We recently connected with Nicole + K Hoffer Sahagian and have shared our conversation below.

Nicole + K, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

After we finished our first promo photoshoot with @pastramiparty over on Instagram, we wanted to celebrate with some grubbin’

We landed on a local Thai place that was close to Nicole’s old apartment.

Once we got there we started talking names. I mean, we had a song and some photos in the tank, but no name.

We bounced several back and forth and jokingly one of us suggested the name of the restaurant, “Thai Sweet Basil”

Riffing of the bit we started putting different rhyming words in place of Thai. “Bye Sweet Basil” “Try Sweet Basil” “My Sweet Basil”. K was pretty much hooked on the latter immediately but INSISTED we changed the spelling to reflect its “Thai” origins and to maximize SEO. You know like real business owners. The rest is history.

Nicole + K, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are Mai Sweet Basil, officially, but unofficially you can call us Nic(ole) and K.

We’ve been making music separately for our whole lives, but we think that because we share a birthday (down to the year, day, and month) that we were probably destined to end up making music with one another.

K had been writing some songs on his own that he was hoping to have some female vocals on. Word spread and got to Nicole who showed up to a few of K’s shows with his other band, Speak Easy, and the conversation started with one song.

We hit that together and had a great time doing so, so, we figured why not a whole album? Why not a band? Why not?

From there getting “in the door” is a lot of promotion, posting, and gigging. Which we’ve been doing together since before the album even dropped.

We think we offer something kind of interesting to the space in that way. We have an energy together that’s really unique. In many ways it feels like we were raised together, but separate. Brothers from different mothers so-to-speak. And in that way our writing and performance styles are really casual and easy. We feed off each other and aren’t afraid to make each-other laugh through a set. Although it’s usually K making Nicole laugh.

Because we’ve been in the community for longer than we’ve been a band I think we also have a communal relationship with our audience and the featured musicians we work with. That comes through in our sound. You can tell we all enjoy being a part of it and that we’re all pulling from the same references.

There’s certainly no shortage of pop acts in our demographic so we really don’t try to be anything other than ourselves and we’re very lucky because I think that’s all we need to be and all our listeners want out of us.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

It’s a little cliché, but really being ourselves has seen the most “return on investment”.

Streaming numbers can really be deceptive sometimes. It can be nice to open the “for artists” apps and see thousands on a song. But really that’s not always reflective of who’s staying and who’s coming to the shows.

While it’s certainly nice to land on a playlist, or see a song surpass expectations, really it’s more rewarding to see who is consistently coming and who is consistently supporting.

When we make content and music and performances for ourselves, people stick around. We’ve got a small dedicated following of photographers, for example, who we’ve come to love (Hi Ky! Hi Will!) who stream, show up, photograph, like, comment and generally interact with our material solely because they know us and know we’re having fun doing it. I don’t think it hurts that the music is good, but I definitely don’t think we’d have the staying power with our friends in the scene if we weren’t being authentic.

Your first audience is friends and family. Your second audience is MUCH closer to friends and family than we sometimes realize. Respect them by keeping it real.

For us that comes in the form of really stupid promo content that makes us laugh and risks on stage that make us go “oooo nice”.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

We absolutely have multiple income sources. In fact, I think most of us in the local music community do.

It’s near impossible to “fund the dream” on your own dime. So a really amazing thing you can do for your fellow musicians or friends in the artist community is to show up and show out.

We do many cover gigs, we teach, we help out friends with production, we do studio work; Whatever keeps the lights on at the MSB studios. So absolutely it’s so important to stay close and make sure we’re out there supporting our peers in the way we’d want them to support us because we’re really the thing that keeps each other afloat through this stage in our careers.

That’s a pretty easy job though because our peers are incredible artists and hangs who put on a great show.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maisweetbasil?igsh=MTE3NmttdXlqYTRmZg==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/eEPwhrUpEEfqxY6i/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@maisweetbasil?si=98FYKSEjLGYClqb9
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4QdO4t2cWxRPIqPgRvZWYB?si=GOMU6D6LQv6EdG1DqvI2zAApple Music:
  https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mai-sweet-basil/1671589141

Image Credits

Amie Santavicca
Will Laurie
Sweetest Shooter (Jayda)
Ky Fridge