The Lonely H Kids are Alright
Fall--and yes, we think we can say it's now officially fall--is a great season for concerts. Yet another good one this weekend is an all-ages affair, with Port Angeles' own The Lonely H celebrating their second record release tonight at the Vera Project (7:30pm, with Model Photographer and Don't Tell Sophie, $7). The band's comprised of five teens just outta high school, but don't let that negatively influence your opinion of them. The guys sound (and look) older than their birth certificates, way older, like right out the 70s, with Zep-like shredding and long flowing locks. We spoke to bassist Johnny Whitman about going to college, life on the road, moving to Seattle, and hating emo bands.
How did the five of you start making music together?
It started with just Eric and Ben meeting up to play guitar and drums together. They must’ve been 13 or 14, and then from that we all ended up joining, first Mark and then me as Eric's older brother, and then we got Colin, our second guitarist. We all met in elementary school, so we’ve known each other forever.
It seems like the new album (HAIR) covers the gamut of retro sounds. There are hard rockin’ guitar riffs, but you’ve also got plenty of harmonies and even a few ballads. It’s a really sophisticated musical style. How did that develop?
Our songwriting is a cohesive, collaborative effort. Some of the ballads were written by Colin and one was Mark’s creation on the piano. It’s pretty organic; there’s no set recipe for how we write, just whatever we feel like playing. We don’t set out and say "ok, we’re going to write a song like this," it’s just what we end up riffing off of when we play together.
There are so many 70s references on the album. Who are your favorite bands, or who do you consider to be your biggest influences?
We go through waves. Right now, it’s definitely 70s rock. Influences? Zeppelin of course, the Beatles still. We listen to some Queen, Joe Walsh, The Eagles. We listened to a lot of Thin Lizzy while on tour. Yes was also thrown in there. We all have huge record collections—we just moved to Seattle, so the past few days we’ve just spent going to record shops.
What part of town are you living in?
The U District. We officially relocated from Port Angeles within the last couple weeks. We plan on going to school at the U and having the band based in Seattle now. If the band gets serious enough, we might withdraw from school. You can always go to school, but you can’t always rock.
All you guys just graduated from high school. What’s it like to be embarking on your music career when your former classmates are going to college or looking for a job or really just figuring out what they want to do with their lives?
It’s weird, because we have friends who graduated and are stuck in Port Angeles and they work valet or are in some other shitty situation. We’ve been making music for so long that we don’t really think about it anymore; it’s just natural, it’s the way we’ve been for a while.
How was your last tour? It seems like you went everywhere, including Austin and NYC.
Touring was incredible. We just got back two weeks ago. Driving, hotels, people’s floors, bar shows—we mostly played bars even though we’re not of age.
Any good stories from the road?
Down in Gainesville we were jumping off the roof of the motel into the pool at 1am, like in Almost Famous, except we weren’t on acid. We hit a monsoon hurricane in Austin and had some really scary driving. Mark hit a bird in Kansas, and there was blood and feathers on our bumper for the entire tour, and Eric nailed a deer in upstate New York. And we killed thousands of bugs.
We’re planning another week-long tour in November of the West Coast. And we’re talking about going all over the States again soon.
Your show's at the new Vera Friday night. Did you ever play the old one?
We haven’t been to the new Vera yet, but we had our first CD release at the old one and another show there, and both times were great. It’ll be exciting to play the new space.
You wanna take the opportunity to talk trash about any bands or music you don’t like?
The nickname for our last tour was the Stomp Out Emo/Fuck Emo Tour. So that genre in general we’re still trying to kill.
