LANCO are a relatively new country band who have set the bar pretty high recently. Their debut album Hallelujah Nights released via Arista Nashville went straight in at number one, making them the first band to do so in ten years. The album has already had over 220 Million streams.

LANCO have been nominated for two Academy Of Country Music Awards for Best New Group and Vocal Group of the Year.

The band have just released Born To Love You as their current single

LANCO consists of Brandon Lancaster, Chandler Baldwin, Jared Hampton, Tripp Howell, and Eric Steedly.

LANCO will be joining the C2C Festival line up and will appear on the following stages;

Friday 9th March

Building Six – Late Night Stage – 23.15

Saturday 10th March

C2C Session at Ny -Lon – 12.30

BBC Radio 2 Stage – Indigo – 14.40

Sunday 11th March

Town Square – 15.10

We caught up with band member Eric Steedly to discuss C2C Festival, Hallelujah Nights, going on tour with Dierks Bentley and Brothers Osborne and much more.

I hope you enjoy our chat

Hi Eric, how are you?

I am doing good, thanks.

How has this year been so far?

It has been great; we have been on tour with Chris Young, done our own shows and sold some out since releasing the album. It has been busy but very exciting with everything going on.

Congratulations on not just the release of Hallelujah Nights, but with it going straight to Number One and being the only country band in ten years to get that – which must make you feel pretty amazing?

It really does. There are so many things that you don’t think about; you kind of have your head down and you’re working and touring for years – and then all of a sudden you achieve this thing and it’s like “Pinch me, is this real?” Then on top of that, just to get a Number One on radio, an album and to get the ‘First band in ten years’ title – all this stuff – I never dreamed it would happen.

I am loving all the response, not just from fans but from many Country stars who have all praised the album, which is wonderful for me to read, so must be even more wonderful for you?

Oh, yeah; a lot of them are great friends of ours. They are kind of a family when you are out on the road, as you spend a lot of time with them, so it sort of becomes a support system and you feel like you belong, which is really cool.

It is a family orientated genre, not in the literal sense but in a Country family sense.

Oh, yeah. Country fans will come out to the shows and everyone is so nice and encouraging, it is a unique aspect to this genre and it’s nice.

Going back to the album – when I listened to it, I could hear a mix of various genres, Country obviously, but then rock, too, but the main thing that stood out for me when I listened to this album was LIVE SHOW. Every song made me envision a live setting and I wanted to know if that comes into play, if that is an aspect when you are putting an album together, are you thinking ‘Can this translate well in a live setting’?

Absolutely, and it is such a huge part of it really. In fact, I don’t know if you know the whole story, but our producer Jay Joyce has done a lot of famous rock stuff and he has also done a lot of famous Country stuff like Eric Church and Carrie Underwood. We met him early on before anything had got started and he, for some reason, agreed to do a record with us, but before that we played live for him. I think he saw something in us that we do live and that is why he wanted to work with us, so from then on it was kind of about this thing that we are a band and we need to be able to capture that live with an audience. So when we were in the studio we would say “Ok, how is this going to work out live? How can we use this song to shift the dynamic of the show? How are people going to respond to this? “ We cut a lot of the tracks live as a band, too and I think what’s cool in our situation is that’s not a terribly normal thing to do in Nashville. So when you hear the record then come and see us live, you know it’s us, the band, playing on the record as you would hear in a live show, rather than it being different musicians on the record to the live show.

I cannot wait to see you live and you will be at C2C Festival which is so exciting. Did you know for a while that you were playing?

I think from about November, but waited longer to have it confirmed. We are so excited, we have great management who have helped us so much – they are so connected. We have met many great artists and great people through them. I don’t think any of us have been to London before. I know Brandon has done an excursion to Ireland when he was younger, but the rest of us have never even been to Europe so it’s needless to say that we are all elated to come over. We all love to travel and experience different cultures, even in the States, but the UK has such a cool culture and it is so great to know there are so many Country fans there. The average person may not think it is a place where you would find a lot of Country fans but I remember playing a festival in Vegas two years ago – which was really early on for us – and a girl came up to us from England. She was so excited – she was telling us what a huge Country music fan base there was in the UK and how many fans we had over there. We had no idea, so it is really exciting to have the opportunity to come over and share our live shows.

