Exclusive Interview with Gay Pop/Rock Duo Fab The Duo

Rapidly rising from New York City, Fab The Duo is a gay pop/rock duo that energetically delivers an open-minded message, challenging the status quo of today’s cultural scene. Through a carefully crafted combination of genres, the power duo, composed of boyfriends Greg Driscoll and Brendan Eprile, opens up a door to all communities around the globe to embrace their personalities and true identities. 

I got the chance to talk to both of them about where the name Fab the Duo came from, the story behind their new single “No Prince Charming”, what goals they’re aiming to reach in the next couple of years of their careers and so much more. Keep reading to see what they had to say!

For those who aren’t familiar with Fab The Duo, can you give me a little brief history of how you guys met and how the duo came to be?

Brendan: We’re actually a couple – we met on Tinder two and a half years ago – and we’re both performers and artists. Within about a year, we ended up doing a cabaret together and it went really well. We did another cabaret in Austin and then we start getting a couple of gigs. It just sort of started taking off from there and then we became a singing duo.

Where did the name Fab The Duo come from?

Greg: We were just talking about names and I was like, “I wish Fierce Ass Bitches could be the name.” And then I was like “Fierce Ass Bitches. F-A-B. Fab” and I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t taken already. And that’s how it was born. 

Brendan: So yeah, Fab the Duo is actually an acronym of Fierce Ass Bitches. It’s not short for fabulous. During our shows, we always like to ask people what they think Fab stands for and of course everyone says “fabulous” but it’s really fun to be like, “No, it’s actually Fierce Ass Bitches.”

That’s awesome. Something I’m always genuinely curious about is what artists want to convey to listeners with their music. So if you guys had to describe the music that you make without using genre names, how would you describe it?

Greg: Oh, I love this question. Honestly, uplifting new age pop.

Brendan: First of all, I love that you didn’t ask a specific genre, because the first question we’re always asked is, “What genre is our music?” and it always stresses us out because I feel like we don’t have one specific genre. But definitely empowering and uplifting. I think if you listen to all of our songs, all of the songs are really big, in your face and all of them definitely have a message. Really what we’re trying to do in our music is always try to convey a message about love and acceptance and self love and just being yourself.

Kind of going off of that, who are some of your guys’s musical influences?

Greg: Gaga for sure. Beyonce for sure.

Brendan: Definitely a lot of the older like Elton John glam. Like Prince, Queen, Freddie Mercury, a lot of that kind of older glam rock as well. We definitely have a retro, rock sound. Lenny Kravitz, as well. 

I want to talk about your new song, “No Prince Charming”, which I absolutely love by the way. What is this song about?

Greg: In short, it’s about knowing your worth and not settling for anyone until they acknowledge your worth.

Brendan: It’s pretty much just not needing anyone else to validate you, very self love anthem. We also wanted it to come out right around Valentine’s Day because I know, especially for single people – and we both have been there before we were in a relationship -seeing all that around you can be really disheartening. So the song is kind of for all our single friends and even though we’re in a relationship, we’re still our own individuals and we take seriously that; at the end of the day, we’re still our own person, and we have to be able to live with ourselves. If we can’t love ourselves, we can’t love someone else.

Something I’ve always been curious about with songwriting is how topics come to mind. So did you guys know that you wanted to write about this specific thing going into the song session that birthed “No Prince Charming”? Or did it just kind of come about organically once you guys started writing?

Greg: It actually started off as just a fun chorus. I wrote it without any idea that it would become a Fab song. It started off as a joke, to be honest. And then we started really looking at it and I was like, “You know, if this is going to be a Fab song, I think this would be a rap song.” And then it just morphed into what you hear today. 

Brendan: So yeah, it’s fun asking about the songwriting process because originally, I started out as the songwriter because I’ve been doing it for a long time and our other singles were mostly written by me and then Greg would kind of arrange them. This was the first song that Greg mostly wrote. He came like, “Hey, I have this hook,” and then we worked on the verse. So this is really Greg’s baby. Now, we kind of try to collaborate more as we continue with Fab; we try to work more together.

That’s awesome. So the song also features Mariahlynn. How did that collaboration come about?

Greg: We were big fans of her song “Once Upon A Time” and she had a link on her Instagram for her email and we were like, “Let’s just reach out. We’re just gonna risk it. We’re just gonna do it. Who cares?” And then within an hour, she responded back saying, “Oh my god, I love this song. I’d love to jump on it.” Then literally the next day, she was in the studio with us.

Wow.

Brendan: We just vibed super well. We thought she would just hop on the track and then leave. But then we were like, “What if we try to do a music video?” and then she was down to do that. And then we even performed live with her on Friday, which was super cool. So she’s really been heavily involved. It’s not like she was just a feature, did her verse and left. She’s really involved in the song as well and we’ve kind of formed a friendship.

Greg: Which is really cool because it was unexpected. We took a chance that we didn’t think would happen and then it happened, way better than we ever could have imagined.

Did you always envision this song having a feature or was it a situation where it was her and if she said no, then the song wouldn’t ever had a feature?

Brendan: We ideally always wanted a female rapper, especially because we’re two men singing about not needing man and we know that, for some people, it might be harder to relate to it. We were kind of looking at a lot of different female rappers, but I think Mariahlynn is literally the perfect choice. I can’t think of anyone else.

