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Lake Street Dive’s ascent from its music school roots to Manhattan’s largest concert stage is a story of an old-fashioned work ethic in an era of overnight TikTok stars.
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A decade ago, when Lake Street Dive performed in New York City, it played the 600-capacity Bowery Ballroom, a notch on the belt for up-and-coming acts. Not long before that, the band, which came together in 2004 at the New England School Conservatory of Music, played gigs at the cozy Rockwood Music Hall, wine bar-cum-music venue that could squeeze a couple hundred people at its biggest stage. In 2022, Lake Street Dive had taken its brand of pop-meets-jazz-meets-soul to two nights at Radio City Music Hall.
By 2024, the five-piece band was ready for the city’s most vaunted stage, the 19,500-capacity Madison Square Garden. Thinking about performing at the historic arena, which has hosted everything from the legendary Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 to a 10-year Billy Joel residency, gave singer Rachael Price “a fair amount of imposter syndrome,” she tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast.
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“But when we got there and we walked out on stage, and we felt the crowd, it was like every single person had seen us play at Rockwood Music Hall. That’s how they felt. The energy of the faces in the crowd, they all had this like knowing look on their face, [as if they were saying,] ‘I’ve seen you in this city for 10 years, and I knew you guys when.’ And so the whole thing felt kind of like a big homecoming. It felt like a graduation party.”
Drummer Mike Calabrese found himself with a similarly weak stomach before the show. “I didn’t sleep the night before, and I was nauseous all day until sound check,” he says. ”But then I realized, oh yeah, our fans are the best. We’ve played New York a million times. We know what we’re doing. Everything’s fine.”
Price, Calabrese and their bandmates — bass player Bridget Kearney, keyboardist Akie Bermiss and guitarist James Cornelison — reached another career milestone in 2024 when their eighth studio album, Good Together, was nominated for a Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album. For a self-described “genre-less band,” receiving a nomination that typically requires being placed into a genre came as a surprise. “We definitely have all said to each other — maybe to ourselves —[that] we will never get nominated for a Grammy,” says Price.
Success has a way of finding talented artists who persevere, though, and Lake Street Dive has put in the hard work to merit both a Madison Square Garden gig and a Grammy nod. “We have been doing this for 20 years — and steadily for 20 years,” says Calabrese. “And I’m not saying that everybody who does that for 20 years deserves a Grammy necessarily, but it’s very exciting, and we’re very honored. I also feel like we made a really good album. It would be one thing if we were a band that was one or two years on the scene and had this just massive hit and boom!”
Still, the Grammy nomination was so unexpected that the band didn’t contemplate leaving time in their tour schedule to attend the ceremony in Los Angeles on Feb. 2. “It wasn’t on our bingo card,” admits Price. Instead, the band will be enjoying a day off in Amsterdam while touring in Europe. “If someone wants to send their private plane to get us there — which we’re against philosophically — then we would go,” she jokes.
Listen to the entire interview with Rachel Price and Mike Calabrese below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, Audible, Podbean or Everand.
On today’s (Nov. 20) episode of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century podcast, we reach No. 3 on our list with a pop super-duperstar who shined bright for 13 years of absolute pop world command, before ducking out to tend to her business and empire for most of the past decade. (Read our No. […]
When Sabrina Carpenter set up shop in Los Angeles for three dates of her Short n’ Sweet Tour, she brought out the big guns. There was Christina Aguilera. There was Jack Antonoff. And then there was Domingo. On the new Pop Shop Podcast, we welcome Billboard deputy editor Lyndsey Havens so she and Katie can […]
A few years ago, Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson had an idea for a band T-shirt with the song title of one of its most popular songs in the style of a satanic metal band. “It was all blood, and there were pentagrams, and it said ‘Follow You Down’ in old English script,” he tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “It was just blood and flames everywhere, and I loved it so much. I thought it was really funny and great.”
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The other four members of Gin Blossoms — a melodic rock band whose handful of lasting hits from the ‘90s alternative rock era have little in common with dark heavy metal — didn’t share Wilson’s enthusiasm, and the idea never got past the conception phase. Why the shirt didn’t get made helps explain how Wilson and his bandmates have kept Gin Blossoms going for 37 years: Wilson was outvoted.
“Part of what makes our band work is that everybody gets a vote,” says Wilson from his home in Arizona. “And despite the fact that I do more work than anybody else, my vote doesn’t count for any more. It wouldn’t work for us. If I made some power grab, that would be one of the things that could lead to the end of the band.”
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Formed in 1987 in Tempe, Ariz., Gin Blossoms first released an independent album, Dusted, before signing to MCA Records and releasing New Miserable Experience in 1992. The band’s catchy, melodic songs sounded drastically different than the heavier grunge sound that was capturing programmers’ attention at the time, but Gin Blossoms eventually found a welcome home at radio and MTV. Their breakout hit, “Hey Jealousy,” peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1993 and was equalled by “Found Out About You” the following year. A double-A side single with “Follow You Down” and “Til I Hear It From You,” and the 1996 album Congratulations I’m Sorry, peaked at Nos. 9 and 10 on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts, respectively.
