Lanco are one of the most exciting new artists in country music right now and with a genre that is lacking in good, solid, country rock bands, Lanco are a breath of fresh air. Having won the UK fan base over during C2C Festival in 2018, fans were eager for the band to return and they kept their promise and returned with a string of headline shows in early 2019.

We caught up with the band in Bristol and the entire band were great company. Their set was unbelievably good and electrifying. The band are also back for The Long Road Festival this week.

Hi guys – how are you?

All – We are good thanks.

How does it feel being back?

Brandon – Awesome, it has been great. We have been here a week and it is sad for it to be over.

How has the tour been so far? You started with the London so how was that?

Brandon – It was great, it was great way to kick it off. That had been the only place we had ever been in the UK so we started there to be adjusted to time change and take a few days off first. We had only ever been to C2C and that incredible and was what made us want to come back. The fans are amazing here. When we were first over it was for a festival so people are there to see other people so it was a little intimidating coming back on our own but the nights have been packed so it has been wild.

Have you had much time to sight see? Do you go your separate ways or all go together?

Eric – Yeah we all went together with all of our significant others and went around Glasgow. Saw the Glasgow Cathedral which was awesome and the Necropolis.

How do your UK fans compare to back home?

Brandon – I think what is interesting here is that it is not radio driven. You’re not listening to country radio as much here and so when you get here, the crowd is pretty much singing every word on the entire record. So that has been the biggest difference. The energy every night has been a riot.

Tripp – The crowds can be really energetic and rowdy especially in between songs and then when you play they are so attentive. It’s a different vibe.

How did you all meet?

Brandon- I went to school in East Tennessee and I was in a college band for fun. There was a festival at my college and we were playing. Tripp was in one of the other bands and we ended up meeting that night at that festival. I used to live in Nashville and Tripp was about to move there so we linked up there. Eric, Jared and Chandler went to school together and I met Eric through a songwriter friend and told him I was trying to put a band together and he went to MTSU (Middle Tennessee State University) with Eric (the songwriter friend did) and so he introduced us to everyone else. You all already knew each other.

Eric – Right, we all went to MTSU together and played in music groups there and worked on music projects together. When me, Brandon and Tripp started jamming together we decided we needed more people so I brought in a couple of my friends, Chandler and Jared and that was it.

Did you always play in bands at school as well as college? Were you the cool kids at school?

All laugh

Brandon – school was like a really good excuse to be like a) out of home, out of your parents house b) not have a full time job and c) party so yeah, It was a great time for being in bands and playing music. We still don’t know if we graduated haha!

All laugh

Tripp – We all played in a lot of music stuff. I attribute a lot of my learning to play in those days, playing in different bands and colleges, if I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t of met anyone here so…

Chandler – My last two years of college I did mainly online so I was on campus for maybe a day or two a week and the rest of the time I was driving up to Nashville to rehearse with these guys or to play shows. I went to school in Murfreesbro as kind of like an excuse to be close to Nashville.

Any of you have a back up career?

All say no

See that is nice.

Chandler – I think if you are trying to be a musician, having a back up plan is dangerous territory. You will be tempted to fall back on that when things get tough. None of us had one so we had no other option but to keep trying

Jared – I remember all my friends had jobs, like real jobs and they would always say they can hook me up and I remember thinking that if music is what I am doing and then the job is how I am making money I may get used to the money I was making and never try.

What is your tour bus food?

Jared – Our manager tends to buy cheese everything. Cheese Doritos, cheese ruffles, cheese. You have different snacks here, you have a lot of sweets.

Brandon – Also we have a massive whiskey collection on our bus (shows me)

Tell us about the new album and what you wanted to do differently this time?

Brandon – We are going to do the same album but all the songs are going to be backwards

That would actually be cool. This has to happen now.

Brandon – We are in the process right now of making it. It’s hard because we can’t talk too much about it. It is still in the making. We have quite a few songs recorded already but no matter how dominant singles may be or streaming, we still want to have an album, a body of work . We recorded more than just the songs on the album on our last record but when you listen to them all together we realised that we have already said this thing and it doesn’t work that we have said it three times or this musicality thing, we did that on this song and that song is stronger. So we are in the early process at the moment of rocking out and exploring different subject matters and so on. Your first album is no pressure. If 20 people hear it then that’s more than who has heard it before so you win. But there is pressure on the second album but we have kind of learned that we shouldn’t worry about what we should do because we didn’t the first time and it worked. People like what we naturally like. Rival was a cool thing, we put that out early because it is a song that is a good representation of something that we can all agree on and something our fans can as everyone has moments of when not everyone is in their corner. We wanted to remind them that they matter, that their story matters and where they come from is important. If anyone doesn’t believe that then use them as motivation and call them a rival.

Are you working with Jay Joyce again?

Brandon – We are, so all the songs so far have been with him.

Thank you so much for the chat. We look forward to The Long Road Festival.