Speaker 1: Hey, if this is the first time that you've joined
me on this experience and this adventure, please visit Arrow
dot net A r r oe dot net. There's so
much more than just the conversations, the interviews, the movies,
the rockstars, Arrow dot net A r r oe there's
a podcast for everyone. Hey, guys, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Hello? Hello, Thank you for having us, You for having us.
Speaker 1: Man, you guys are everywhere these days, including Dancing with
the Stars, where you have vowed to be bad.
Speaker 2: And we're so excited.
Speaker 3: So this is a dream come true for the both
of us, and we can think of a more ectic,
beautiful way than to announce it on dedication night of
Dancing with the Stars.
Speaker 4: And that was just a coincidence of that aligned and
with this like interview. It's all like lining up in
this really beautiful kismet way, and we're just really grateful.
Speaker 1: We got to talk about the book, especially when you
open it up and all those Christmas lights are right there.
It's the old fashioned Christmas bobs. What is the actual
theme of this book? Because I really felt like I
belonged to the family that's featured inside this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, It's called follow Off Family, and it's about how
family can be a lot of different things. It's not
always the conventional family you see. It can be a
mom and you, a dad, or two chosen family, a
furry friend. Just family is community and family is love
and those people who see for who you are. So
we wanted to showcase all types of families in this
book because we're going to have a future child and
we want our child to be able to see a
family that looks like ours two dads in a children's book,
and so we hope that we can inspire everyone and
to show that everyone's story deserves to be told.
Speaker 1: Guys, Steph Lou did an amazing job with the illustrations.
Oh my god, especially when it comes to looking inside
that crib at that baby.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I was like that was manifesting our future.
Our illustrator, Steph Lou is the most incredible illustrator we
could have ever dream to work with. We worked with
her on our first book, How Lucky Am I That
came out in twenty twenty four, and we instantly knew
we wanted to work with her again on fallow Off Family,
and she's just so incredible because she took you know,
she asked for childhood photos of us from our childhood homes,
our parents, our sisters and brothers, and she took those
photos and put them into the books. So you can
see inside our childhood homes. You can see our dogs,
you can see the big Filipino feasts that I used
to have during the holidays. And we are just so
grateful that, you know, our memories and our lives are
just forever immortalized in these pages that we'll get a
show to our kids and our grandkids and our friends
and our chosen family throughout the years.
Speaker 1: Or so so proud of it the way you guys
paid attention to detail. I mean, you've got some really
beautiful things going on inside this book.
Speaker 3: You can see on the page I'm Filipino, so you
can see my big Filipino family. You can see the
pun sit, the pula book of the Lechaflon, all of
these really cozy feelings of the holidays on these pages,
the kids in the background doing karaoke. It's so funny
because she really captured the essence of being in my family,
my Filipino family during the holidays. And I am so
so grateful and lucky that I'll get to have these
memories forever in these pages.
Speaker 1: Reader. Some families need to know that music has come
with this book, which I think is absolutely amazing. But
what came first the songs or the story?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it honestly, it happened very simultaneously.
Speaker 4: Something we learned when writing our first book was that
writing a children's book is very very similar to writing
a pop song. It's just like short phrases, very simple, rhyming,
rhyme schemes, and like that was like a big enlightening
moment for us. So for the second book, we wrote
a song with the book in mind and the illustrations
in mind, and we just love to create together. So
we went, we just kept going, and we ended up
creating a whole album and then asking our friends who
have beautiful families that were inspired by Meghan Train or
Baila Flex. They're on the album, and so it's like
this whole universe at this point.
Speaker 2: And then after that we were like, what if people
want to sing together? We love to sing with our
family and sing with our friends, and so we had
a cheap music you can sing along.
Speaker 3: Yeah, such a fun project. Because Scott was saying earlier,
making a book into a song itself was just an
amazing experience. And then to create a whole album called
My Family that people can listen to year round because
the album actually, even though the book is a holiday book,
the album is a book for all times of the year.
So it's great that, you know, families are people of
all ages can listen to these songs that means so
much to us.
Speaker 2: That was so warm and cozy.
Speaker 3: There's covers of songs or You're My Sunshine featuring Baila Fleck.
