Known for their matching outfits, dual melodies, powerful lyrics, and exuberant live performances, five-piece indie/pop band Lucius are quickly paving new roads within and outside of their genre. Fronted by best friends Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe, the band is equipped with tenacious vocals and strong lyricism. From backing up Roger Waters to releasing and touring on their second, widely-acclaimed studio album, Good Grief, Lucius is becoming a household name among indie fans.

The success of their debut album, 2013’s Wildewoman, took them on their first national tour. They’re back on the road now in support of their 2016 follow up Good Grief, and they’ve hardly had time to catch a breath between their latest batch of shows. Luckily, Holly found time to chat with me over the phone ahead of their November 9 performance at Tipitina’s. She spoke candidly about their life, creative process, and plans for the future.

First things first, we are a New Orleans publication so I got to ask, have you ever been to New Orleans before?

Yes, we have. We’ve been there a few times and had a blast every time.

Any cool stories?

They should probably charge a little more for alcohol because it can get messy, but it was great fun. We’re excited to go back.

Awesome. So, the two of you, Jess and yourself, met at the Berklee School of Music, then moved to Brooklyn where you met the other members. Can you tell me a little bit about those early years?

Yeah, we met in, well, first in 2003 and we met through our roommate at college. My roommate, my dorm mate, became friends with Jess’ dorm mate, and then her and then we all became friends. But it wasn’t until about two years in that we started all of this and that was through, I had just gone to her house. My roommate who I had met her through originally became her roommate, so I went to a party at their house and we just got to talking about music and how we first fell in love with music and listened to the oldies channel in the car and loved old school soul and rock and kinda bonded over that and thought oh, well, you know, do you like the Beatles? Oh, totally. Oh, well, we should do a cover show. Well, let’s do a cover show of the Beatles, you know, the White Album. And that never happened but we did rearrange “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and we recorded it, you know, to have a little demo just to share with, probably just to have for ourselves and to share with friends. And when we recorded that demo we were trying to figure how we would do it with two singers because we both wanted to sing the lead, and how are we gonna do this? Are we gonna switch off? Are we gonna sing every other line? Are we gonna sing harmony? And we started singing the melody at the same time, I think, you know, into the microphone and with cams on and were like oh, that sounds like, almost like a double track vocal but not quite like either of us so that’s a cool sound.  Maybe we should play with that. And we did and, you know, we continued to play with that from there on. And I was majoring in songwriting, we were both performance, she was music business as well, so I was very interested in writing original music and she was on board with that so we started writing our own songs and put together a band and picked a name and the rest is history.

That actually leads into another question I had for you. So, you guys’ melody and instrumentation is great, but all of that aside, your writing is also very powerful. Is the writing process shared equally between the two of you or is it one more so than the other?

Every song is different. There are a couple songs that are probably more veered towards one of us and the other one’s sort of a witness and sometimes even a devil’s advocate to the other’s experience, and that’s something kinda special about it. We’ll have writing sessions, we’ll set aside time, and we’ll come into sessions with ideas and sometimes a melody on a voice memo and sometimes it’ll be a fully fleshed out verse or whatever it ends up being we bring it to the table and the other will help finish the sentence a lot of times. It’s an interesting relationship to have with somebody, you know, when you’re sharing your art with somebody. To say, okay this is what I have to say, what do you think? And having them help finish it. But it gives you a new perspective and sometimes it’s very therapeutic, I mean I think it’s a lot like coffee talk for us sometimes. So, it’s pretty cool. And very intimate.

You have two full length albums out right now, Wildewoman and Good Grief, and they’re very different. Was it always the plan to cross styles like that or was that kind of an unexpected turn from one album to the next?

