On the Rise
Ballsy

Banos imbues the spirit of art. From a young age, the artist – currently under the moniker Ballsy – was surrounded by the classic dad rock catalogue. Describing herself as “an independent, introverted, weird kid that was very happy playing with my imagination, not playing with anyone else,” it was on one fateful day that she descended into her parents' basement that everything aligned.

Stumbling upon a dusty old acoustic guitar, she soon took up self-teaching the instrument. This also birthed an intrinsic familial connection that still runs strong today. "It was my dad's guitar," she reveals. Referring to him as a "classic, 70s stoner dad...just cool guy,” he'd go on to gift her her first electric guitar, and has remained a stringent supporter of all things Banos.

Managing to make the roughened guitar work, her lifelong love affair with the instrument and her craft began. Working her way through her dad's back catalogue, Pink Floyd, The Beatles et al., this inevitably let to coming up with her own melodies and lyrics. While this aspect of her influence doesn't get paid homage in either of her projects, it's still integral to her dedication and understanding of the power of music.

For Banos, the most integral part of this whole medium is the community. As she got older, it became more a part of trying to find like-minded people around her, "Once I was out of the prison of high school," she lightly chuckles.

"It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, isn't it?" She says when I ask what came first –the musical sensibilities, or her gravitating towards a certain crowd? "I grew up in the early 2000s so I think that it was a weird time for music, for culture, for counterculture, for everything…and I was just a product of whatever was, for the most part, whatever was being fed to me by the mainstream, right, so in the early teen years I was just going along for the ride of what was being shoved down my throat. And then, cue a traumatic parental divorce and all that stuff and then I started to ask questions and dive a little deeper."

Banos is a product of that [weird] time, the 00s were the last bastion of. Late night switches in music TV programming, showing the weird new music, the alternative mainstream. "It was all of a sudden, like, Oh, I'm seeing these alternative ways of expressing yourself, visually and sonically," she marvels now. "Oh, is that a female fronted punk band? Whoa. I feel angry like that, and I could maybe do that too. So I think in so many ways, like what was being fed to me at those different times in my life I was actually I was absolutely absorbing and processing it."

Proceeding to seek out her community was pivotal to Banos' story: "Finding the weird kids, finding the queer kids, finding the punk kids, and just really finally feeling like I belonged somewhere, and a music had so much to do with that," she says. It also opened up the rest of her life.

It was Banos' first proper band that offered her a fantastical freedom, and in turn lead her most recent endeavour as Ballsy. Caveboy was formed in 2015, with Banos on bass, alongside lead vocalist and guitarist Mint Simon and drummer Lana Cooney. Finding chart success, as well as multiple TV soundtrack slots, Caveboy would go on to release their debut album – Night in the Park, Kiss in the Dark – in January 2020.

As Banos was getting to grips with her creative outlet flourishing, as well as jumping behind the console to learn how to produce and mix, there was an external byproduct also thriving. "[Building] community with the weird folks, with the DIY folks, with the queer folks," became a part of her life just as much as creating music. "And then this little world altering event happened,” she quietly alludes.

Reckoning with the halting of her band's progress due to the pandemic, especially at such a pivotal moment post-debut release, wound up in a "grieving process", as Banos puts it. "Having that heartbreak and having to grieve all what could have been, and sitting with that, and then trying to turn back to music and make it feel like a safe place again." Which is how she ended up at Ballsy.

Taking a break from all things Caveboy, her top priority became rediscovering her creative voice: "Like I did when I was a kid, when I was that introverted teen who couldn't fit in," she recalls. Her pursuit of mastering the recording process meant she had lost touch with her creative spark, removing that internal voice. Which is when the important questions came to the surface that helped this solo project find its feet: "What do I actually have to say? What do I feel?"

Shifting all of her energy into Ballsy, her first task was to recapture that magical feeling of playing live. Claiming it as "her thing", her infectious energy in a conversation is tunnelled ten-fold when "Getting on stage and just fucking losing it and making sure folks have the best fucking night of their life."

Showcasing her lusciously melodious and distortion-dripping sonic DNA, as well as excavating her depths, her independently released debut EP, Bisou, came out last year. Having had the chance to tour it all over the world, and to rebuild that connection that she sought so dearly, for Banos, this new moniker is a gift. "I was missing [all of] that...the whole reason I made it was to say something and to connect with people all over, so I feel so grateful to be able to do that."

One place she wants to develop that connection is back home. A big believer in Montréal's music scene, although she sees the divide between the English and French-speaking populations. "There are two distinct music industries and music communities, and for whatever reason, they can't seem to find a bridge together. It's like you're working in two different countries, almost. It's pretty wild, and it's such a bummer, because there's so much talent and so much possibility for collaboration and expansion on both sides."

Banos is coming to the UK to represent the ever-sparkling Canadian music scene as part of this year's Québec Spring initiative. She's keen to bridge that gap."One of my life goals is to crack the code on how to build that big community here," she says with a believable air of determination. "But on the smaller scale, in the English language community here in Montréal, it's pretty great. People look out for each other and show up for each other and collaborate, and it's pretty special."

Beyond the grander ambitions, Banos puts Ballsy's spiritual essence down to a string of arrested development. Deep down, she's still that teenage trawling through the late-night music channels searching for something that connects on a deeper plane. It's something she cherishes."I want to hold on to that forever," she gushes. "That's essentially it. It is that adolescence. It is that kind of emo-adolescent vibe." It all circles back to her chugging away for hours and hours at power chords in her bedroom on that gifted electric guitar, feeling safe, secure, and resolute in her path, no matter how lonely she may have felt in her high school years.

A large positive of being an adult with these keen teen sensibilities, is that she has the ability – admittedly after "a bunch of therapy" and "connecting a lot of dots about shit I've been through" – to analyse and exorcise to find the gleaming truth. It means she can say things properly, more meaningfully and coherently than she's ever been able to before.=

This iteration of Banos has even changed her for the better. She mentions that people close to her are noticing a tangible difference in her, a maturation she's wearing well. "It's so rewarding to hear that from the people you trust and and that care about you, like this did something for me. There was something inside me that I had to get out, that I was just like holding captive out of fear," she beams.

The lifelong gift that she stumbled upon in her childhood basement has kept on giving throughout Banos' life. It's helped her find her people, it's helped her find her creative spark, and light it up again. It's taken her around the world and given her the power to help others. "This is why we make art," she explains, "to feel feelings with people, to connect with people, to help people." It's a perpetual feeling that never really leaves, but every so often, for an artist like Banos, it can feel peaceful and right. "It's one of my favourite things. On so many levels, the itch has been scratched, Steven!" She resolutely beams.