By Christopher David<\/p>\n
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Salt Lake City quartet The Backseat Lovers took to the Lollapalooza stage this past Saturday\u2026 for their first ever Chicago performance. Who among us can imagine such a thing? Spoiler: they nailed it, which would come as no surprise to anyone familiar with these indie rockers on the rise. We caught up with the band\u2014singer\/guitarist Josh Harmon, bassist KJ Ward, guitarist Jonas Swanson, and drummer Juice Welch\u2014this weekend to talk a bit about what\u2019s to come now that they have one of the biggest festivals in world on their collective resume.<\/p>\n
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In the Loop (Christopher David): <\/strong>First off\u2014congrats on this, your first Chicago appearance! Most bands couldn\u2019t even fathom such a thing, I\u2019m guessing. Is this your first time in the midwest, generally?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Josh Harmon:<\/strong> It was a dream. Just a really beautiful experience. We haven\u2019t really toured much at all in the midwest. We played Schuba\u2019s the other night, and it was amazing!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ITL<\/strong>: It was great to get a sense of your chemistry live. How would you describe your process and your sound to someone? You have a lot of really interesting elements coming together in your songs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n JH:<\/strong> Well, we\u2019ve been really focused on our second album, and in doing that, and rediscovering how we operate as a band, we\u2019ve been really centered on the songs. Down the core songwriting, whether it\u2019s just acoustic and vocals, get to the very heart of it. And then there\u2019s a branching out process as we bring it together as a band, and it turns into this whole other thing. I would say that a lot of us grew us listening to folk music, but also lately just classic rock n\u2019 roll\u2014Queen, for example\u2014and stuff like Radiohead and Wilco. I feel like we have perspective into the intimacy of songwriting, but also an interest in really guitar-driven music.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ITL:<\/strong> Wilco came to mind when I was watching you – they\u2019re unique in that they comprise these different elements, and they become their own \u2018thing.\u2019 I get the same sense from you. Is that second record coming out soon?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n JH: <\/strong>We don\u2019t have a specific timeline, but soon. Definitely soon!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ITL:<\/strong> Was there any kind of deliberate shift in sound, things you wanted to do or didn\u2019t want to do? Do you all write together, collaboratively?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jonas Swanson:<\/strong> I think it really grew with us as we\u2019ve grown as musicians. We started experimenting more with different instruments\u2014we started collaborating with each other in different ways, there\u2019s more piano now, for example.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n JH:<\/strong> I think that level of collaboration has been the biggest thing with this new record. When we were working on our first album, we were still living in our parents\u2019 houses, and when we started this new one, everything was moving ahead\u2014we\u2019re on our own, taking on adulthood, that\u2019s a huge part of what the album is about. Letting go of youth, I guess.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Christopher David Salt Lake City quartet The Backseat Lovers took to the Lollapalooza stage this past Saturday\u2026 for their first ever Chicago performance. Who among us can imagine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-features","category-interviews","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}