Well, it’s interesting because I know, people bring this up a lot and I know what they mean ‘from one record to the next’ but from our perspective the first record Wildewoman had been written over like three years, you know, from start to finish, and it was, when we started touring that, you know, we’d already been playing and hearing these songs for so long, we started accruementing with the live show and adding things, and adding instruments, and everyone has multiple, you know, tasks on stage, and had fun with it live, livened it up a lot.  And the audience, a lot of times would comment and say, “you know, I like the record but the live show is so much more boisterous and energetic and electric, you know, it’s loud and bombastic and I love that about it.” And so, you know, we agreed and that’s how we had grown on the road. From the time where we left our last live show at the end of touring Wildewoman, which then had been like five years, that where we left off there with it is kinda where we started with Good Grief. So, it didn’t feel like a departure, it felt natural, it felt like the natural evolution from our standpoint. But with the two on just records, yeah, they do sound like they’re from two different worlds, because they are, I mean, the first one was very green it was before we had toured, it was before anything, we didn’t even know we were gonna put it out. It was just writing, and experimenting, and then the second one was more mature in some ways but it’s funny because the first record’s all about, oh, we’re going through this journey and we’re growing up and we’re not kids anymore blah blah blah and then the second one is like, what the fuck am I doing? Where am I going? Who am I? You know, it’s backwards contextually, but I think basically it’s a lot more grown up.

Yeah. I agree. Wildewoman was well-received and, as you mentioned, you guys weren’t touring before that. What was it like going from not even having an album out to touring the majority of the year? Was it a big shift?

It was intense. We didn’t know what to expect. We’d never done it before and we were ready, we were really ready to work our butts off and boy we really did, I mean, it was heavy. Everybody is trying to be a successful musician in the scene and someone is always gonna be working harder, constantly harder than you are so we knew we couldn’t afford to say no to anything at that point and we wanted to be playing all the time and, you know, luckily, people kept calling and so, you know, we took everything that we could and it was a lot and we were driving ourselves, we were in a van, it was like overnight drives, radio show in the morning, show at night, drive to the next city, radio show, it was like non-stop, and it was heavy and by the end we were really drained and suffering in different ways, but grateful, you know, of course grateful. But I think Good Grief came from a lot of that because it was emotional, it was emotional to be away from home for that long, it was really hard on relationships with your family, your significant other, your friends. So, you know, it was a lot.

How is your current tour going with Good Grief? Is that a different experience, or is it similar in ways?

It is different, I mean, we’re still busy, we’re still working hard but we’re on a bus which makes a huge difference. Like hallelujah. There’s space, you have your bunk, you can close the curtains, you know, shut everyone out if you need to. I also think temperamentally everyone’s in a better state and everyone kinda knows how to handle each other and handle themselves better, as far as like I feel like I need alone time, I’m gonna go for a walk by myself, and everyone’s like cool, you know, I get it. There’s not the same pressure of having to be together all the time, everyone understands each other better and what they need for themselves. So, it’s been better, you know, not that it was ever bad, but it’s been great.

What was it like performing with Roger Waters?

Completely insane. And so wonderful. Yeah, God, I’m still thinking about it. Yeah, it was nice, we *away from phone* oh sorry, hold on, you got it? Ok. *on phone* I left my ear pack on from sound check and our wonderful monitor just grabbed it from me. Anyway, so we met him two summers ago at Newport Folk Fest. Jay Sweet, who runs Newport, was matchmaker, ‘cos he [Waters] was gonna do a surprise set, My Morning Jacket was going to be the backing band but he wanted a couple background singers so he asked Jay and Jay thought of us ‘cos we’ve been at Newport the previous couple of years and collaborated with everyone and had a blast and, you know, really bonded with those guys. So he recommended us and all this stuff, and was like do you guys wanna come sing background for Roger Waters with My Morning Jacket as the backing band and it was like, uhm yes. Tell us when to be there, we’ll be there. And, so we did, we went and met him and we had one rehearsal before the show, it was totally daunting, and, you know, after the first song, we were supposed to learn like two songs I think, and after the first one, you know, he kinda looked over and nodded and smiled so we were like ok great, he’s into it. The second one comes around and we’re not supposed to sing on it so we sat down, he started playing and realized we weren’t singing and looked over and said “Well, man up!” Uhh, ok, what do we do? What do we do? You know. Then Jay said, “Oh no, they’re not singing on this song” and Roger said “No, they’re singing on every song.” It was like twelve songs or something. We thought, oh shit well we better cram, luckily we had made ourselves familiar enough but we didn’t know all the parts so we studied for our finals that evening and came and did the gig and he was happy enough with it that he asked us back. So we did the desert trip with him, did a few shows, he called them warm-up shows, I don’t know how they were warm-up shows, they were in Mexico, they were in front of so many people, I mean, it was insane. But anyway, he liked what he heard and he asked us back and it was just an experience of a lifetime, really.

