denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.
[ noun ]
a tropical Asian and African kingfisher with brightly colored plumage.
a mythical bird said by ancient writers to breed in a nest floating at sea at the winter solstice, charming the wind and waves into calm.
A five piece indie rock band from Mascoutah, Illinois that will amaze and astound you.
Halcyon is a band that has been on my radar for a while. After listening to their debut album, “Stuck on the Daze”, I was immediately hooked by the expressive and melodic indie rock rhythms. The vocal style in particular was captivating, and the way the rest of instrumentation played off of it was compelling in a way few groups truly achieve.
The immediate comparison that I and many others point to after being introduced to Halcyon’s sound is Paramore. I remember texting a friend after seeing them live, “You have to check these guys out. They’re like if Paramore was from southwest Illinois”. And that brings me to what really convinced me I needed to talk to the members of Halcyon: their live performances. My goodness me.
Live performances can be hard to lock down, especially for a band of five people. Sometimes it’s hard to find a synchronicity with just three people (speaking from personal experience here). Reader, when I tell you these guys are tight, I mean they are TIGHT. It’s ridiculous, it’s almost unbelievable the rhythm this group is able to capture when they’re playing together.
It’s truly an incredible experience, it makes me sad they’re going to take a little break- though it is a well-deserved break and a break that signals the coming of more original music, which makes it well worth the wait (as a fan). You will have one more chance to see Halcyon live at their one year anniversary show November 15th at The Mill in their hometown of Mascoutah, Illinois. But, without further ado, enjoy our interview with:
HALCYON
[ Originally recorded September 21, 2025 ]
Pictured [L to R]: Jade (vocals), Alex (guitar), Braden (guitar), Alise (bass), and Bryce (drums). Photo via @officialhalcyon on IG.
Introductions
To start, can you introduce yourselves, your role in the band, and a fun fact.
Jade: My name is Jade, I’m the lead vocalist of Halcyon. Fun fact, I write 90% of the lyrics for all of our music and our discography.
Alise: I’m Alise Forsyth, I’m the bassist. Fun fact about me, I’ve been playing my instrument the least longest out of all of these guys- almost a year and a half now.
Bryce: I’m Bryce Erlinger. I am the one and only drummer for Halcyon. Fun fact about me… honestly, that’s a hard question on the spot. What’s a fun fact about me, Braden?
Braden: This guy’s a really big Urge fan.
Bryce: I am! The Urge is great. I really like the Urge. Local music is fun! Listen to more local music. Fun fact. It’s great.
Braden: My name is Braden and I’m one of the guitarists for Halcyon, and I kind of run all of the social media and booking and all that stuff. So if you want us to play for you, reach out to me and I’ll get back to you!
Alex: I’m Alex. I play rhythm guitar for Halcyon. I really like bluegrass music!
How did you guys all meet, or how did this band start?
Jade: Well, me, Bryce, Braden, and Alise went to school together.
Braden: For a long time.
Alise: Shoutout Mascoutah school district!
Jade: Shoutout Mascoutah. Out of everybody, me and Bryce have known each other for the longest and then Brayden, and then Alise. I peer pressured Alise into joining the band, because I was like, “Hey, she plays bass!” and I called her-
Alise: (laughing) For four months.
Jade: For four months straight, and she brought along Alex and we had one rehearsal- we actually played it live today, it was “Top of the World”, Alex started playing the intro riff to the song and I was like, “Hey, keep playing”, and that’s when our lineup really locked in together. That was October 8th (2024), so our one year anniversary is coming up really close. (Editor’s Note: This was recorded a little over a month ago)
Do you guys have anything to add?
Braden: Well, we’ve been a thing for a couple years, but it wasn’t really an original music band until when they said. We did cover band stuff for a couple years, doing shows around town and around the area, like local benefits and playing in bars and stuff just to kind of get out and play- we didn’t really have a purpose. I would say our purpose really started when we got together and realized that we could make half decent sounding music. And so we kind of just put our foot to the gas and haven’t stopped yet!
Bryce: Yeah, I remember watching you guys when you were just playing at the AG building for the first or the second time in town and I was like, “This is never going to be something I’m in. Like, I’ll never find a band. Woe is me”. And then here we are playing PointFest, playing PorchFest.
