Tag: nashville

Although they only emerged a little over a year ago, Los Angeles-based trio LANY has quickly made their way to the top of the charts. After touring with Halsey, X Ambassadors, Twin Shadow and, most recently, Ellie Goulding, the young band is now on their own headlining tour across the U.S. Vinyl Mag had the chance to chat with LANY prior to their set at Shaky Knees to talk about their music, touring and the exciting future ahead.

Vinyl Mag: So you guys started out in Nashville and now you’re based in LA. Has that change impacted your songwriting or is the process still pretty much the same?

Paul Klein: I think it’s the same. I mean I was living in LA when we started LANY but I would say it’s probably the same.

VM: Where does the name LANY come from? Does it stand for anything?

PK: Los Angeles, New York. It just represents, all over the country.

VM: And speaking of acronyms, your EP Make Out is full of them—what was the idea behind doing this?

PK: Well Make Out was a re-release because in 2014 we put out an EP called Acronyms that had a voicemail from his mom, I love you so bad and be right back, so we wanted to, we went on tour last year and opened up for people and got a bunch of new fans. And we wanted to kind of, noticed that on our Spotify albums we had a bunch of singles, and it felt a little unorganized, so we wanted to condense and make it an easy discovery process for people. So we complied our songs and put it on Make Out.

Jake Goss: We were actually in Nashville eating when we decided on the Acronyms thing.

VM: Well it’s a cool idea. And you guys recently toured with Ellie Goulding, how was the experience?

PK: It was super tough, probably the hardest thing we’ve done as a band. Just playing two hours before Ellie Goulding in arenas is interesting.

VM: Have you ever played an arena show before?

PK: That was our first. So normally we’re used to being really close, and on top of our fans, or people and in an arena people are really far away from you and two hours before the headliner goes on it’s pretty, it’s like half full. So for instance when we were playing the O2 that holds 20,000 people and there probably were 10,000 people there when we were playing, but it really just felt like there were 10 people.

VM: So would you say you like playing for smaller venues better, or was it cool to play in something that large?

PK: Well our songs sound really humongous in arenas so that’s always awesome. It sounds huge. But I’m gonna say smaller rooms because we’re headlining smaller rooms right now, so that feels better. But I think our greatest challenge as a band but something that I look forward to is making an arena feel like a 500 cap room. Because I know that we will be there one day. So that’ll be, I can answer that question better when we headline.

JG: But it’s always the best to just play with your fans.

VM: So when you get to the arena level, who would you want to open for you guys?

Les Priest: Coldplay

VM: Solid choice.

PK: Yeah, I don’t know probably whatever. I mean I hope that we can bring up bands that remind us of us when we were not playing arenas. Bring those people out.

VM: So if you could describe your sound in three words, what would you say?

PK: Dreamy, aspirational and emotive, or convincing. There you go, you have a couple choices.

VM: Looking towards the future, what can fans expect from LANY? Any news on an album release date?

PK: No news, just because we don’t have any news on that. But you can expect just a lot of activity I guess. A lot of content coming your way.