Fab the Duo: More to the Story

Taylor Harrington 6/12/2021 10:47am EST

Fab the Duo is a pair unlike any other. The energy the duo brings to the stage keeps audiences talking about the show long after the performance is over. We sat down with the couple to talk about their beginnings in the music world and all that we have to look forward to that is heading our way soon!

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We are here today with the wonderful Fab The Duo. Thank you so much for being here today! Can you introduce yourselves first and then we’ll get into a little bit about what you are all about as a duo and as individuals?

Yeah, for sure. My name is Greg. And my name is Brendan, and we are Fab The Duo.

Greg, where did you grow up?

I originally grew up in Texas. I grew up on a 60 acre farm with all the animals. I always say I was a city boy trapped in the country boy’s life and as soon as I was able to leave, I did. I ended up moving straight to Austin and then that wasn’t big enough for me so then I moved to New York, where I met him Brendan, and now we’re here in LA.

Nice! What about you, Brendan?

I grew up in Vermont, it was also a very small town in the country. Then I moved to New York, met Greg, and then we moved to LA about six months ago.

Did you two meet through music?

Well, we actually met through a dating app. We are a couple as well. We immeately both felt a very creative connection at first and then it just slowly turned romantic. We were dating for a year before we tried doing any performing.

When you were in New York, where could people see you performing?

Always in Manhattan, always in Lower East Side, West Village, East Village. Even though we lived in Brooklyn, it’s always easier to have shows in Manhattan. We sort of started out doing cabaret shows and then moved to the full-on band for rock music venues. Some of the venues we’ve played were, Cutting Room, Bitter End, Bowery Electric, and we do have some shows in New York later this month.

That’s exciting! When you are writing your music, are you in a studio together, working on this as a team with other collaborators, or do you kind of get into it on your own?

Every song we’ve written and have released has been completely written by just us. Eventually, I’d love to collaborate with other people but we haven’t really had much of a songwriting team. It’s just been us. I was a singer-songwriter when Greg met me, so I started out writing a lot of the songs but more recently, especially our newer stuff, has been a lot more collaborative and us really writing together. Then Greg comes in and makes it sound more interesting, because I’m very singer-songwriter-minded, and he’s like, ‘No, no, I need drama’.

It works! That’s why it is Fab The Duo. It’s not you or him, it’s the duo.

Exactly. We always get asked, “How is it working with as a couple” and we’re like, ‘I don’t know, it works, and we never try to screw it up. People always wonder who’s the “lead” but we’re both the frontman. We’re like a two man boy band.

I just love this. How do you get ready for a performance, Greg?

We’ve actually never been asked that question. Um, for me, one of the most important things to me, I come from the theater world. So, for me as going into character, my outfit is everything I need in order to fully get into whoever I’m about to be, I need to have the exact outfit. I need to feel it, I need to pretty much become that person. I always say getting on stage, that’s a very different Greg than what you get in normal day to day life. So yeah, for me, it’s all about making sure my outfit is good, making sure my face is good, and making sure my hair is good. I don’t think we have that many rituals, if any, we try to take a shot of tequila right before a show.

What about you, Brendan?

It’s been so long since we’ve had a live show. We have our first actual live show for over a year is next Friday, at Redline in Downtown LA. We’re super excited and we’re rehearsing a lot, because we’re sort of out of practice. Now I feel like it’s a workout, and so just making sure we’re ready get in the zone is important. I’m also a very different performer. I’m very different on stage than I am in real life. I feel like you just get in this whole different zone completely. There’s like nothing like performing live, so I’m so excited to finally be able to do that again. I feel like a part of me has been missing for so long this past year.

Do you think that’s why the two of you work so well as a couple, because you’re both putting on these personas on stage, but then you’re coming home to just the real two of you?

Exactly. It’s a very fun duality. I feel like it’s also a persona, but we’re also still just being real and being ourselves. We sort of just interact with each other on stage. When we fell into performing together it was kind of funny, because again, as I said, I come from a musical theater world, I dragged Brendan into it. We did a cabaret show, which is just a collection of songs for those who don’t know, in a story format. We did that and it was just literally because we saw a really bad one and we were like, we could do better. We just came out with it, and did it. That show was just us kind of bickering the whole show and people ate it up. That was when we realized, ‘Oh, we might have something here.’ That went off Broadway for a second, and then we turned into in band, and so it was a happy accident. I think one of the main things that people like about us is that on stage we’re not uptight. If one of us messes up, we’ll be like “You messed up”, and people love it honestly. We give each other looks if someone screws up, and some may call it unprofessional, but we just call it fun.

What’s the next step out in LA?

Obviously, as a musician, LA was very much a place we knew we had to go. I moved to New York to do theater, but once I wasn’t really doing it anymore, it was like, ‘Okay, I don’t need to be here’. Then of course, a pandemic happened but we had already been talking about being bi-Coastal prior to the pandemic. We stuck it out for a year or so in New York but then we were just like, ‘Nope, we’re not doing this again’. I feel like the first couple months in LA there was absolutely nothing going on with the pandemic and then suddenly, literally yesterday, all these things are suddenly piling on and opening up. Now we’re really trying to get the ball rolling. We’ve been recording and working on new music. We have some new stuff coming out very soon. So stay tuned. We have our first show in LA, and it’s really exciting because I don’t know if you’re a Gleek, but I am, and Kevin McHale is doing the show with us. Then we also have Nikki blonsky, if you know her she was Tracy in Hairspray. So we have a lot of things in the works and I’m really excited because we didn’t get the full experience of releasing our EP like we wanted to do last year, but we’re working on something really exciting and once people dive into this, I think they’re gonna really love it. It’s literally all about just letting out what we have held in for so long. So most of the songs that we’ve been writing have been written during the pandemic. It’s a lot of angst, but like happy-angst. It’s like, “I need to let this out. I need to express something other than anxiety, depression, and anger. I just need to release some good energy. So yeah, we’re really excited and we’re continuing our trend of trying to be everyone’s gay best friend.

Well, I hope you two take over the world one day, I really do.

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