You guys are from Illinois originally, so how did you end up expanding more to St. Louis and this area?
Braden: There’s like no…
Alise: Scene.
Braden: Like no local music scene in Illinois…
Jade: At least where we’re at.
Braden: There’s a couple places that you can book, but really all the consistent, like, every single weekend venues are over here- which, we’re so lucky to be close enough to be able to be a part of. I know friends that are down in Carbondale- which has a decent scene- but if they wanted to play shows up in St. Louis every weekend, they would have to drive the hour and a half to come all the way up here and play, where it’s literally like in our backyard. We can just hop over the river and do like what we did this weekend. We did a show at the Doorknob and then we went over to Illinois and did a recording session in the morning and then came back over the river today and did PorchFest, and I think if we lived really anywhere else that would be borderline impossible.
Bryce: And I think a lot of the credit would go to the bands that we’ve met and become friends with as well. Like the Down Bads have pushed us into the scene a lot, they’ve helped us [by being] like, “Hey, check out these venues, check out these bands. You guys would really like them. They would like you a lot. Come play this bill”. Raze the Alarms really helped us a lot in the start.
Jade: They really helped us take our first steps, Raze the Alarms.
Bryce: So just meeting people in the community got us out there more and got us booking more shows, which is awesome.
Jade: Raze the Alarms got us PointFest. They really did. They’re like a three-piece dad band from where we’re from over in Mascoutah, Illinois. We did a battle of the bands with them, that’s where we met them and the Down Bands together, and it was really, really great. They were like, “Hey, you guys should do this”. They saw a lot of our potential, so a lot of thanks to them.
I really like the name, I’m curious how it originated.
Braden: That’s all [Jade].
Jade: When me and Braden first started this band it was in my garage in high school when he was a junior and I was a senior. We would always go over to each others’ houses, play guitar, hang out, and do whatever, and one night, Brayden was like, “We should do a show!”. So we put together this rinky-dink, like, pop-punk cover set that was maybe an hour long at the longest. I highly doubt we even reached that much. But he was like, “We need a band name if we’re gonna actually do a show” and I was like, “Okay, let me sit on this and think for a little bit”.
“Are you feeling halcyon?”, was actually what my dad would say a lot, so it’s kind of a memory of him. But now that we have defined our own sound- like we have our shtick together, 100% group all together- Halcyon’s to the book definition is “an idyllic moment of a happy past”. So, nostalgia, but warmer. And that was originally the kind of music we were playing when we were doing covers, like we were doing 2000s rock and punk and everything like that. I told Braden, I was like, “Halcyon”, and he was like, “That’s really stupid”.
Braden: I did, I hated the name.
Jade: But we kept growing with it! And I feel like we’ve definitely grown into the name.
Braden: Yeah, I second that. Well- I think the reason I hated it was because it was so...
Jade: Obscure.
Braden: It’s not a word that you see every day. It’s so odd and there’s so many different ways that you can pronounce it. But it’s really grown on me in the fact that it sticks out and the fact that if we play anywhere, people are going to be like, “Oh, that’s Halcyon. We know what they’re about”. I think that’s super, super cool.
Bryce: It almost gives into the meaning more too, because that word has been lost over time. It used to be super common back in the day, it was regular speaking. But now it’s like, “What is a halcyon? Is that a bird?”
Braden: Oh, it’s also a bird.
Pictured: A halcyon.
Bryce: Yeah, it actually is a bird.
Alise: It’s a kingfisher!
Jade: And that’s what our logo is!
Who designed the logo?
Jade: I did! On my iPad Air.
I thought it was a deer originally, like with antlers.
Bryce: That’s valid.
Jade: I see that, yeah.
It reminded me of that Pokemon, whichever one that is. But it is a bird, I see it now.
Pictured: The Pokemon I thought of when I first saw the logo
The Sound
How would you pitch your band to someone?
Braden: We are... I tell everybody indie rock, just because it’s such a broad genre. You can get really punk with it and very, like, thrashy kind of rock, but you can also get very melodic, soft tone guitar. I think we- I mean, you experienced it with our set- we get really far into both ends of the spectrum. I think our last album is a lot more classic rock, a lot more into the heavier side of rock, and I think this new album is going to really show people that we can do both! A lot of it’s going to be on the other end of the spectrum with a lot of softer guitars, more vocal harmonies. It’s going to really show our musicianship. So I usually say indie rock, and then let them assume the rest.
