Jay: Thank you.

Mia: You guys are from Texas?

Jay: Yes, so nice to meet y’all too. We are from Texas.

Aby: Austin. Originally from Dallas, and Jay from Houston.

Mia: But Austin’s a cooler city.

Aby: That’s where all the weirdos go.

Kasen: I’ve never been to Texas until two weeks ago. I flew to California, and I
stopped in DFW.

Jay: Oh. Technically, you’ve been there.

Kasen: Now, I can say I’ve had boots on the ground in Dallas.
Jay: Yes

Kasen: Is this your first time in Québec or in Canada?

Jay: In Québec. I mean, we stopped in Montreal on this trip over; we spent two
hours killing time there, so I guess that was the first time, but we’ve been to
Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Mia: Nice. I’m from Vancouver, actually.

Jay: Oh, okay, we just played there in May.

Mia: Which venue?

Aby: Green Auto. Like the DIY.

Mia: Okay, they have a good stage there, I like it. Like the velvet and stuff.

Jay: It was cool, and the green screens are everywhere. People were so nice
too. Every time I’ve been in Canada, people are always so friendly, so I really
enjoyed it. I really liked it.

Mia: And who did you play with in Vancouver? Do you remember?

Jay: I don’t remember right now. I have to look.

Mia: Like local acts?

Aby: Something Yourself.

Mia: Reveal Yourself?

Aby: Reveal Yourself.

Mia: Okay, okay. I had a feeling; they’re so good!

Aby: They’re so good

Mia: They started up after I left, but I’ve been following them, and they seem
really good.

Jay: They’re great. Who was the last person?

Aby: 2 Girls 1 Daw.

Jay: 2 Girls 1 Daw. Which was dope.

Aby: They were awesome.

Jay: Kind of crazy, hyperpop, DJ stuff, but also singing over it and stuff. And then
the last person was kind of gothy-like, industrial thing, and they had the drummer
from Japandroids drumming. Which was cool, but I don’t remember their names.
Aby: I’m blanking on the name, but they were all awesome.

Mia: Okay, cool.

Aby: Yeah

Jay: I’m bad with names.

Mia: And then, this is your first Québec show.

Jay: Yeah

Aby: Yes

Mia: This town.

Jay: Yes

Mia: Okay, awesome.

Jay: Made a little journey up here.

Kasen: It’s our first time up here too.

Jay: So, y’all usually in Montreal?

Mia: Yeah. We’re from CKUT, which is the McGill University radio.

Kasen: We want to hear about where y’all are from. We want to hear about
Austin.

Jay: You want to hear about Austin? Just what about it? Just like being there.
Mia: The scene.

Jay: I mean, the scene is always something; it’s always poppin’, there’s always
different stuff. It’s currently 40 degrees hotter there right now, which is crazy.

Mia: Oh my God. Fahrenheit, yes.

Jay: Oh, sorry. It’s 38 Celsius or something there. Something crazy.

Mia: Damn.

Jay: Something too hot. And then, I mean, the scene is great. There’s so many,
so many bands, almost to the detriment of so many people because there’s just
so much stuff going on all the time.

Aby: Well, detriment as in, “Oh, I can’t go see every show I want to see” because
there’s multiple hot shows happening a night, five nights out of the week at least;
there’s a lot of variety, which is cool. You’ll see a lot of mixed bills of, like, I don’t
know, punk and electronic and experimental and indie and twee and shoegaze,
all mixed up together.

Mia: I know some twee bands.

Jay: Twee is really big there right now. And then there’s also a lot more bands. I
feel when I first started playing music in Austin, 2016-ish, a lot more psych rock
bands, and there still are a lot of them; it’s really big in Austin, but now there’s a
lot more electro-dance. There’s a lot more different genres than there used to be,
which is cool.

Kasen: Isn’t there a Psych Festival…

Jay: Yeah, Psych Fest. And Psych Fest used to be something else; it’s one of
those—

Aby: That’s Levitation now.

Jay: That’s Levitation now. Okay, which is next week in Austin, and that’s always
really fun. There’s a lot of really cool bands that come through.

Mia: I feel like your music is different from everything you’ve just listed, a little bit.
Where would you fall in?

Aby: I think we’re definitely an outlier on most of the bills we play in Austin and
on tour too.

Jay: Oh, on tour especially, we’ll play with really chill bands.

