{"id":2446006,"date":"2019-07-04T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=308733"},"modified":"2019-07-04T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T22:00:00","slug":"lake-street-dive-returns-to-a-sold-out-belly-up-with-a-new-member-and-new-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/lake-street-dive-returns-to-a-sold-out-belly-up-with-a-new-member-and-new-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Street Dive returns to a sold-out Belly Up with a new member and new album"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Lake Street Dive will headline Belly Up Aspen on Saturday, July 6.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

For nearly all of Lake Street Dive\u2019s<\/a> 15-year history, the group stubbornly refused to bring on any additional musicians to help re-create some of the sounds the band had incorporated into the studio versions of its songs, but could not replicate live with just four band members on stage.<\/p>\n

But that thinking went out the window (and onto the stage) in 2017 after the group gave performing with keyboardist Akie Bermiss a try. Guitarist\/trumpet player Mike \u201cMcDuck\u201d Olson, singer Rachel Price, bassist Bridget Kearney and drummer Mike Calabrese found they got much more than a faithful representation of their songs with Bermiss in the fold.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that our past selves\u2019 sides would have denied up and down that we would ever have considered adding another member,\u201d Olson acknowledged in a recent phone interview. \u201cBut we have whole-heartedly embraced Akie Bermiss as sort of the fifth member of the band as a keyboard player. Last year, he was on right around two-thirds of the show.<\/p>\n

In the past, on a single song in concert, Olson might play guitar and sing then have to whistle a section of song and hop onto a mellotron to play a double part.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat challenge was very exciting for a long time, and I think a natural thing for a group of people who attended a music conservatory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

(The band members met at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic is supposed to be something of an athletic pursuit,\u201d Olson added. \u201cIf you\u2019re not sweating, are you really playing? That\u2019s sort of the conservatory mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freed from having to figure out which band member would have to play certain keyboard parts either in tandem with their regular instrument or in place of their instrument, Lake Street Dive found their overall sound enhanced with Bermiss handling keyboards. For Olson, it also allowed him to expand the role of guitar beyond being the primary melodic and tonal instrument in the group\u2019s live sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, I\u2019m the only thing defining the tonality of a song,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m the only thing with more than one note going at any time, so everybody is using me to tune to. So there are all these like checks on the list that I needed to do before I could even think about what I\u2019m playing from a creative standpoint. But with Akie there \u2026 now we\u2019re constructing these sort of very idiosyncratic key guitar parts that come from records that we know and love so much. Now we\u2019re not fighting with the music, we\u2019re dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the band members liked what Bermiss did so much in the shows, they brought him in to play throughout their latest album, \u201cFree Yourself Up,\u201d and were further delighted by the impact the keyboardist\u2019s playing had on the Lake Street Dive sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that we played a lot differently when there was a live piano player involved,\u201d Olson said. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting and it\u2019s inspiring from a musical standpoint and I think the (live) show is elevated musically just from the kind of tasty musical elements that Akie contributes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFree Yourself Up\u201d still sounds very much like Lake Street Dive, but there are some significant new wrinkles in the music. The band has stretched out a bit stylistically, retaining the hooky pop melodies, good-time feel and the jazzy and soulful elements that have been laced through the group\u2019s five previous studio albums.<\/p>\n

But the sound is fuller and rocks a bit more. This is especially true of \u201cDude,\u201d a standout funky track with a groove that\u2019s matched by the catchy chorus. But other songs get extra jolts of energy, as well. On \u201cBaby, Don\u2019t Leave Me Alone with My Thoughts,\u201d a riffy change of pace part adds some grit to the song while \u201cYou Are Free\u201d gets some similar riffage to go with its buoyant melody. And Bermiss makes his presence felt throughout the album, for example, spicing up \u201cRed Light Kisses\u201d with what sounds like clavinet and B-3 organ and weaving in synthesizer in \u201cDoesn\u2019t Even Matter Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aspen audiences have had a front-row seat for the band\u2019s evolution over the past five years. Since a summer 2014 debut at Belly Up<\/a>, the hard-touring band has been back regularly as its sound \u2014 and its membership \u2014 has grown from its early days as a throwback soul outfit and YouTube sensation. Lake Street also wowed at Aspen\u2019s biggest pop festival<\/a>, the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Experience, in 2017.<\/p>\n

The band will return to Belly Up for a hotly anticipated, sold-out show Saturday.<\/p>\n

Olson said the group is pleased enough with \u201cFree Yourself Up\u201d that a good chunk of the new material was getting included in the band\u2019s live show as soon as the album was released in May 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201c(We were) showcasing a lot of new material right off of the bat, interspersed, obviously, liberally with more known material,\u201d he said \u201cBut we\u2019re lengthening the show, as well. So it\u2019s going to be a little bit of a longer show, which will ensure that we can play as much of the new record as possible, but also make sure we play the hits, as it were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Travers contributed to this story.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lake Street Dive will headline Belly Up Aspen on Saturday, July 6.Courtesy photo For nearly all of Lake Street Dive\u2019s 15-year history, the group stubbornly refused to bring on any additional musicians to help re-create some of the sounds the band had incorporated into the studio versions of its songs, but could not replicate live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 17:21:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}