www.facebook.com/LoriandtheDarlings
From: Michigan
Sounds like: Folk Rock/Blues
1. How did you get started with music and how did you develop your sound? Who thought of the name "Lori and the Darlings" and is there any meaning behind it?
My father was a musician. From the time he was a teenager and picked up his first guitar until the day he passed. He was always playing an instrument. He could play any instrument it didn’t matter what it wa,s it could be the first time he ever saw it, and he could pick it up and figure it out and start playing it. He was also a songwriter he wrote dozens of songs, and I remember being a little girl and our living room would be covered in demo tapes (cassette tapes that is lol), letters to publishers and labels, and padded envelopes and stamps. I remember a lot of nights where my dad sat in the dark, listening to the music music that he recorded in our living room on a little four track. He never stopped writing, and he never stopped playing. I grew up with instruments all around me, and one of the best teachers I could’ve ever had.
As far as my sound goes, my dad was a musician, so there was always music at our house. I grew up on the Beatles and Pink Floyd, Donovan and Jim Croce, Led Zeppelin and Focus but then I was growing up in the 80s and loved all that music too! The hair bands, the girl Rockstars, the Heavy Metal the Pop all of it. I also really love big bands, and Classical music. There really isn’t any kind of music I don’t like and I listen to all of it regularly. I think our sound comes from a four different musicians from four very different backgrounds in music and four very different tastes. Somehow when we come together and put the song together, all of that blends into what we sound like. I also write the melodes and the lyrics and then I give it to the band for them to write their parts. I never hardly direct them at all. I trust their instinct on what to do with the song, and they are always right.
Our name comes from the fact that our group chat always started with a morning greeting from me: “Good Morning darlings (insert whatever I had to tell them here lol)" we tried for weeks to come up with a cool band name and I think it just clicked because I was always calling them Darlings just to call the band that!
2. What do you want people to take away from your music?
I want people to listen to my music and feel some thing. I want people to listen to our music and be able to connect to it because it relates to them somehow. I want people to listen to the songs I write that are happy, and I want them to feel joy.
3. How would you describe your sound to the average listener?
I would describe our sound as Americana Blues.
4. Who are three bands you’d like to tour with?
Oh man!!! 3 Bands! The Shakey Graves, Jason Isbell and Lake Street Dive.
5. How has Covid affected what you do?
We don’t let it affect us. If the venue needs us to accommodate their rules, we oblige. If one of us is sick we take precautions to make sure that no one else gets sick. Of course there have been shows canceled because of Covid, but it honestly hasn’t affected the band much at all.
6. What’s your take on the current state of Folk/Blues Rock?
I listen to a lot of under the radar, music. Artists and bands that aren’t on the radio but that I find streaming and I think that the scene is alive and well and there are so many artists out there that are amazing and keeping every genre going strong.
7. What's the current music scene like there in Michigan?
As far as the music scene in Michigan goes: it’s amazing. It always has been :-) We’ve been producing amazing musicians, and amazing music since music could be recorded, and even before! Mid Michigan has a fantastic circuit of original artists in groups, that we personally know, and love to play with! Not only is that community, loving and supportive of each other but every one of them is so very talented!
8. What’s your take on the royalties that streaming services pay out to artists?
I have to be honest I have no opinion on the royalties that streaming services pay out because I don’t know anything about it. I let that stuff be handled by Eric Who is the acting manager right now.
9. What’s next for Lori & the Darlings?
This is what is next for us! We’ve been nominated for the Review Music Awards in the mid Michigan area and we’ve been nominated in the Detroit Music Awards. We’ve also been asked to play at the Review Awards in Bay City in April! We would like to wrap up our album "Gratitude" by putting it on vinyl and getting three more videos completed for the songs "Time Alone", "Wish You Were My Baby" and "Blues and Fools". As soon as this is all done, we will head back into the studio. This fall to record her second album "One Side At a Time"! Then we will do this whole thing all over again :-)!!