Aby: We just played with this touring band from California, Soft Palms; we played
their Texas shows with them. We’re such an outlier from them and the other
bands, but I love playing a mixed bill. I feel when all the bands sound the same
it’s kinda like…

Jay: And that used to be more of a thing, you go to and see this one type of
bands play, but I, we get— We’ve kind of learned to thrive on that. The band kind
of started in a very organic way, so it wasn’t really trying to be “oh, let’s be
different or something.” But it’s really cool that people will come and be like, “Oh,
I haven’t really heard something like this before, but I really liked it, or something
like that, which is nice. I don’t get too many people, or— if they don’t love it, I
don’t really care because it’s not for everyone. So that’s cool.

Mia: So how did you guys meet? And how did the project start up? ‘Cause you
[Jay] said Haha Laughing is your name.

Aby: I worked at a restaurant with the guitarist of a band that Jay used to play
drums in, and I would just go to their shows all the time, and I thought they were
sick, and then eventually I was like, to our mutual friend, “You should tell Jay to
break up with his girlfriend and date me instead,” and then eventually they did
break up.

Jay: That actually happened later, like years later. But we’ve known each other
and seen each other at parties and stuff forever.

Aby: We were just acquaintances in the scene.

Jay: But it’s like, you pick up a vibe from somebody, so I was like, “I know I could
meet up and hang out and have fun and stuff.” So that happened, and then we
played in this one band called La Femme Solitaire. Actually, it’s kind of funny;
there’s a little French thing going on with that band. I didn’t think about that. And
like this Emo band called BFF, and I would play drums or guitar and bass, like
more rock stuff. And then I started doing the Haha stuff just on the side for fun
after some — Can I cuss?

Kasen: Yes

Jay: After some shit went down with my friend. So I just started doing that solo,
and then we had a homie, Rachel, who’s in the scene, who’s very — you talked
about the scene earlier, like a very, very big part of it that books a lot of people.
Rachel Kirk, she’s in this band called Guiding Light. She was like, “Can y’all play
a show?” And I was like, “Uh, sure—” But then I felt shy. So then I got Aby to be
my hype-man. So for that show, it was just me on vocals.

Aby: I was like, yeah, I’ll jump around and scream a little bit

Jay: …and do samples.

Aby: It wasn’t as orchestrated or collaborative even as it is now; it’s evolved from
mostly his original project to both of us collaborating.

Jay: It’s us now; the band is us, it wasn’t at first. And that’s been a fun growth of
it, ’cause even the last stuff we put out, mostly it’s me on the on the beat side of
stuff still and everything, but then the last thing we recorded was all the two of us,
writing the vocals together, which used to not be a thing either, so it just keeps
expanding, which is cool.

Mia: Awesome, cool.

Jay: And that’s how we met. Music.

Aby: Music.

Jay: The power of music and love.

Kasen: Do you think Austin attracts [people] in Texas, like a hub? A lot of people
in Canada will move to Montreal to pursue musical things.

Jay: That’s what someone said last night. I get that.

Aby: That’s why I was like, “That’s where all the weirdos go.”

Jay: A hundred percent. There’s weirdos in Dallas and Houston and El Paso and
in San Antonio.

Aby: Yeah, they’re everywhere, but especially if you’re a musician, you’re going
to go to Austin; that’s where you’re going to get the most shows, get
opportunities. We’ve gotten so many opportunities to open up for huge people
that we were like, “Wait, what? We’re on a bill with them?”
Jay: That’s kinda coming from us being a weird wild card though, too. We’ve
gotten lucky, and we get thrown on bills with random people ’cause if they’re kind
of hype, so that’s fun.

Kasen: I just keep thinking everything’s bigger in Texas. You know how people
say that.

Jay: It is true, though. I’d say so; all the trucks are so big, all the roads are so
wide, and its parking lots are so big.

Mia: What about food?

Jay: Food is great.

Mia: Is it big too, the portions?

Jay: It is, but that’s not—

Aby: I mean, I think it’s just America. Nasty, huge McDonald’s. I mean, I don’t
know how it is here.

Jay: I feel like I see bigger portions of fast food stuff in the Midwest and stuff than
in Texas, but— I don’t know, but Texas, we get a giant steak, like barbecue.

Aby: I mean, you get a big plate of food at a Mexican restaurant.