You will really love it. What have you been told about us as fans, because people will know the words to every one of your songs, every album track.

Yeah, you know, that is actually specifically what I have heard. I used to know some of the people who played with Kacey Musgraves and talking to them a couple of years ago they were like “Yeah, it is crazy. The crowd literally knew every word to every song, it’s overwhelming.”

Do you have a favourite track off the album to listen to and play to? As a guitarist, I can imagine there must be one that you just love to play live more than others?

Oh, yeah; that is a tough question as they are all your babies, but I would say live, we all enjoy playing Troublemaker, which is kind of on the sassy side. Live, we turn the knobs up to eleven on all the songs a little bit, so they are definitely gonna get a little more of a punch with everything. Troublemaker is pretty rockin’ and if we have time in our set – well it is meant to be a surprise, but you know it’s comin’ – we will do an improv jam thing.

Oh, good!

As a guitar guy, that is a really fun thing for me.

Of course!

We kind of go crazy and have a lot of fun with that one. So Long, just for listening, is one of my favourites. That song really took on kind of a Springsteen essence midway through the song which it wasn’t meant to originally – it just happened. That song became really moving to me, because it is about losing love and not finding it again, so it is like the flip side to Greatest Love Story.

When a song is written- how do you hear it first? Do the band get together to listen collectively and then give their feedback?

On this record, Brandon wrote most of the songs and some of them were even written when we first came together, because he had a stack of songs he had already written. He is a phenomenal writer, but then there are also some co-writers in Nashville we have worked with. What usually happens is that we will sit down and just play something, work something out in the back of the bus with an acoustic guitar and say ‘let’s put a chorus here or a verse there’; it is kind of very basic.
Once we have the main structure, we will go into the studio and start building on it. It is kind of an old school process.

The band name, what does it mean? Why all capital letters?

Brandon’s last name is Lancaster, so when we started we thought it would be more like a ‘Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ kind of name, so originally it was called Lancaster and Company. As we progressed we were all committed to making this band a thing, we decided to shorten it to LANCO. I think we even played a show for our friends in Nashville early on and they were kind of joking around with that word, because it’s an abbreviation, and we thought, “Oh, that’s kinda cool”. It is easy to spell and say and it fits on a Koozie haha. It used to be capital LAN then a small co.

I thought it did, glad I am not going mad!

Yeah, and then we thought it looked better in all capitals.

After C2C, you are about to go on tour with Dierks Bentley and Brothers Osborne. Explain this tweet from Brothers Osborne –‘That one time us and @LancoMusic drank psychedelic tea with who we thought was @DierksBentley. #mountainHIGHtour

Haha, yes! Was that the Brothers? Have you seen the announcement video for the Dierks tour? Well Dierks reached out to us and asked us to go on tour with him and, of course, we said yes. I have learned recently that he is a very creative person, a lot more than just just Drunk On A Plane. He wanted to do this wacky tour announcement and he got this awesome producer to write up the script and the tour is called The Mountain High Tour. He recorded his new album out in Colorado so it is a very natural, earth inspired record. This tour announcement idea was to go out into the woods and it’s a funny plot of us getting lost in the woods and happening upon this man, who may or may not be Dierks Bentley, and he gets us to drink some weird concoction. Then we have an out of body experience and wake up and go on the Dierks Bentley tour.

Ha, that will probably happen on tour, no?

Ha, yeah, we said that is probably not too far from the truth!

Well, we are so excited to see you at C2C and thank you so much for chatting today; I love Hallelujah Nights.

Thank you!

Listen to Hallelujah Nights here
Purchase Hallelujah Nights here