Bryce: Usually when I’m talking to people about our music and our band, it’s like, “Hey, have you heard of Paramore? Have you heard of Backseat Lovers?”. Kind of big names in the indie indie-rock pop-rock kind of scene, and I’m like, “If you like that, you would like us. We have a very similar style/sound”. We have, like, pop writing, but with indie music, so it gives us this really cool dynamic of digestible, but also really expressive music.
Alise: I also think what we’ve done really well is combining all of the genres that each of us as individual people like to listen to into our discography. Whenever I’m pitching our band to friends or strangers I’m like, “There’s something for everyone on our album or in our discography that you’re gonna enjoy if you come out to a set”. Whenever you get five people that have listened to completely different genres growing up throughout their life, it’s hard not to get that in a discography whenever you put them all together.
Alex: Yeah, and it comes back to our writing style where it’s not like a couple people decide, “Oh, this is a song we want to do”. Each one of us has come and been like, “Hey, here’s an idea for a song”, and then we work off of that. So every song has the potential to be spawning from a completely different side of the spectrum. It creates a really fun dynamic of how our songs play off each other, because they’re all so different.
Jade: We’re very fortunate that all of us work creatively well together. I know a lot of bands that break up because of a lack of creative liberty, but all of us are very accepting of each other’s ideas. Like, we’re going to be hard on each other all the time because we want each other to be better! We want to push each other all the time. And writing is not easy, especially with a group of five, but somehow we do it. Somehow we do it every time we write. And- excuse my language- we have good shit!
I was very impressed with the synchronicity you guys have, especially being five of you. I feel like that’s sometimes hard to pull off.
Braden: I feel like that’s a compliment we don’t really get that I think we’re really good at. A lot of people will be like, “Oh, those are cool guitar licks”, or, “That drum fill was super cool”, but I think our biggest thing that sets us apart is that we’re cohesive as one with five people. When I was talking to the porch host, the one compliment he gave us was like, “Oh my gosh, you guys are tight, like, you guys just line up so well together”, and I think it’s super cool that you as well noticed that. (laughing) I don’t know, I just thought that was cool. I’d have two pennies, because it happened twice.
Alise: The thing that I’ve said since we did our first Road to Pointfest show is, like, whenever we first started out doing our cover gigs or our benefit shows, there would still be little tears that you would feel between us. But ever since we started performing and really living our own original music, it’s very clear that on stage, like, we are Halcyon. It’s not Alex, it’s not Braden, it’s not Bryce, it’s not me, it’s not Jade, it’s Halcyon on that stage. And whenever we get off of it, when we’re not playing anymore, then we go back to being our own individual people. But I think it’s really nice that we’re all able to kind of become what we are supposed to be as a band whenever we’re all playing.
What would you say is your dream set list of you and two other bands?
Braden: Any band?
Yeah, any band.
Braden: Us, Paramore, and... The All-American Rejects.
Bryce: That would have been fun to hop on their little tour.
Alex: I would say us, Paramore, and Backseat Lovers.
Jade: I would personally say us, Paramore- Hayley Williams-
Braden: (laughing) Hayley Williams solo act.
Jade: Hailey Williams is the love of my life.
Bryce: (laughing) Us, Paramore, and just Hayley Williams.
Jade: Us, Paramore, and then mostly because of this next album that we’re gonna put out- since Braden mentioned it’s gonna be a lot more indie- I would love Flip Turn.
Braden: Oh, that’s a good one.
Alise: Easy, without a doubt, us, Backseat Lovers, Greta Van Fleet.
Bryce: For me…
Everyone: The Urge!
Bryce: I was gonna say the Urge and 311, but that literally was PointFest, we just weren’t on the same stage. But imagine how sick a show would be, like, The Pageant: us, The Down Bads, and the Urge. Like that would be the coolest lineup for especially local, but like dream: us, Chili Peppers, and... I don’t know, I think Paramore or Backseat Lovers, one of those two interchangeable. But Chili Peppers would be so fun to play.
Braden: So yeah, some similar but also different answers.
Jade: I love Paramore!!