So, on Good Grief, the song “My Heart Got Caught on Your Sleeve”, I love that song and it’s really relevant in my life right now.

Aww.

So, I was wondering, do you find certain songs of yours are universally relevant to your fan base or does it seem like everyone has a different favorite?

Well, I think “Two of Us on the Run” from the first record is one that resonates with a lot of people, and it can be interpreted in a lot of ways so I think that’s probably why. I mean, initially it was a romantic sort of marital sort of song, but also applies to, obviously, Jess and I being two and going through this journey together and I think people can relate to that in so many ways, the family you’re in, romantic relationships, friendships, whatever. That’s one that people always know at shows and really relate to. I guess that’s the one that sticks out the most. “Gone Insane” people like because everyone gets that, you know, crazy feeling of sometimes needing to just scream. So I think that’s another one. “My Heart” a lot of people do love, we haven’t played it all that often, to be honest, live, so I’m not sure how much people know it. We haven’t gotten that feedback, really, yet.

Do you guys have a certain process for deciding what you want to play live?

Not really. I think we try a few sets to decide what’s feeling good and what works well together as a group of songs. But, I mean, we play almost every song at this point because we still only have two records. It’s gonna get harder after the third one, that’s when the decisions really start to begin.

I know some musicians like to paint or act do things like that in their free time. Do you have any creative hobbies outside of music that you find helps your musicality or creative process?

I like to write. I have a bunch of different journals that are designated for different things. One is funny anecdotes from the road, one is short stories, one is just diary-style, but I really enjoy writing. One is obviously lyrics, lyric ideas. I do like visual art a lot. I was very much into that as a kid, I come from a family of visual artist and so does Jess, actually, and that’s something that we’re really taken by and try to incorporate into the show. Pete [Lalish] is also an amazing visual artist, painter, he’s always doing that on the side on the road whenever he gets a chance. Danny [Molad] is like sound master, so producing records and playing with all sorts of new and upcoming technology and all that kinda stuff.  So I think we all have our other outlets on the road. And, you know, we’ve been talking about, for our next one, trying to incorporate more of a 360-style creative experience as far as visual and audio and all that, because that’s something that we are so drawn to.

Sounds like fans have something to look forward to in the future with that. Is this love for visual art, I’m assuming, where the costumes come into play. Why is that so prominent within your show?

Yeah, we were both very, and we talked about this in the very very beginning, drawn to artists who had strong visual aesthetics, and that was very prevalent, you know, in the 60s, 70s, 50s, I mean, before the 90s which was the grunge-era which was a thing in itself because it was like fuck the rules and that was a statement, but now not dressing up for a show is no longer a statement except, at least… Well, I’m not gonna say anything. But, we enjoy the idea of putting on a show and taking not only the audience to another place, but ourselves to another place. And that’s part of where it came from initially, I mean, aspiring to be like so many artists we love like David Bowie, Björk, Prince, you know, Parliament Funkadelic, all these people that go for it. I think it was kind of a helpful stepping stone for us to get comfortable on stage, and to escape a little bit, and I think it helps the other people do the same. So, it’s fun for us, but it does come from that connecting with two. The dressing as one is because we sing as one and you want to add a visual to that audio so that is also unified.

Can you tell us anything about any current projects?

Not yet. We’re definitely thinking about the next record and starting to write for it so I think this is kind of, we’re wrapping up this tour, we got about two and half more weeks on this then that’s sort of the end of the Good Grief tour, so after that we’re gonna start working on the whole new shabang. So, I don’t know what it is yet, I mean we don’t even know what it is yet but I do promise you it’s gonna be great.

Awesome, I’m glad to hear that. Well, I can’t wait, I’m seeing you guys in New Orleans at Tipitina’s and I am super excited for the show. And, who knows, maybe I’ll even get to hear “My Heart Got Caught on Your Sleeve” live.

Uh oh, here we go. Alright, I’ll try and work it in there, we’ll see.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Thank you so much for talking to me today.

Of course, thank you for talking to me. I’ll see you in New Orleans.

 Lucius will perform at Tipitina’s on Wednesday, November 9. Tickets for the show are on sale here.