Have a Seat with food court people

Words by Matthew Spence:

Come and take a seat now; today’s session, we’re going to do a quick mental exercise. Who am I? Your friendly neighborhood music shrink. Now I may not have a PhD or a doctorate, but I’ve mixed Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” and Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” in a playlist together like a kid with his cereal. So I’m more qualified than any BuzzFeed test you can take online. Now, the purpose of this exercise is to see where your brain aligns with sound and visual. Sound meets setting. I’m going to show you some photos, Subterranean Homesick Blues style, and you quickly state your answers as to what genre you may hear.

What do you hear when you see this pic of someone existing on a park bench? Perhaps some post-punk or cloud rap beat.

How about this: someone is sondering outside the passenger-side window?

Lying and tanning on a sunny beach, probably a bright, vibrant, hot 100 track, sure is not a genre, but still.

Now, is there any image where you hear the sound of indie and folk? No, not hanging in the coffee shop waiting for the purple-haired maniac pixie dream girl. But all of the above, what I listed before, and then some. Maybe some Peter Bjorn and John or boygenius, but in the 2020s, we’re neck-deep in a new wave of folk and indie music from ear to ear. The latest addition to the movement, food court people

A marriage story that feels adapted straight from an Apatow script to human life: Marc and Hannah’s individual 20 years of musicianship, plus 8+ years of partnership, have resulted in one solid debut album and a sound that carries the torch of xenial and calm. A NY-based 2-piece band that combined classical music upbringings and improvisation skills for a project that crafts indie music that helps highlight “two brains are better than one.”

Marc and Hannah, or Hannah and Marc, were once coastally distant as nosebleed seats. Hannah, being from (layer the fuck up) New York and Marc being from California (shorts during Christmas), both coming from a pristine musical background from childhood, unknowingly they’d be panning back and forth stereo style before finally meeting in the center, so to speak, as food court people. Marc found the guitar as a kid and under the wing of his talented musician family members, with his aunt being a Latin jazz prodigy and his uncle being one of the founding members/percussionists of Santana’s band. He took every single note on paper and scales. Influences of classic rock, jazz, and third stream jazz on his melodic liking.

On the right, Hannah came from music academics essentially, with her mom being a singer and her dad being a composer and pianist; she was put on track with piano lessons at an early age, but ultimately went off and tried out other instruments that seemed right for her. The violin would be the one to win Student of the Month. Sprinkling in her love of indie rock on top of classical music as well. Skipping the line to their early adult years, Hannah would stay home-based for school. Marc would go bicoastal and go to school, and both would leave footprints all over the campus map for a while until they finally crossed each other’s paths after numerous close encounters.

500 days of philosophy: coincidence or destiny? Who fucking knows?

Either way, they took life’s hints and ran with the vibes as their wires got crossed and music got tangled for the better, as Hannah says, “Marc’s ideas and perceptions on what options for music are out there, I guess, because we had such different [musical] backgrounds.” However, their journey to being the food court people we have in 2026 was a cross-country trip of character development, reflection, and trying to make it to the next day, and I don’t mean that just figuratively, but literally. At some point in the late 2010s, they had a cross-country trip living in a van and teaching music lessons for about 8 months until they found themselves settling in NYC after living together in Cali for a stint. “Figuring out how to get a 1997 Ford Explorer to be divided in half in the back area so we could sleep up top and put all of our shit underneath,” Marc states. Not the most romantic lifestyle, with its downs and hardships. However, it doesn’t seem to leave the worst taste in their mouths as they reflect back on that time in their life as important to their story. With good laughs and introspection. However, Hannah ties up that 2019-pandemic chapter with a bow by saying, “It was very invigorating. ”

Going from Point A to Point C with funny Fun with Dick and Jane moments in between. “We got into a couple of different hiccups with the police; you know it’s 2:00 a.m. I think the resident of the house or whatever got freaked out, and they called the police on us, and then they said, “Can you step out of the car, sir?” Like I had to get out of the car first, like I’m half awake, half naked,” as Marc tells a story about one of the run-ins with the police while living in the car.

Settled in and collaborative in the NYC, food court people would officially find their footing after collaborating and producing for a close friend of theirs. “A friend has this project called Girl Love, an incredible writer. She asked us to produce her debut album under Girl Love, and that’s when we sort of realized that we had a way of working together that we previously didn’t realize was there that was inspiring to both of us that produced enough residence points in the work that we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re satisfied with how much we’re contributed with what’s actually being finalized in the step of the process.”

