lovelytheband

After years of incessant touring behind a single that refused to leave the charts, Lovely the band are getting ready for their next move

Charlie Connell

For decades there was a detailed set of instructions a band would have to follow in order to make it big. It basically went form a band: Pay your dues at small clubs, start playing some bigger shows, sign a record deal, release a single and then maybe, MAYBE, get famous. As the music industry has changed, so too have the rules, and no band exemplifies this more than indie-pop sensations Lovelytheband. They didn’t just skip a step or two in the expected progression, they went and had a hit single before they even fully formed the band.

“I met Jordan [Greenwald, guitarist] just by happenstance and I was like, you wanna write some songs and do this thing with me?” vocalist Mitchy Collins explains. “Luckily he was down, and we put out the first song, ‘Broken,’ on April 14, 2017. Then we signed with Another Century in June, I believe, and Sam [Price, drums] joined July 1.”

Not only did they have a single starting to rise the charts before they had a drummer, they hadn’t even met their drummer! Collins and Greenwald found Price on Instagram after playing a show with one of their buddies filling in on the drums. “I joined and then a week later we were off to the races,” Price says with a chuckle. “I think I really only had maybe two conversations with Jordan and I was like, cool, we’re going to be on flights together for the rest of our lives. In vans and mud and all of it.”

This situation could have easily devolved into a living hell if the three guys didn’t mesh perfectly together. But, on the other hand, it was also a way to know very early on if the band would be able to handle the long haul. “That’s a very quick way to force yourself to learn other people,” Price says. “I think if anyone of us didn’t want to do it, or it didn’t work out for some reason, it would have been quick. We had to learn each other and grow very quickly. We became brothers.”

Each time the band would return home from a tour supporting another band, they would quickly do some laundry, repack and hit the road in support of another group. In short order they saw most of the United States and a pretty big chunk of Europe. All the while, “Broken” kept climbing the charts.