There's original songs like All I Need featuring Megan Trainer,
And we're.
Speaker 4: Like really big fans of things, and something that's fun
about being a fan of something is like getting to
dive in and like watch all the music videos and
then watch all the behind the scenes. Like honest, we
love like having lots of stuff to consume when we
when we are really a big fan of something like Wicked,
We've watched all the behind the scenes, all the John
two interviews, and so we wanted to like create that
with this. We were like, we'll do cheat music, We'll
do a whole album, and people can discover this and
like and so it's kind of like a world you're
diving into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please do move. There's more with Scott and Mark
coming up next. The name of the book La La
La Family from Scott Hoyne and his husband Mark. Is
it okay to sip on coco while I'm reading this
book and sharing it with my grandkids?
Speaker 3: Oh? Oh yeah, thank you. That was definitely our intention
for sure is to have a cozy book you can
read with your kids as you're putting the you know,
to bed.
Speaker 4: Exactly, and those are like some of the best memories
the out of the kid to be like the soundtrack,
and also just to be the children's book in those
memories the kids have in their formative years.
Speaker 2: It's like that. I mean, that's an honor Scott.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a Christmas tour for the band
coming up in the next month. Any surprises out there,
what's going to be brand new because we want to
make this into our yearly tradition.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: We have so much new stuff and we have the
most beautiful epic set we've ever had.
Speaker 2: We're like playing a game with the audience we've never.
Speaker 4: Played and there's like really really beautiful arrangements that we're doing.
I'm more excited for the store than I've ever been
for a tour.
Speaker 2: I like truly can't wait.
Speaker 4: And this album Christmas in the City, is like really inspired,
and we were all together in the studio and it
just came from this magical place that like remind me
of some of the early Panasonics days. I'm just like
really excited for this new era. It might be a
little bit difficult to do tour and Dancing with the
Stars at the same time, but I am energized right
now because it's such a beautiful era of life.
Speaker 2: That I think I can do it.
Speaker 1: For a brief second, let's go back to dancing with
the stars. Do you have any kind of pull when
it comes to what you want to dance with? Because
I mean music is just so personal as well as dance.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I've literally had the best experience over the
past six weeks. I can't believe it's already halfway. It's
been the most intense, beautiful, like like scary but in
a good way vulnerable experience I've ever had. And I'm
just I'm just treasure it. And next week it's a
Wicked week And that's my favorite. That is our favorite show,
Our favorite movie. It's just on repeat at our house.
And like when we were talking in the interview about Wicked,
I was like going in because I'm like a dramatic
of that musical, and so I am really excited for.
Speaker 2: The dance this week.
Speaker 4: I think it's going to be a big moment and
then and just like I'm excited to see how it
pans out. The cast is so amazing, Thank good, everyone's
so sweet. I'm just treasuring every single moment and just
trying to make the most of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been so much fun just be a part
of it all on Dedication night, Martin me like God,
and in Scott's partner Riley, who we adore so much.
It's it's it's been so much fun, and we like
don't want the experience to end because we're having so
much fun watching Scott live this incredible dream.
Speaker 4: And I am practicing choreo all the time because it's
so when you're out there, it is terrifying and your
mind goes blank and you have to rely on muscle memory,
and so I just have to drill it, drill it,
drill it, like and yeah, but hevn't you're out there.
Speaker 1: Made a lot of being in this moment of now.
Is there a message you would like to share with
new readers as well as fans of the music.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, spend time with people you
love and you connect with who are your family and family.
Speaker 2: Can mean so many deside. I'm gonna go ahead and
take that on again. We love you so much. We
hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
Speaker 4: Family can be anything, your chosen family, your family at home,
your friends. Just find the people and the things you
love to do, and I hope you celebrate and have
the best stay of our.
Speaker 3: Truly, and we hope our book is speaking of hope
and representation for families that look like yours. We really,
really really wanted to make sure that this book incorporate
all types of families, all types of love. So hopefully
when you're reading Fall Up Family, you're seeing your heard,
you feel the love, you feel the joy, and we
love you and we will always love guys.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time to share
this book with me, as well as the brand new
music and tour plus Dancing with the Stars. You guys,
be brilliant and please come back to this show. Anytime
in the future,