From then on it’s full speed ahead: months of songwriting and testing sounds. 2025 would mark their debut project. “we have that at home.” A sentence universal for every kid asking for McDonald’s. seven tracks and 16 minutes It’s a cozy project that centers around attributes of experimental instrumentation. with these full-length tracks that offer sounds of intimacy and calmness, you can appreciate with yourself at a park or in nature.

Tracks like Harborwave feel like the soundtrack to your VHS memories. Is it the strings that capture you, the arpeggios, or Hannah’s voice that can calm a rowdy pre-K class? Pick your favorite piece; the song makes for a hell of a first impression.

To the interludes that would give Aphex Twin whiplash due to the shift, however, they seem to fit right in; it’s like your peas touching your mashed potatoes. Not what you had in mind, but you just go with the flow and enjoy the meal unless you’re a bourgeoisie brat; then you won’t leave till you finish your plate.

Food court people fill out the silhouette of an artist’s artist. Not just solely based on their quality of music or their expansive library of theory they know, but also their love of music that doesn’t seem like it’ll be fading away anytime soon. Whether they skyrocket to superstardom or remain unsung gems that never cracked the algorithm, music won’t slow down, at least not in all aspects. Marc expresses for himself, “I was raised by working musicians who just like told me like from the very beginning, like, ‘Hey, like, if you want to be a musician, be prepared to like do anything and everything,’ and so I was raised with that, like, just like awareness.” He continues, “I might never make it in the certain way, like growing up realizing what ‘making it’ means, like this very narrow lens of what music is in the mainstream awareness, and like, I very quickly made peace with that, especially cuz I was introduced to that idea like early on, like, ‘What is making it? What is being a musician in spite of not making it? And so, like, I just very quickly just realized it, like, ‘Okay, I can be a musician without being, like, rich or famous or well-known, and that’s fine. That’s okay.’ That’s, like, so at that point, why am I doing this? It’s for me, for us, my friends, trying to build a community to bring awareness to social issues, to political issues, to whatever it may be.”

In the midst of their life destination, I had a chance to chat with the duo and ask them a bunch of stuff. From their origins to creative process to food courts to music gear to vampire facials and whatever else that may or may not make the interview. It’s an interview. Questions are asked. Remember, when ordering water at a coffee shop, they’re probably judging you, but at least you’re saving money.

How do you feel being a DIY duo drives your creativity? Tribe to make the most with the least/trying to make more with less?

Marc: Definitely does. I feel like that’s central to everything we do. That entire record we made in our bed, no fancy studios or anything like that. We have our studio set up here, like everything is relative. We might have a fancy pedal or two, but it’s very much DIY for very much that whole thing. Everything you hear from the violins to these guitars, the way we come up with ideas and test things, it’s all here; it’s all pretty important.

Hannah: Yeah, sometimes there are things we want to do but can’t happen on time but–

Marc: We just have to find another way to do it if–

Hannah: Or find a whole other way to think about it so we’re not, like, you know, trying to go after an idea that can’t be accomplished. But we have, I’d say, the sound you get in some ways has to do with the stuff like, we customize them down to the exact kinds of sounds we like; we pick the synths that have these sounds or have patches or whatever. Every piece of it aligns with our taste. I’m sure both of us, if we had access to a full band recording studio, we wouldn’t even try to try cuz a lot of the stuffs harder to do than that; it’s way more time-consuming than if we could just hire five people and play a song off of a chart—that would take like a day. It takes us weeks and months to piece this together.

Marc: What takes months is that luckily we’re in an age where it’s easy to explore what you can do live, how can you get these cool textures, these dreamy things?

Describe your sound in three words.

Hannah: cinematic
Hannah/Marc: Improvisatory
Hannah: EXPLORATORY

Origin of your band name?

It was just “food court” at first, then we found this one band in Australia that was no longer operating under that name. We tried reaching out, but —

Hannah: No answer.

—Marc: but decided to play it safe and add the word “people” at the end, but that vibes with us even more so. You came up with ” food court” first, right?

Hannah: We had a joke where I was like, “I want to be a producer, but I don’t want to be Hannah.” My producer name is going to be something weird like ‘Food Court’ or something; it just sounds gender-neutral and playful and has a nice ring to it, a bit of nostalgia, like we’re both definitely at that right age to get the full Mall/food court experience when we were kids.

How do you navigate improvisation vs. focusing when it comes to songwriting and structure?