Mia: Tex-Mex

Jay: Tex-Mex is the best. I can eat that every day. I grew up on Tex-Mex. They
[Aby] worked at, I guess not a Tex-Mex—

Aby: It’s a Mexican restaurant, and I do eat it every day. I love tacos. We do.

Jay: They’re so good. But the food in Texas is crazy; it sets a high bar when I’m
travelling around, ’cause we love trying new places and stuff too.
Mia: I think Montreal’s pretty good.

Kasen: It is. A lot of different stuff going on.

Jay: Oh, I had some great wings from there; from some place the other day, so
that’s fine.

Aby: It was just a random bar

Jay: Right by the bus station, but it’s still good.

Kasen: I’m curious, after your first hype man show, you guys started fashioning
the sound down to what it is on your most recent project. What was that process
like, bringing it together?

Jay: This last one was the first one where it was all new stuff. We sampled
ourselves more on it; you [Aby] played the keyboard on one thing. I think we
were just more intentional with it.

Aby: And playful. Just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Jay: I agree. And there’s even some beats on the other old ones that we would
hear, like, “Oh, we should make that or something and stuff.” We also went into it
to try to have the new thing be a little more fun. I mean, it still sounds nuts-o.

Aby: The past stuff, Jay’s always on the laptop making shit. And I was like, okay,
for this, the EP we just put out, well, not just, but in the spring, I was like, okay, I
want us to go in with
“What is the theme of this?”
“What are you trying to say with this?”
“What’s the feeling you want with this?”
So that was the first time that it wasn’t just all these tracks that you got together
and made make sense. Let’s start from a clean slate and an idea and then build
on top of that, and then also see where it takes itself though, not glue it down,
and let it become what it wants.

Jay: It was fun, some lyric stuff where we were like, “Okay, well, that actually
doesn’t tie into what the theme of this is,” so change that. ‘Cause I usually tend to
make stuff too heavy-handed with some dark stuff, so we’re like, we’ve got to
make it more like pulling yourself out of the mud, not mud being on you, stuff like
that. We had a lot of sports references in there just for funsies.

Mia: What sports?

Jay: Death Spiral 3 is an Olympic ice skating move, and the first one’s got a
bunch of baseball samples; we had sports on in the background ’cause this
year’s just been like—

Mia: Very sports heavy, you guys had FIFA in Texas.

Jay: No, FIFA too; it’s been like April in the D everywhere, it’s all the sports at
one time. I’ve enjoyed it. I played sports in high school and then didn’t do sports
forever, so it’s been fun.

Aby: I’m not an athlete, but we wanted to ride that sports pumped-up vibe.

Jay: There’s this bar called Tweedy’s that we love, and all the weirdos will go
there and watch the Spurs and the — I almost said the basketball World Cup.
See, I don’t know much about sports, but it’s fun to go there and hang out with
people and stuff and watch it without a bunch of macho people yelling and stuff.

Kasen: Speaking of the lyrics, one of my favourite lyrics is on Holy Toledo, when
you guys say “Took a shot with your opps, we were toasting that you’re chopped”

Jay: You like that?

Kasen: YES, I like it. What would be your liquor of choice for taking a shot?

Aby: Tequila.

Jay: Tequila.

Aby: Or Fernet

Kasen: You guys were quick with that.

Jay: I like a crazy Jägerbomb.

Aby: But if I’m toasting with the opps, it’s tequila.

Jay: That’s usually what we drink, to be honest.

Kasen: Mia, we need to take some notes. Next time we take a shot with
someone’s opps because they’re chopped, because the person in question is
chopped… tequila, please.

Jay: I’m glad that you liked that. That was fun. We were also on this EP a little
more like *insert vulgar gesture* to people, not to certain people. ‘Cause there’s a
lot of BS, but bullshit, let’s say bullshit, a lot of bullshit in the Austin scene, so it
was fun to be like, yaaaaa ahhh whatever, we don’t care and stuff, and that’s
what that stuff’s about.

Kasen: So who in the scene have you been chopping around with?

Jay: Oh, like hanging out with?

Kasen: Yeah.

Jay: Guiding Light, Almost Heaven. I like Almost Heaven a lot; they’re really
good. Team Trust.

Aby: Team Trust!!

Jay: I always start to blank, but those are probably my big three. Let’s just leave
it there. If I think about more, I’ll say more later ’cause there’s so many.

