Lake Street Dive is bringing its 20th anniversary tour to Maryland this weekend.
The band rocks Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, on Friday night.
“We’ve been in the region many times over the years, but this is our first time at this specific venue,” Drummer Mike Calabrese told WTOP.
“It’s always been great for us down there for sure. We were playing tiny clubs in D.C. back in the day, then the 9:30 Club, then we did Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, and we’ve been in the small clubs of Baltimore, too, so this has been a good all around regional area for us.”
They’re calling it the “Good Together” Tour, fittingly named after the title track of their latest album.
“It’s named after the song but figuratively it really is about the fact that we’ve been a band for 20 years and we’ve been able to make it work and it’s still working this long. Also, some of the subject matter in the songs is very much about how people can connect, making connection possible, remembering that with some intention, the right focus and the right work you can work well with anybody. That can be found as a common thread throughout.”
Formed in Boston in 2004, the pop-soul, alt-jazz and folk-rock band mostly met at the New England Conservatory of Music.
The original lineup featured Calabrese (drums), Rachael Price (vocals), Bridget Kearney (bass) and of course Mike “McDuck” Olson (lead vocals, trumpet and guitar), who named the band after a dive-bar-style bowling alley on Lake Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that was a family favorite among his hometown relatives.
“There’s a spot called Bryant Lake Bowl on Lake Street in Minneapolis that one of McDuck’s uncles, who is also a trumpet player, frequented,” Calabrese said.
“Back in the day it was one of the cool underground clubs and that was the original idea, it would be a band you would see in a dive bar. That’s how we got our start and developed a following in Boston and we still try to bring that to the stage even if the stage is as big as Merriweather Post.”
Lake Street Dive’s first full-length indie album “In This Episode” (2007) was partially funded by Kearney winning the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, using the $1,000 cash prize to produce 1,000 CDs of their first gritty effort.
“It was pretty cool,” Calabrese said.
“We don’t even sell that album anymore because it’s not our best work, but Bridget had written a song that the band recorded called ‘Sometimes When I’m Drunk and You’re Wearing My Favorite Shirt.’ … She took half her winnings and donated it, then took the other half like, ‘Hey, I know this is a brand new band, but you guys helped me record the demo, so let’s put this toward making our first album.'”
After their second independent album “Promises Promises” (2008), the band delivered its true breakthrough studio album with the self-titled release “Lake Street Dive” (2010).
“The first album that we still sell is the eponymous one, ‘Lake Street Dive,’ which is technically our third but that was the first album where we decided we’re not going to pursue the jazz element, we’re gonna go this new route with back beats and four-minute songs,” Calabrese said.
“We still play songs from that record because it still somewhat represents us as a band, our more concise, cogent pop songs, so that’s kind of where we start.”
The band continued to evolve with their next album “Bad Self Portraits” (2014).
“The title track is still a big one for us, and also ‘You Go Down Smooth,’ those are two songs we play almost every show to this day, but a great tune from that record that we haven’t played in a while is ‘Just Ask,’ written by McDuck,” Calabrese said.
“That was one of the better songs he ever wrote and it was a turning-point song for us where we embraced this more moody, emotional side of us in a perfect way. I think about that song a lot.”
Their next album “Side Pony” (2016) delivered the tunes “Call Off Your Dogs” and “I Don’t Care About You.”
“‘Call Off Your Dogs’ we brought back because we’ve been touring around with the Huntertones, this horn group, but we didn’t play the title track ‘Side Pony’ for years because although McDuck had written it, he was very embarrassed by it, he kind of wrote it as a lark, basically a love song for his wife who at their wedding had a side ponytail, and the greater meaning of it is more about what makes you you, what is your flair or your signature?”
In 2018, the band recorded the Emmy-nominated theme song for the Netflix foodie series “Somebody Feed Phil,” the same year as their sixth album “Free Yourself Up” (2018) with fan favorites like “I Can Change” and “Shame Shame Shame.” It also included arguably their catchiest, most mainstream hit “Good Kisser.”
“It’s just a great sentiment,” Calabrese said.
“Bridget wrote that one with a great melody, hook, feel, all that stuff. … Breakup songs usually go one of two ways: begging someone to take you back or you’re the worst and I never want to talk to you again … but what’s good about ‘Good Kisser’ is that it’s like, ‘OK, be fair, tell the whole truth, if you’re gonna gossip about me after we break up, how about you tell them all the good stuff too?'”
After a pandemic hiatus, they released their much-anticipated seventh album “Obviously” (2021), which featured the tracks “Making Do,” “Know That I Know” and the popular song “Hypotheticals.”
“We started work on that album in late 2019,” Calabrese said.
“We took a little break and did a cruise for a week in February 2020, we were hearing all this news, got back from the cruise, finished the record and three days after flying home it was lockdown. All the songs were written and recorded before the pandemic hit, so we were able to mix and master it remotely, but we had to sit on it for a year and a half before we played a single show.”
McDuck left the band in 2021, leaving the rest to emerge from the pandemic with “Good Together.”
“He did some soul searching and it just was not right for him or his family, which is 100% understandable and respected, and he went into education,” Calabrese said.
“It was very amicable and maturely discussed. … For years we’ve just been notorious amongst ourselves as the lowest-drama band I think you could possibly find. We’re not cool, there’s no hijinx, we don’t trash hotel rooms and we don’t have big blowout acrimonious fights.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
