Discover New Music Introducing: FOOD COURT PEOPLE
food court people is led by Hannah (Western NY) and Marc (San Francisco), a NYC–based indie jazz rock band formed somewhere between rural New York, a car that doubled as temporary housing, and a recording studio squeezed under a loft bed. Both are classically and jazz-trained instrumentalists, and their 2025 debut "we have that at home" sounds intimate, sincere, and slightly chaotic — like a band that accidentally turned “what if” into an entire project. The record is available to stream on all platforms, and their Instagram page (@foodcourtpeople) features live performances from their “under the bed sessions” series. Upcoming performances include dates at Dada Bar, Pancakes Records, Berlin, Hart Bar, and Cobra Club.
ARTIST Q+A
Imagine: there has been some kind of government censorship on music and you’re only allowed to listen to five albums on repeat for the rest of your life. What albums are you taking with you until your dying moment?
That’s a wildly difficult question to answer, but if we had to choose–we have two shared and two individual answers to this question: Parachutes by Coldplay and Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens. Hannah’s personal pick is Reflektor by Arcade Fire and Marc’s is Gladwell by Julian Lage. We also have a secret short playlist that we listen to when we’re together, so maybe we’d take that too :)
Bob Dylan famously said, about writing his music, that it “isn’t him” — something else took over entirely, like a trance, and when he snapped out of it, he had some of the most lyrically profound music in front of him; music that he had trouble taking credit for. What does songwriting look like to you? Is it reaching a transcendent flow-state, or is it a way simpler process?
It has ranged from the “flow state” to hard-won quests for the right phrase or note. Our process has been different for every single song. We’ve literally improvised parts of some songs and we also utilize controlled chaos via randomness and imposed limitations to stumble onto new options. We’re always collecting melody fragments, grooves, harmonies, and lyric fragments for later use–it’s an ever-evolving, ongoing process!
Do other art mediums (i.e. painting, sculpture, film) inform how and why you make music? Who are some of your favorite artists outside of the art form of music?
We are especially inspired by film (as a rule, we hit the theaters once a month), and we love visiting art museums and galleries. Visual elements combined with sound is the complete picture to us artistically. We’d even love to score films someday. It all comes down to sensory experience and narrative, the same elements we are always reflecting in our music: color, texture, mood, story, and execution.
Is there someone in particular that has greatly inspired your current music taste? How have you carried this into your artistic expression?
We each bring influences from our earliest days as musicians in jazz/latin jazz and classical music. Channeling that into a shared vision has been the fun and the challenge. Some artists we discovered later that shaped this project include Kishi Bashi and Mid-Air Thief–both artists that led us towards experimental and eclectic production in the studio.
You’ve been assigned aux for the spaceship ride to Paper Moon. What are you playing?
Let’s see if we can pick up an alien radio station during the trip. When in Rome.
Artist Credit: @foodcourtpeople
