Boston band Lake Street Dive are bringing their blend of soul, jazz and 60s rock to New Zealand’s shores this March.
Lake Street Dive Photo: Lake Street Dive
Lake Street Dive shot to fame after a cover of them singing Jackson 5's “I Want You Back” on a sunny Boston street went viral.
As the bassist Bridget Kearney modestly puts it, “one person shared it who must have known a lot of people” and it took off from there. It's now clocked over 2.7 million views on YouTube.
Since that casual gathering around a single mic, the band of four have appeared on Conan, The Colbert Report and the Late Show with David Letterman, performing songs from their latest album Bad Self Portraits.
The YouTube captions on their Ellen performance describe their sound as “jaunty”, which makes Bridget laugh. “There’s definitely an element of light-heartedness to our music. We never take ourselves too seriously.”
“One thing that drew us together as musicians within the conservatory is that we were the jazz students that were interested more in different styles of pop music, like soul and Motown and ‘60s rock and roll.”
The New England Conservatory in Boston is where trumpet/guitar player Mike Olson decided that he, vocalist Rachael Price, drummer Mike Calabrese and stand-up bassist Bridget would become Lake Street Dive in 2004.
The band have had a lot to celebrate from those ten years, including their recent success, so they decided to acknowledge their tin anniversary by getting tattoos.
Mike has a pterodactyl holding a sign that says “tall mum”, Calabrese has a heart on his chest saying “Betty” with a drumstick replacing the traditional arrow and Rachael’s is a quote from an album that is no longer sold.
Bridget is the only member yet to get her band tattoo. “I’m the last one, I’m the hold out, I don’t have any tattoos, I don’t know what to get,” she says.
“Most of them are kind of little jokes that we have among ourselves, or ongoing characters we’ve invented that remind us of each other and probably don’t make sense to anyone else.”
She’s right; the link between a pterodactyl and the band’s mix of jazz, pop and soul is tricky for an outsider to decipher, but the ease with which they play and harmonise together more than shows how unified this group is.
Despite their whirlwind success, the band is determined to stay true to their name which is taken from a bunch of “no-frills” dive bars on Lake Street in Mike Olson’s hometown, Minneapolis.
“We wanted specifically to make music that was not for people to be sitting down and hush-hush, but instead to be in a place where people are standing and hanging out with their friends,” Bridget says.
Bridget is staying on after the festival to check out what New Zealand has to offer. “It seems like people are generally really you know, warm and easy going and the other thing that we’ve heard is that the geographical beauty is just stunning so really excited for that too,” she says.
Meanwhile, you can check out what Lake Street Dive have to offer at The Auckland Arts Festival on March 12-14.