Story Behind the Song: The Reklaws, ‘Hometown Kids’
Jenna and Stuart Walker -- otherwise known as the Reklaws -- released their single "Hometown Kids" in June of 2017. The Canadian sibling duo (they're two of seven kids in their family) co-wrote the song with Travis Wood and Gavin Slate.
Raised in Cambridge, Ontario, the Walkers channeled their teenage lives into "Hometown Kids," a song about the carefree days of youth and the "never-gonna-grow-up" feeling that goes along with them. Below, the Reklaws share the story of how the song came to be.
Stuart Walker: We wanted everybody to understand that we are just college kids at heart. Everybody that we meet, we always want to try to become friends with; we never want anybody to feel, like, intimidated to come up and talk to us at a show or after a show. We just want to hang out, have a beer ... and that's kind of why we wrote "Hometown Kids."
Jenna Walker: We wanted to get the message across that it was, like -- that we could relate to a lot of people, because a lot of people love their Fridays and Saturdays.
I think the song is important to us because it was our first major, like, [time to] sit down [and] really configure who we are as artists and what we want to say, and it was the first song that we wrote with these two guys ... They were really into, like, "Okay, we're not wasting time here. So, who are you guys and what do you want to say?" "Hometown Kids" came out of that day; it was the first song we ever wrote with them, and we never thought anything would come of it, and then once we got it recorded and stuff, we all looked at each other and were like, "This song is awesome."