My Green Bananas Go Underground for First Off-Campus Show

By Adora Brown and Lauren Larking

It’s loud, grimey, and intimate. 

Every inch of the concrete walls are covered in doodles, illustrating the past few years of the Tourist Trap’s contribution to the Boston underground music scene. David Staats, guitarist of My Green Bananas, has just scribbled the band’s place onto the wall.

My Green Bananas (MGB) is comprised of all Emerson freshman including lead singers Kayla Hardy (she/her) and Belle Fortebuono (she/her), guitarist David Staats (he/him), drummer Kaveh Hodjat (he/him), and bassist Taryn Noonan (she/her). 

Hardy and Fortebuono’s voices blend together for the alt-rock opening song “Spare Change.” The group of first-years rock out on the DIY stage as friends shout every lyric from the first few rows.  

“You look out and you know that twenty of your friends are in the front row, and those are the only faces that you're looking at. It's so easy to feel comfortable,” Noonan said.

The band follows up with “Bloodstains,” sung by singer Fortebuono who takes center stage for this fan-favorite track as Hardy jumps on the guitar. Her electric stage presence compounds upon this heavier tune to build an angry-girl rock anthem. 

Rejoined by Hardy, the two lead singers harmonize in the drum-heavy stand out track, “Dead on the Dash.” Hodjat impresses with his tight skills and drum soloing. The crowd enthusiastically joins in for much of the chorus with the lines, “What is he angry for? / We’re both gonna end up dead on the dashboard.” 

Hardy and Fortebuono collaborate to write MGB’s songs, and “Dead on the Dash” was notably written in a day.  “I think that so much of what makes My Green Bananas, My Green Bananas is that we're not just covering songs or putting music out hoping that people like it, but we're putting music out that is close to us,” Hardy said. “It's like our diary.”

Their shared life experiences come to fruition in many of their songs, and both note the personal nature of their lyrics.“We live it for the people so we can write it for the people,” Fortebuono notes. 

“Superglue” starts off slow and descends into a quicker, passionate song with strong vocals. Noonan keeps up on bass in this pining ballad about growing apart. Crowd members cheer for Hardy’s high notes and begin to sing along after catching on to some of the lyrics.

Hardy and Fortebuono get real close for the final song “In Front of Your Friends,” which Hardy notes is “about a girl I don’t often see before 9 p.m.” The whole band throws smiles and laughs around while performing this catchy show-closer. Either moshing or swaying along, the crowd joined in on the memorable song.

Pictured left to right: David Staats, Kayla Hardy, Kaveh Hodjat, and Belle Fortebuono.

The band members explain how they persevere through not-so-ideal conditions at Emerson for budding musicians. 

“Emerson does not have the resources for musicians, and that's something that we really want to shed light on,” Hardy said. 

The band currently uses practice rooms at Berklee College of Music and other locations in the city to have access to drum sets and recording studios. Eli Mihaly-Baker (any pronouns) lets them into practice rooms at Berklee, plays with the band, and helps them with music theory.

Over the course of their first year at Emerson, the band members have fostered their chemistry in a way that is evident in their stage presence. 

Fortebuono said, “The songs feel like breathing at this point.” Hadjat adds, “We all overlap a lot, but we have different tastes. I think that's kind of what makes the band nice because we all come together and see what we like.”

MGB hopes to have demos on Soundcloud soon, with the ultimate goal of releases on larger streaming platforms. The band aims to continue performing every weekend around Boston to become a prominent fixture of the local music scene. 

Follow them @mygreenbananas on Instagram to stay up to date.