Lydia Talks Touring and Broadening Their Horizons
By Ashley Altus
Tucked away three stories above the House of Blues stage in Chicago, Lydia have spread themselves out in a dark and cozy greenroom. The temporary home the indie rock band and their crew have set up shop for the night in is like an episode of Antique Roadshow. Weathered, mismatched couches and chairs hug the walls and an oversized coffee table sits on top of an oriental area rug. With an overabundance of furniture and laptop and phone charging cords extruding from the walls, navigating the cramped space takes some agility.
The dimly lit room hides the warm and sunny 75 degree weather the Windy City offers the band. But Leighton Antelman, Matt Keller and Justin Camacho took advantage of it together by attending a Chicago Cubs game yesterday, which isn’t something they normally do on tour.
“We don’t really do much as a band, even if we have time to,” Keller says. “We just chill.”
Antelman said he went down to Chicago’s Riverwalk and laid his back on a bench to enjoy the sun and Keller visited The Bean in Millennium Park less than a mile from the stage they would be playing tonight.
Their love of Chicago has even dripped into what they’ve been listening to. Being on Kayne West’s home turf has influenced the band to bump his music.
“If you put on some Kayne in the van, you’re probably not going to have anyone get mad at you,” keyboardist and programmer Keller says.
However, Chicago hasn’t always treated the Arizonians like this.
The band froze at Lincoln Hall during their spring 2014 North American headliner, where they played their 2008 release Illuminate in its entirety, as Chicago had one of its coldest winters.
“There was ice everywhere and snow everywhere, and it was miserable, “guitarist Camacho says.
The 13-year veterans tagged along on PVRIS’s first headlining North American tour. But this tour is PVRIS’s breakthrough moment, and some concert attendees had never even heard of Lydia before reading them on the lineup for these shows.
“On this tour, you walk out, and it’s PVRIS’s crowd– 300 percent,” Keller says. “Everyone’s here to party with PVRIS.”
While the boys of Lydia have only been getting the stage half of the amount of time they’re used to, they’re still making an impact on the crowd.
“The first two or three songs, we’re just out there giving it our all, making sure they [the crowd]pays attention, make sure they take notice,” Keller says.
They have.
After their set, the band will go to their merch table to greet concertgoers with line wait times ranging from 30 minutes to an hour.
“’I’ve never heard of you guys before,’” Keller says PVRIS fans will often say once their turn comes to say hello to the band. But they’re excited to meet their new favorite band. “People say it like they’re embarrassed, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of you.’”
This reaction doesn’t faze the band even though they’ve been around the scene for over a decade. They’re just thrilled more people are enjoying their music and becoming a part of their fan base.
“I’m looking forward to all the fans we’ve gained on this tour to come see us when we’re headlining cause it’s a bit of a different experience,” lead vocalist and guitarist Antelman says.
Only playing a couple songs from their nearly 100-song discography is a different experience for Lydia. On their Run Wild tour, the band was on stage for over an hour playing about 20 songs a night.
“It’s pretty crazy to slam 8 songs into 35 minutes and just get off and be done,” Camacho says.
Keller says there’s a lot of give and go on headliners. A full set allows the band to build up the crowd and opportunities to slow down. They can set the atmosphere of the room.
But it presents it’s challenges too. Camacho says the band intently discuss how many songs from each record they should play during their headliner shows.
“We want to give them a taste of everything,” Camacho says.
Because the band has so many songs, they’ll play a song for two or three tours before putting it in temporary retirement and cycle in new songs.
To mesh with the intense energy of PVRIS’s live set, Lydia pulled their most up-tempo songs to play for the crowd. They also added many songs off their newest 2015 release, Run Wild.
“We didn’t want to walk up and be sleepy and slow and get drowned out,” Keller says.
The band’s Chicago performance was anything but slow. Barefoot on the stage, the band showed they were at home, no matter if they’re playing for their fans or another band’s. They plugged away hard their entire set to hype the crowd for PVRIS’s set which would be live streamed over Yahoo.
Selling CD’s for only $2 during their Chicago tour stop, the band just wants their music heard.
“We just really want people to hear our music,” Keller says. “It’s what we do. It’s the only thing any of us know.”