Braden: @ParamoreBand.
Yeah, I’ll tag them for sure.
What shape and/or color would you describe your music as?
Braden: I would say an olive green. It gives a sense of- like, obviously green because of the logo, but green is such a… I’d say an inviting color. as opposed to, like, orange or red. Calming is a good word- our music invites people in to listen to it, I don’t think it’s niche enough to be like, “Oh if you don’t like this music you’re not going to like our music”. If you like music in general I feel like we have either written or played something that will attune to your ears and I think green really embodies that.
Bryce: Yeah, the first thing I pictured was like a muted kind of green, soft color and just like a free flowing, free forming pattern. Like you guys have all been saying, we have something that anyone will like. That’s kind of what I pictured.
Alise: I would describe us as a little dandelion tuft in the wind! On the wind like a little wish.
Jade: I like that, that’s really cute.
Alise: Thank you! Yeah, I think that’s us.
Jade: That’s us.
Beyond & Within the Music
For each of you, what is your relationship like with your instrument?
Alex: I started playing guitar in like 7th grade and I played acoustic stuff mostly. I’m majorly into classic rock, like, Eagles, Boston, and I would learn Eagles songs on the acoustic guitar. I played up through- like halfway through high school, just all on acoustic and then I kind of dropped off. Then Alise was like, “Hey, there’s this band thing happening…”. And I was like, “I don’t know if I’m good enough to be in a band!”
Alise: Ok, no, he was still playing heavily whenever I first met him and he sounded good, so that’s why I asked him!
Alex: Ok, I picked it back up a little bit, but they invited me and I was like, “There’s no way I’m good enough to be in this band, but I’m gonna try”. And yeah I showed up at that rehearsal and…
Braden: Which is really funny you say that, because a lot of the riffs for our songs, Alex wrote. Like Top of the World, Quickie, Church Girls, all of those rhythm guitar parts are all Alex. He doesn’t miss, like, it’s incredible.
Alex: I think I’ve got a good ear and I think that’s my superpower. But yeah, I’ve fallen in love with guitar again, and especially electric guitar specifically. I had so much time with acoustic guitar that that’s kind of like my home, but I’ve just been having so much fun exploring what electric guitar does.
Braden: I started as well on an acoustic, but I switched pretty quickly to electric. I also dig a lot of classic rock, a lot of 2000s rock, so I would get really into that. My dad is a big AC/DC fan, so I would learn all the AC/DC songs, and unfortunately you can’t play a lot of AC/DC songs on acoustic guitar, so that was my push for him to get me an electric guitar. Then immediately after that, after learning all those songs, Jade- also Jade has always been good at guitar- me and her started really doing those cover sets and basically just formed a band because we both liked to play guitar.
I have a big jazz background, I did a lot of vocal jazz, jazz band in high school, and I’ve always wanted to get into jazz guitar, so I’ve been taking lessons the past year-ish. I’d say it’s really influenced a lot of the writing that I’ve done and a lot of the solo licks and stuff like that. I think it’s really just improved my versatility on the guitar.
Bryce: Where do I start with me and my drums? I mean, as long as I can remember, from the time I was super young, I’ve been just tapping on stuff. Anything, tapping with my fingers, hands: tapping. My dad does it too. I don’t know, I think there’s something in my family, but the rest of them didn’t harness it until me. But as soon as fifth grade came around and we could sign up for band, I was like, “I want to do this”. I was talking to my parents and my grandparents like, “This is the only thing I want to do”.
I originally tried out for trumpet! And I go in there and I pick up the mouthpiece, *imitates unfortunate trumpet noise*, and the director just hands me a pair of sticks and he goes, “Nope. You’re gonna be on percussion”. I was like, “Okay!”, and then from there- all the way from elementary up until high school- I stayed in percussion. I excelled! I was one of the best- not to stroke my ego- but I ended up getting center snare, which is the highest ranking you can get in a drum line, which basically just meant I was capable of leading, I had the best hands.
Jade: Bryce is the best.
Braden: Bryce is the goat!
Bryce: But I was never the strongest drum set player! I was always good in marching, but drum set I was jazz band second chair drummer. We had this kid Roman, who was always better than me…
Jade: And Roman was originally our drummer!
Bryce: He was the original drummer, yeah.
