Diane Coffee shouldn't just be heard — it should be experienced. While many bands tend to stand idle at their mics onstage, frontman Shaun Flemming and and his crew transform the stage and themselves into a production. With the costumes, sparkling makeup and his interesting facial expressions, one would think the theatrics would take away from the music. But it's exactly the opposite. We had the chance to get to know the man behind Diane Coffee and find out about his musical beginnings, Everybody's A Good Dog and his key to happiness.

 Here are 10 Things You Should Know About Diane Coffee.

The Name “Diane Coffee” is a Product of Shaun Flemming's Musical Taste

Diane Coffee was born Shaun Fleming. And while he’s one to admit that band names aren’t the most important thing to him, he did need to come up with a moniker for the project and decided to combine two of the things that he was heavily listening to at the time.

“During the first conception of the project, I was listening to a lot of Diana Ross,” he explains. “There’s a singer-songwriter named Nathan Pelkey, who doesn’t have a lot of credits under his name. I got a hold of two unreleased tracks, and one of them was called ‘Mr. Coffee.’ And that’s some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. So I was listening to both those things in the same week that I needed to come up with a band name.”

He Got Into Music as a Kindergartener

Shaun jumped right into music when he was a kid. At the age of five, he was already covering tunes for his parents. “My dad had a tape recorder,” he says. “There was a lot of music in my house. He had us tape these covers for my mom. So I recorded a version of ‘Julia’ [by John Lennon] and ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ [by Bobby McFerrin] with my dad. On ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ I could only say those words then the rest was [random sounds].”

"Spring Breathes" Came to Him in a Dream

“‘Spring Breathes,’ the first track on the record. I dreamt it, and it’s the first that’s ever happened to me," he admits. "I grabbed my crappy voice recorder on the iPhone and tried, half-asleep, to mouth what is going on in my head. So there was that bit of it. And then it kind of got lost, but there were probably about 30 voices in the intro track as a choral thing. It only sounds like four or five, but we were struggling to find a way to make it work. It took a lot to mix that song to where we wanted it and not what I expected it to be.”

He Thinks "Soon to Be, Won’t to Be" is “Sloppy”

“‘Soon to Be, Won’t to Be’ was a demo,” he expplains. “The guy who recorded it, Tim Smiley, he came over and set up mics and recorded the first things that came to my head like the first drumbeat that came to my head. That’s how that song was done. It was completely off the cuff with no thought of what it was beforehand. We tried to recreate it in the studio, and it didn’t work. That’s why it’s kind of sloppy, because it’s really loose. But I love it. It stands out as a different kind of track.”

"Everyday" Delves Into His Time Being Away From Home

"That song, as with most songs on this record, is reflecting on what I was going through over the past year since the last record came out — a lot of touring, not being home, having a partner and trying to manage that. When you’re away, that can, no matter how much you call and stuff like that, you start to feel a weird drift between you.”

And The Track in His Partner’s POV

“It’s written in a woman’s, or at least my partner’s point of view,” he conveyed. “And that first line, ‘You don’t even see me / I’ve been here so long,’ that’s what the song’s all about. It’s about toying with someone’s heart. It’s like being a stranger in your own home with your partner and trying to manage that for any reason. It’s dealing with that.”

He Was Inspired By His Time With Foxygen

Before Diane Coffee, he was a drummer for Foxygen. After working with the California band for five years, he took away some tricks and applied it to his own band. “I took a lot from Foxygen,” he admits. “It was more about learning how to run a tight ship and how to manage because the first couple of years, it was chaos. It was trying to figure out how to work in this industry. Sam’s a great frontman. He really commands the stage. I’ve taken as much out of those shows as I have from watching other greats.”

While in Foxygen, He Continued To Work On His Own Music

“Foxygen was never my project,” he explains. “I played in that project, but I’ve been writing and playing my own music for a while now. So it kind of felt like getting back to business as usual. But now, [this] is taking off, which is great because I’m playing to crowds that I want to play to. So that’s different.“

He’s Living the Life

“I’m doing what I love, and this is most people’s dream. It’s really hard, and I get stressed out a lot. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. What was the Tower Records thing? ‘No Music, No Life’? It’s true.”

And He Wants People to Find Their Happiness, Too

“Do what you love. It doesn’t have to be your career, but make time to do something that makes you happy," he proclaims. "It could be a hobby. Today, more so than ever, people can get locked away in their phones and that’s not what’s important, and that’s not what’s going to make you happy. The more you do of that, the happier you’ll be.”