Mia: What are some musical influences that might be a little bit different from
your music, but you’re still influenced by them? Your music’s really original, so I
feel like everything will be surprising.

Kasen: Is there an unexpected influence?

Jay: No, you mean like TV and movies and stuff?

Mia: Anything, any media.

Jay: I mean, like the TVs and movies and stuff are so big, there’s so many times
where I’m making a beat, and then I hear the TV on, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going
to record that and put that in the song.” Or like, there’s vibes and stuff.

Kasen: You guys mentioned the sports too.

Jay: That sports stuff is almost like us kind of fronting. I like sports, but the Spurs
were the only time this year I was feeling super amped.

Mia: It’s just when you feel the spirit.

Jay: Yeah, the spirit, and stuff. A lot of TV show stuff, some Tim Robbins stuff,
like Nirvana The Band The Show stuff. That inspires us a lot.

Mia: That’s Canadian.

Jay: I know. We’re going to The Rivoli when we get to Toronto; I’ve got to check
that out. That’s process. I get inspired by how they make art and stuff and the flow of
everything, and then, I don’t know if this is a weird answer, but the last EP, in my
head I was like, “Blue Sky.” Like the vibe, I don’t want the vibe to be night-timey,
and so that was influential on me too. Brightness from clothes and stuff,
fashion— Aby loves fashion—that inspires the music somehow too.

Aby: I’m really inspired by rappers, female rappers specifically.

Kasen: Like who?

Aby: TiaCorine, I love Princess Nokia, Rico Nasty, Doechii, I would say Tierra
Whack.

Jay: Tierra Whack for sure.

Aby: Those are some more current ones that I’m getting inspired by often.

Mia: Me and Kasen have been really into BunnaB.

Kasen: We’ve been loving this one.

Mia: This one song, this whole trip. You might like it. I don’t know.

Aby: I love when a song you have attached to a trip.

Kasen: ‘My man’ by BunnaB.

Mia: My friend Franky just showed it to me. I work on a farm, and we were
listening to this.

[Music playing].

Aby: Wait, I know the song. I love it.

Jay: We’re going to be bumping that for sure. I love that song.

Aby: That’s our song of the trip now, too.

Jay: That’s a good example because … Other music that makes me feel like how
I want our music to make people feel, it doesn’t have to be Death Grips or like
JPEGMAFIA. It’s a lot of fun stuff like that or some random part in a rock song or
something like that.

Mia: Cool, awesome! Well, just to wrap it up, what’s some advice you have for
younger musicians starting up, since we’re a university-affiliated radio. For other
musicians who might be listening, what would you have to say to them?

Aby: My favourite piece of advice is to, if you’re making something, don’t
just sit on it forever and tweak it forever. Just put it out, just share it with some friends if
you’re too scared to share it with the internet or whatever. But just let stuff be and move on,
and that’s how you grow, and that’s how your art evolves into what it really wants to be, versus
if you just pick something apart, you lose the magic.

Jay: Yeah, it goes away.

Aby: And that’s what you’re trying to bottle up.

Jay: I feel like that was a big thing with the band too at the beginning ’cause I put
that thing [Haha’s previous work] out five years ago or before, and we didn’t play shows for years after
that. A lot of it is from my friends or Aby being like, “Just put it out.” I was shy about it I would say
a really good mentality. It sounds corny to say “Be yourself,” but you’ve got to do it for you. You’ve got
to do what makes you feel… when you hear other stuff that you enjoy and makes you feel a certain way,
it’s good to try to emulate these things, ’cause other people will feel that too, and if it’s authentic,
people will just get down with it, even if it’s some weirdo shit. Which I’ve really learned from this, ’cause
I— Young people, dads, all these people that actually like it, you know what I’m saying? And so I feel that
really just comes from a mentality of just— I’ve been doing this for ten years; it takes some time, but I had
to get out of my head that I was trying to make it; I just want to do it for ourselves.

Aby: Don’t let the imposter syndrome keep you down, ’cause nobody knows
what the fuck they’re doing.

Kasen: Amen.

Jay: Amen.

Kasen: Thank you so much for joining us, haha Laughing! So nice chatting with
you.

Jay & Aby: Thank you.

Kasen: And we’re looking forward to your show tonight.

Jay: Oh, yeah, me too.

Aby: And we’ll be in Montreal for POP Montreal in September!

Kasen: Yay, okay!! We’ll see you there too!!