Braden: Fun fact, Roman Wells III is our original Halcyon drummer. But he has moved on to better things.
Bryce: So I played the jazz drum set a little bit and it was fun, I was getting used to it, but when I started to practice on my own kit, learning like the 90s alternative, the 90s rock, the Urge, you know, stuff like that, that’s when I really started to click and fall in love with playing drum set, and I just kept going with it from there. And Roman being their original drummer, when they reached out to me to come and play drums for them, I was initially kind of like, “Oh shit, I have big shoes to fill, this kid is really good”. But immediately they were like, “You fit our style perfectly, we really like having you on board”, and I’ve just fallen in love with drums so much more. Music is almost number one in my life, and it always has been, always will be. It’s just so fun, I love it.
Jade: I peer pressured Bryce into joining the band. I showed up to his job.
Bryce: I was just at work and she was like, “Hey!! Come play!!!” And I was like, “Uh, okay”.
Alise: My story is less long than everyone else’s. I’ve always been, like, musically inclined, I played the flute for like eight years of my life, I was in marching band too with most of these guys. So like I’ve always known I’ve had the capabilities of doing well in music scenes, but I never really pictured a band like this. I taught myself ukulele, so that was four strings, and kind of one day whenever I graduated high school, I was like, “I kind of want to pick up another instrument”. I was like, “Well, I’ve already got the ukulele. Let’s try the bass. That’s four strings too”. I’d only been playing that for like four months and then Jade hit me up and she was like, “Hey, you play bass right?” and I was like, “Uh, barely”.
Jade: And I was like, “That’s fine!”.
Alise: Then the rest is history from there. My relationship with my bass is, she’s like the cooler version of me. So I feel like whenever I put her on, I turn into a cooler version of me and it makes it a lot easier to perform with these guys, because it’s not really me!
Jade: Love that. Ok, singing… I suppose I’ve been singing my entire life. I want to say since I was maybe four years old, when I was able to speak a word legibly. I sang at my churches growing up and listened to the radio and I have always just been in love with music since I was a really, really little kid. Fun fact, I’m Filipino, and you’ll never meet a Filipino that isn’t musically talented. So music just kind of runs in my family, my entire family sings or plays an instrument or dances.
I really started singing when I was in middle school, like I joined choir in 6th grade and then that just kept going on up until I graduated high school. Then my eighth grade year, I picked up guitar and I was like, “I really like this instrument”. I picked up guitar and piano at the same time and my oldest brother taught me how to play. I just kept falling in love with music even more the more I got into other instruments, and I kept developing my voice with them. And one day I was like, “Oh my gosh, I want to write a song” and I started writing, and I kept writing, and it hasn’t stopped since.
So I feel like my relationship with my voice is really... kind of definitive of me. Like, if I lost my voice one day, I would be distraught. Singing is probably my whole passion and purpose with life, I feel like, and nothing makes me happier than getting to be in front of a mic. Braden has told me that before. I lived in LA for a little bit and then I moved back home and I was really depressed, and one day he was like, “Hey, come over, get in the basement, and hop on the mic”. He was like, “You’re never happier than when you’re singing”.
Braden: And then Halcyon was born.
Jade: Yeah, and then this lineup of Halcyon was born! So yeah, it’s just my whole life, the singing.
Alex: He wants to live in the walls and eat cheese.
Braden: I like cheese!
Favorite color?
Alex: I think green.
Braden: Green.
Bryce: Orange.
Alise: Green.
Jade: Green and red.
This is a tough one: would you rather have one dollar or two dollars?
Bryce: Double it and give it to the next person.
Alex: Is it a one dollar bill and a two dollar bill or two one dollar bills?
It’s two one dollar bills
Jade: Ok, one dollar then.
Bryce: I’m still taking two.
Alex: Two dollars. Then we can combine our four dollars and buy something at McDonald’s.
Braden: You can get a McChicken!
Alex: We can get a McChicken!!
What was your answer?
Braden: Gotta go with $2.
Favorite pokémon?
Alise: Turtwig!
Jade: Squirtle!
Alex: Cacturn!
Bryce: Whoa. You’re weird.
Alex: Dude, I don’t know anything about Pokémon, but that one looks cool.
Bryce: Ok, fair enough. Typhlosion.