A four-year breakup and three studio albums later, Gin Blossoms’ democratic approach to running the band has proven effective. They spent much of 2024 criss-crossing the country playing playing music venues, fairs and festivals. In August, the band hit the road with ‘90s compatriots Toad the Wet Sprocket and Vertical Horizon. In January, the band will board The ‘90s Cruise in Tampa, Fla., that will also feature Blues Traveler, Everclear, Lit and Lisa Loeb.
“I think there was a lot of sacrifices made by the everybody in the band to stay together,” says guitarist Jesse Valenzuela. “But at some after 20 years, you start to see it as maybe, I guess, this is my life’s work, and what are you supposed to do? You better make peace with your situation and try to be positive and be the best person you can be. Try to be helpful to others and be honest.”
“Punctuality,” Wilson adds. “Punctuality is important. You don’t make your bandmates wait for you. You want to keep a band together? Get to the airport on time.”
Listen to the entire interview with Robin Wilson and Jesse Valenzuela from Gin Blossoms in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Audible, Podbean or Everand.
Just how long can Shaboozey‘s breakout hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” stay at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100? So far, it’s scored 17 nonconsecutive weeks up top — the second-most in the chart’s history. And on the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are discussing whether the newly Grammy-nominated hit (song […]
When the 2025 Grammy nominations are unveiled on Friday, there’s a world where the year’s biggest pop stars dominate the storyline. Billboard awards editor Paul Grein has shared his final Big Four predictions ahead of Friday’s announcement, and he thinks pop women will lead the biggest categories, including Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured […]
Some ‘90s rock bands reunite for the paycheck of a festival appearance or an alternative rock package tour. The original members of Sixpence None the Richer got back together simply to make music again.
As singer Leigh Nash and guitarist Matt Slocum tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast, the band members’ lives happened to intersect again for the first time since 2002. The result, the group’s new Rosemary Hill EP, was released on Oct. 4 through Flatiron Recordings, and the band is currently on a U.S. tour that concludes in Los Angeles on Dec. 15.
“Leigh and I had started working on new music during the pandemic,” says Slocum. “Dale [Baker], who’s our drummer, started reaching out. He was coming into Nashville periodically, because he still works as a session musician here in town and in his hometown of Durham, North Carolina, and he tours a fair amount.”
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Before long, Nash, Slouch and Baker were talking about making music together over dinner. That conversation led Nash to reach out to bass player Justin Cary. “That ended up being very serendipitous,” says Slocum, “because he and his wife own a bakery in Albany, New York, and they had made the decision to close the bakery.” Nash called to ask Cary if he wanted to make music again, and “he was more than ready to jump in.”
Truth be told, Sixpence None the Richer never really went away. The band’s 1998 breakthrough hit “Kiss Me,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following year, was streamed 70 million times and played on radio nearly 48,000 times in the U.S. last year, according to Luminate. The song has consistently been featured in television shows, too —i ncluding a 2016 episode of The Simpsons —and most recently can be heard in BLACKPINK member Lisa’s new song “Moonlit Floor,” which uses an interpolation of “Kiss Me” and takes its title from the song’s lyrics (“Kiss me, beneath the milky twilight / Lead me out on the moonlit floor”).
Nash is hopeful “Moonlit Floor” helps the band reach new fans and introduces Rosemary Hill to a younger generation. “I have seen a pretty big uptick in people and followers on our social media platforms and and no doubt those are really young people. So, I’m excited to perhaps affect a brand new generation with the new music that we’re putting out. That would be an insane blessing.”
“It’s been really cool to see how it’s connected with people all over the world and has done this generational jump,” adds Slocum. That “Moonlit Floor” songwriters Ryan Williamson and Jessie Reyez chose to utilize “Kiss Me” “shows that it’s just timeless,” he says.
Listen to the entire interview with Leigh Nash and Matt Slocum to hear more about the writing and recording of the Rosemary Hill EP, performing again for the first time in more than a decade, covering The La’s “There She Goes” and meeting The La’s frontman Lee Mavers in London in 2015. You can listen in the embedded Spotify player below or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
If you’re a disrespectful photographer or an overly personal fan planning to cross Chappell Roan‘s boundaries, we have one thing to say: Good luck, babe. The pop singer/songwriter has been making headlines for months for calling out bad behavior in the music industry, whether it’s her plea to fans to respect her space when she’s […]
When One Direction arrived in America in 2011, the five-member British boy band took the pop world by storm. More than a decade later, fans of the wildly popular group were devastated to learn of the death of Liam Payne last week at age 31. The four remaining members of the group — Harry Styles, […]
Stevie Nicks returned to Saturday Night Live over the weekend, performing on the show for the first time in 41 years and playing two songs: starting with her latest song “The Lighthouse” and ending with the 1981 classic “Edge of Seventeen.” On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie and Keith are chatting about the […]