The Lumineers to light up Paris
Less than two years ago, The Lumineers were playing concerts to fewer than 50 people. Now, after selling more than a million albums in their homeland, the US folksters have embarked on their first world tour. What sparked The Lumineers' metamorphosis into global folk icons?
Last year the French TV broadcaster TF1 featured a news segment on a new Parisian craze: private house concerts. To my surprise, one of the interviewees was a friend whose private acoustic gigs around the capital had been feeding my musical appetite for the past few weeks. Frequented by obscenely bo-bo (bourgeois bohemian) types these intimate shows took place in settings that ranged from former warehouses-turned-art nouveau lofts to stereotypical Hausmann-style apartments. Guests came and cosied up on giant cushions, nodding appreciatively as they sipped red wine to the soundtrack of the American coastal cities. At the end of the performance, my friend passed around a hat, pour les musiciens, s'il vous plait, and gave instructions on how to find the group online. It generated great word-of-mouth publicity, and for a moment such DIY innovation became a newsworthy topic at Parisian coffee tables. However, like the arrival of Starbucks before it, what Paris' hipster community was really looking at was yet another North American import. Over on the other side of the Atlantic, where gritty American backstories of struggle and strife are hard currency, they've been feasting on the genuine McCoy for years. Score an invite to a private house concert over there and you might just find yourself elbow to cheekbone, with the folk recording artists of tomorrow.
The Lumineers are the latest in a line of American folk groups to have taken on this mantle. Unknown less than two years ago, the group were signed in early 2012 after a video of them playing their song Ho Hey! at a house concert appeared on YouTube. Captivated by a typical performance that included foot-stomping and chanting, music execs hoped that they had stumbled across the next Mumford&Sons. Was this a tad ambitious? Perhaps. Yet few can doubt the business nouse of the music bosses or argue that Ho Hey! has been anything other than extraordinary. The single went to the top of the US rock charts, as The Lumineers swapped cramped apartments and dreary basement clubs for the Grammy Award show stage, where they were nominated in the Best New Artist and Best Americana Album categories. While they didn't win, the exposure added momentum to the one thing The Lumineers had in their favour: timing.
"There really is something to this sound right now," singer Wes Schultz told me. "We just happened to be here, releasing in a perfect time for it to catch on."
'Roll your sleeves up' artists
For a group that can still be considered newcomers, The Lumineers project began a lifetime ago, in musical terms at least. It was 2005 when struggling New York musicians Wes Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites decided to start a band following the tragic loss of Fraites' brother and Schultz's best friend to a drug overdose. A talented painter, Schultz would become the group's lifeblood, combining introspective lyrics with mellow acoustic guitars, giving his songs the same meticulous attention that he would his sketches. However, with life in New York proving to be too expensive, the pair relocated, or rather "ran away", to Denver in the south-west. There they recruited a third member, cellist Neyla Pekarek through the popular online listings site Craigslist and set about playing live music wherever they could. To pay the rent, they'd wait tables or work long hours in local bars. Luckily, Denver welcomed them into its vibrant music scene, far enough away from LA and New York to be considered alternative, yet near enough to haul their instruments for the occasional income-generating gig. Indeed, the group point to those early days as proof that, far from the overnight success that the Ho Hey! phenomenon portrays them as, they are simply reaping the rewards of hard graft.
"It may seem like super quick success but it doesn't necessarily feel that way to us” Schultz says with the kind of sentimental determination that might befit a 30-year-old with a tale or two to tell.
YouTube-friendly
In an age when folk has become synonymous with Spotify and Dylanesque stories are more likely be told on a Canon 1D than with a twelve-string guitar, the group embody the modern folk rock band. Arriving precisely when new barriers to folk music were being trampled down, the Lumineers were primed, revealing minimalist folk songs with few instruments and simple enough chord progressions as to inspire scores of YouTube covers. Now having toured together for so long, Schultz pays lip service to the "great family atmosphere on the road,” giving the impression that surviving today's ‘Everything Sounds Like the Mumfords Now’ world is more about having strong chemistry than musical ability. Indeed it's a nice touch that now everyone are talking about them, the band still give a nod to their humble roots. When they played the ratings-busting Saturday Night Live TV show in America, lampshades recreated the intimate settings of their earlier performances. For a group who once used the name “Free Beer” on a poster just to make sure they attracted any fans at all, what a comfort it must be to know that they have left the private house venues well and truly behind.
First published on Wordpress. Image credit: Big Hassle.