Braden: Mine is Mudkip.
Bryce: I like Hisuian Typhlosion a lot too.
A lot of starters here.
Jade: I literally asked them that question a couple weeks ago.
Alex: I had to look up a bunch of Pokémon.
Braden: Or Vanillice, the ice cream one. Maybe because I just want ice cream.
Jade: Squirtle or Altaria.
Editor’s Note: Not to scale…
The Ending
You guys mentioned you’re working on your next album, but what are your other long or short-term goals for Halcyon?
Braden: We want to go on tour.
Bryce: Short-term, I’d say a Pageant show. I think if we can get to a Pageant show that’s kind of the marker of like, “Hey, maybe we should look at a tour or go even further”, because the Pageant is like the big venue for local shit.
Braden: Yeah, I agree.
Alise: One day I would love to play the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater main stage.
Jade: I would too!
Braden: Short-term goal, play in another city. I think with this new album, it’s going to open up a lot of opportunities to really travel and play in places where we don’t really have a fan base or where we’re going to be relying on other local talent to bring a fan base to expose them to our music. So I think that that’s going to be a real decider of, “Hey, do we sound good or do people we know just come to our concerts all the time?”.
Jade: “Do they like us?”.
Braden: I think that’s the main short term and then obviously long term we want to blow up. I think we have what it takes, it’s just a matter of getting in front of the right ears.
Jade: Knowing the right people.
Braden: Knowing the right people, getting in front of the right ears, and then just just keep playing. I think a lot of people struggle with the longevity of just being able to keep playing. I can attest, like, especially this weekend, it’s a lot. But I think we have what it takes to really go the extra mile and get what needs to be done, done.
Alex: And I think on a more self-contained level, this album is going to be really huge just in terms of our creative process and making something that’s much more thought out and creatively inspired. Moving past this album, I think just getting to a place as a band where we feel happy about the direction we’re moving and continuing to evolve in our songwriting process and continuing to make the music that we want to hear and want to play and that we think is good.
Bryce: Long term- this is kind of a selfish one, but I think it would be sick for all of us- is playing Red Rocks Amphitheater. That venue is just one of the most beautiful, sounds so good, like, if we could play there I think we could break up the day after.
Jade: And we actually got the opportunity to play with somebody recently- another band- and they played at Red Rock.
Alex: Shoutout Blank Slate. From Denver?
Jade: Yeah, Blank Slate from Denver, Colorado. That’s another shout out. My personal long-term goal: I want to play at Soldier Field and the Kobe Stadium in Japan! World tour, that is my long-term goal. That is like a big, huge dream. That stadium is beautiful.
Do you have any closing thoughts?
Bryce: Listen to Halcyon!
Braden: We’re going to disappear for a little bit, but don’t forget about us!
Alex: Don’t come looking for us… Don’t ask where we are…
Braden: Follow our socials. We’re going to get really active on there, posting a lot of stuff, but we’re going to kind of lay off the shows for a little bit. We’ve been doing a lot over the summer. I think we’ve done probably close to 12 shows over this last summer from probably late May to now and I think we’re gonna lay back a little bit, really work on writing our new stuff and making sure it’s polished and good. We’ll probably do Road to PointFest again next year in February, but other than that, I think we’re gonna really lay off. So follow us on our socials so you don’t forget about us! When we come back, that first show back is gonna be explosive.
Alise: And thank you to everybody who has listened and tuned in and come to our shows along the way. I think we’re all very down to earth in realizing that we wouldn’t be doing any of this if it weren’t for any of the people that bought our merch, streamed our stuff, followed us on Instagram, just the smallest things, you know? Thank you all for listening to us and letting us be able to do this every weekend.
Bryce: Thank you St. Louis!
Jade: Thank you St. Louis! And southwest Illinois, and our beautiful, amazing media management team!
Bryce: Wooh! Go media team!
Alise: We literally wouldn’t look cool on social media if it weren’t for them.
Jade: It’s true.
Thank you Halcyon. I’m so very pleased I was able to talk to these guys and see them live before their little break! Very excited for everything their future may hold, especially this next album.
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Again, if you ever get the chance to see them live, DO IT!!!! Seriously. But yeah, that’s all for me, see you guys in the next Bobcat Press article ☺