Marc:
I like doing it in general. That’s been recurring is making most, if not all, of the compositional process happen before we even touch a computer, yeah, and especially with songwriting, like, yeah, like I feel like we’re at our most efficient and are most decisive when we go in with the structure and the outline of the song already being finalized, maybe except for like an adjusted intro and outro length.

Who would you want to star in your indie film: Michael Cera or Jessie Eisenberg?

Hannah/Marc: Cera!

Hannah: We’ve watched him [Jessie] all of the time, but he has an interface that can come off a little rude (laughs); like the way he says stuff always comes off condescending (laughs). But yeah, I like Michael Cera; I wanted him in high school in Arrested Development. He’s just so funny in that.

Which environment triggers more personal reflection/conversation: church or food court?

Hannah: Maybe the food court.

Marc: Maybe

Hannah: Because it’s not open-ended.

Marc: I guess the food court. In my view, you meet a wide variety of people there, and you may be inclined to explore a more wide variety of topics.

Hannah: It’s broader cause you come across so many different people; it could result in more personal reflection in a student way.

Marc: and not growth in a different way.

How do you feel about the importance of classical music?

Hannah: I mean, people often give too much importance as a thing that people want to put on a pedestal. I think just because it’s so old and because it’s been positioned to such an important thing historically, music, just because lesser music has a domestic voice, and what’s important in music. So because of that, classical music is put up here like “that’s the shit.”

“This is the hardest thing; it’s the best thing.” I don’t know. It’s just been around a long time but not even nearly as long as a lot of world music has been. Yeah, it was just developed in a very certain way with a certain set of instruments in a certain amount of cultural acceptance. Does it do some things really well? Yeah, I think. We were talking with our friend; he was saying, like, in terms of exploring harmony and orchestration, it’s pretty up there. I mean, it’s really refined in that way, and the orchestration is pretty up there. I mean, it’s really refined in a really great way, and then that leads into your other questions, so if that’s it, I feel like the thing is if you want to know more about Harmony and shit, study classical music and jazz, you know. And if you want to understand how to explore things in a stunningly beautiful way in terms of texture and arrangement across instruments, study classical music like that. You’re going to find just hundreds of years of people trying to perfect that exact thing, and so there’s a rich tradition to draw from, and that’s where we use it in our music: where there is an awareness of texture and orchestration, and then between both of us, we’re using jazz in class school to inform her harmonic language and how we want to express different things, like emotionally, using that.

Marc: Where you ended up punctuating a lot of those thoughts is like it reminds me of the way that I—well, a lot of people tend to teach harmony or theory. Like, well, first of all, the mainstream thing is like theories like there are rules and rules are meant to be broken, like it’s just like, you know, like that kind of thing, but a little less mainstream and in this more like a corrective view. Theory and harmony, and classical music they’re observations of how things work that were explored naturally and organically among humans. Like you give a name to something that people like doing during a certain time in history after the fact of when they start doing it. Like when they started doing it, they were just like feeling their way around, you know? ‘This sounds nice,’ and ‘this sounds nice,’ and ‘this sounds cool and interesting,’ or ‘this sounds momentarily bad, but then like it sounds happy,’ and like that dissonance and consonance resolution is like, you know, now has a name for this, but yeah, that pretty much sums up every theory or harmony concept or classical concept that you can ever find.

Hannah: Unless you’re talking about acoustic science

Marc: It’s more often than not throughout music history, whether it’s jazz or classical or really anything around the world, that it’s humans deciding, like, we were pursuing this for our own personal reasons, whether it be emotional or it be protest. Whether it be reflective healing, and then people come, often decades, sometimes centuries later, and then later and put labels on things and then say, like, “Oh man, we love that era, so now to do that era, you need to do this or do that.”

Future plans

Marc: Next project will be releasing in a few months, and then we’re going to LA, I say sometime this year.

Hannah: And I think we’re trying to slowly work out some tour dates, not like maybe even consecutive days. We’re trying to like build audiences in other cities; we just did a show in New Haven, and we’re working towards the show in Boston in March.

Yeah, it seems like I mean, I’m sure over time I think that the cycle for right now has ended, but continuing to build, you know, presence and stuff and apply to festivals. Yeah, just seeing if we can play as much as possible, getting the next music out, and working towards touring. And you know, work towards touring; it’d be great if we could open for someone on tour. That’d be awesome; we love that we actually love opening

Stream and listen to “we have that at home” wherever you like to listen to your tunes. Follow food court people on everything and anything they’re on. Remember: break a guitar string, and you will crack your mother’s back.