Greg: Fun fact – originally, when we first were looking for features, we were like, “What if we could get Lizzo on this track?” But that was right as she was starting to blow up and we were like, “You know what, probably not gonna happen, but one can dream.” 

Brendan: I first heard “Once Upon A Time” on TikTok of all things. Just the sassiness and also that fairy tale kind of aspect of it was so perfect for our song that it’s literally the perfect match. 

Were there any major changes made to “No Prince Charming” once you guys got into the recording studio and laid it down, whether it be something lyrically or something sonically?

Greg: Honestly, no. It just got more pop because our producer Juan – he’s amazing – he just brought out the pop side. Our music has always been more rock centric but still mainstream; this one, we flipped it and it’s more pop-centric. And honestly nothing changed. I would say everything just got enhanced and the lyric stayed exactly the same.

Brendan: Mariahlynn did write her own verse, though. That’s something cool. We brought her in the studio and were like, “Do you want us to write a verse for you?” and she was like, “No, no, I got it.” She literally came in the studio, we played the song on repeat for half an hour and then she was like, “All right, I got it” and laid it down in like 10 minutes, and it was amazing. So that was cool, having someone else add that verse is something that we never would have thought of and having that, it is really a collaboration. 

That’s cool. You guys mentioned that your music video for this, which I’ve seen and think it’s a ton of fun. What was that process like? How did it compare to some of the other ones that you’ve shot?

Greg: This process was so much more fun. I mean, the song is way more fun. But we got to bring in our friends. The main girl you see, the girl that gets broken up with, that’s our friend and all the other people are our friends [too]. We were like, “Hey, I know you love this song. You want to be in the music video?” So that had a whole different energy to it. We were all in this little tiny space together and honestly, it just felt like a big old party. We were there for about 10-11 hours, shooting those scenes. Then, we shot the outside scenes where the girls are slow-mo walking in 20 degree weather and we were outside in New York just being like, “Okay y’all. One more take. One more take.” They were just troopers. So it was honestly one of the most rewarding and fun experiences. And all of our friends got to go on Billboard with us when we were there so it was very cool to do it and it was a very easy process considering the fact that there were like 10 people in the whole thing. But looking back on it, I think this will be one of our favorites because we got to have all our friends and Mariahlynn. It was just magical. 

Brendan: And it came together really fast. Also, Greg styled everyone, so it was really cool to see him do that. We had an amazing videographer but we also took a very hands on approach and really came up with the idea and found all of our friends. So it is really cool to see the end product.

I know this song just came out, but do you guys have any plans to release another single or maybe even an EP or album sometime this year?

Greg: We do have something in the works. Will it be a single? Will it be an EP? We will see. But I can say it’ll be within the next few months.

That’s awesome. You guys are still relatively new to the whole music game so what are some of your goals or benchmarks you’re aiming to reach in your career in the next couple of years?

Greg: Honestly, we’ve been talking about this recently and we both realize that we’re the first of our kind. We’re the first gay duo to start making waves in music and we don’t take that lightly. Our whole thing is that we want to be the heroes that we never had growing up; everything we’re doing could be a huge part of history. Everything we love and everything we’re doing could change people’s life and save people’s lives. and we don’t take that lightly. Anything that could happen, we hope that all of it could happen in all honestly. We hope that we could be performing at the Grammys, get a Grammy. I want to show that a gay duo is not anything different than another duo. It’s just music; music transcends everything. 

Brendan: I think we realized that what we’re doing is honestly bigger than just us, especially with this track, with hip hop. So many Mariahlynn fans, who are LGBT, have commented like, “Finally Mariahlynn’s rapping with queer artists.” There’s not really many female rappers, or any rappers honestly, who are collaborating with queer artists. So I think just changing people’s perceptions, especially in genres like rock and hip hop, which are definitely for the most part very straight focused. It’s really cool to kind of be literally be changing history. So we both hope we just keep on going.

I think in terms of short term goals, we’re definitely looking for management and agent and just really get bigger, take it on tour. This summer, we’re hoping to play a lot of pride shows. We want to do a whole pride tour if that’s possible, because we love playing for our community.

That’d be awesome. Last question – our website is called Talk Nerdy With Us because we all have some kind of inner-nerd so what is something you guys are currently nerding out about?

Brendan: Well, one thing about me that you might not necessarily know from Fab is I’m obsessed with food and cooking. My dad was very, very gourmet, and I’m really into cooking food. I actually hae my own Instagram page called @brendancooksthings. I’m obsessed with all those cooking shows like Gordon Ramsay, Chopped and even Guy Fieri’s cooking show. So I definitely geek out a lot about food.

Greg: I’m completely on the opposite end of that. I love Sims still. I’m one of the people that still plays Sims religiously. I do it differently because I have an actor brain so I play Sims like it’s a movie. So yeah, I create a whole storyline. I know exactly what my sims are gonna do. It’s geeky.

Brendan: We both geek out about roller coasters. We both love rollercoasters, we play Rollercoaster Tycoon. We love going to different amusement parks. We’ll literally just watch rollercoaster videos together [laughs]. That’s definitely something we geek out about that people might not expect. 

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