EVOLOVE: The all encompassing, ever-changing force that bonds us through love.
It’s been a couple of years since Evolove released their last album, but they haven’t been just sitting by idling and you wouldn’t expect that from this band. This is the same band that was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight after twelve million people saw them in a national commercial with FreeCreditScore.com. Since that last album, lead singer Lucy Levinsohn and bassist Billy Berman welcomed a new addition to the fold with the birth of their daughter Zoey and the band was signed to the Spectra Music Group as well. Evolove is now back and stronger than ever with the release of their brand new album We Are the Warriors and they’re itching to get back on the road where they have won audiences over in the past with their high energy and entertaining live show. It’s tough juggling the roles of being a rocker chick as well as a mom, but Levinsohn is quickly learning how to. She managed to steal enough time to sit down with me recently and she caught me up to speed on all things Evolove during our talk.
So, where did the name Evolove come from?
Lucy Levinsohn: Billy (Berman) and I have been in bands together for about a decade and our previous band went through a lot of changes. It was during that time that we started to think about maybe changing and going in another direction and getting a bit more rock. That was where Evolove started to be conceived. Our last band name was kind of long and it was very cumbersome and I decided that I needed one word this time. I wanted a palindrome, something backwards and forwards, and the first word to come into my mind, maybe because I’m a girl, was love. I didn’t want it to be too obvious, so I wrote the word starting backwards and wrote it out and I liked the way that it looked. It kind of made sense because it was like love mixed with evolution and we were in the midst of a huge evolution ourselves. It felt like a good name, it kind of just stuck and we really liked it; thus Evolove was born.
So, if Billy would have named it, would it have been racecar?
I don’t know; what’s the word for guitar backwards and forwards? It probably would have been something like that, you know, that’s what guys think about, right? Oh wait; we could have been Boob (laughs).
Oh the marketing ideas and merch opportunities behind a name like that (laughs). So, when did Boob, I mean Evolove begin?
I think I need to go check our Wikipedia page (laughs). No, I’m just kidding; we released our first EP in 2009. We had been silently working below the radar and had an EP ready to go for when we made an official announcement of the new band. The lineup was a little different back then and we quickly found ourselves looking for bandmates and we met Dave C and Colby Jensen and they’ve been with us pretty much since the beginning of Evolove. If you Google us, you’ll find a couple of different band members, but they weren’t around very long. Once we got together with Dave and Colby, Evolove really started to take shape. We had some pretty good luck with placement once we got out there and got going and there was this freak run-in with being in a commercial for freecreditscore.com. We were about to embark on our first national tour in 2012. We first went out with Gemini Syndrome and Stitched Up Heart and later on with Blameshift, kind of back to back. Our drummer, who was going out on the road with us, decided a week or so before the tour was about to start that he didn’t want to be in the band anymore or go out on tour. Another little detail was that the drummer was also in charge of the touring vehicle.
Ouch! Talk about adversity smacking you in the face with a challenge!
Our booking agent obviously did some fast thinking, because he obviously wanted to make his money too, and he thought he would talk to the other bands about sharing a drummer. It was during that tour that we started working with Andrew (Carroll) and for two months straight, he did their set and then he did our set. He ended up sticking with us after that and we’ve been a unit ever since.
Tell me how you ended up working with Mikey Doling on this album.
We met Mikey through Gemini Syndrome and he did their original EP before they were signed. We were already fans of his work and we crossed paths and circles. He and I have a connection because we’re both originally from the Coachella Valley; I wasn’t born there, but I grew up there. He approached us about doing a record and we had been toying with the idea of doing some singles. It’s not every day that you get an opportunity like this where someone like Mikey approaches you, so we took it as a sign and moved on it. It was a really cool experience for all of us. Half of the album was already written before he approached us, so the writing frenzy began on the other half after we talked with Mikey. I think we wrote about 20 or 30 odd songs and then narrowed it down to the best picks. We passed files back and forth because he was out of the country at the time. Once he got here, we had a very short amount of time with him, but we jumped in the studio and got to work. He really dives in and had a cool approach as more of another member of our band and he brought really good ideas to the table with him. You never really know how it’s going to be when you’re in the room with a producer and sometimes they can be really strict and hard and push you and other times, they can come from more of a loving approach and that was his. At that time, we really needed that nurturing approach, so it was good.
It sounds like you needed that tender approach.
We did because we were fragile and he definitely nurtured us.
I’m sure most of your fans know that you became a mom in between the last album and this new album. I know you said that a lot of the songs for this new album were already written, but did become a mom affect your songwriting in any way?
Well, it definitely grounded me. I’ve spent the last ten years running and running and doing and doing and for the first time ever, I sat still. That was definitely weird and different and a culture shock to me, but it allowed a lot of space to create. I’m not sure exactly how it has changed my writing approach, but I know on this new record that I recorded one of my very few love songs. I guess I’ve never really been a love song type of person, not that I’ve haven’t had the love in my life. Who knows, maybe it’s one of those things where if you have it, you don’t write about it and when you don’t have it you can have those angst moments about it. There’s song called “Never Let You fall’ that’s on the new record, which I co-wrote with my friend Shannon Nicole Colvard. She’s a really talented artist herself and she’s about to become a mother as well. I had an idea where the song was already coming from and she and I kind of wrote that song pretty effortlessly together. I would say that it’s one of my really, true, honest love song and it was written for Zoey. So, I guess it means that I’ve gotten a little soft and mushy and I’m usually not the type to be that way in public, so Zoey definitely has softened me.
EVOLOVE – Warriors (Official Music Video)
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It’s kind of hard not to get a little mushy when you have a love bug like that in your life.
Yeah, being a parent is a super awesome experience.
What made you go the route of Pledgemusic with this new album?
We had already been in motion with the recording of the album and we were approaching the point of needing to press the record. We had done some fan funding in the past and our fans had always been really supportive. We were really in need of the help with the last step of putting out the record. The weird thing that happened in the middle of our Pledge campaign was that we signed a record deal with Spectra Music Group, which is an independent record label out of South Carolina. It was crazy because we still needed the financing it’s not a huge label with huge budgets. We were able to refocus what we were going to use the music for and it went more towards promoting. We have an official music video for our song “Warriors” because the label wanted us to keep pushing the song. We did a lyric video quite a while back, but we did feel like it was time to something a little bit more for the song. We ended up filming the set at our last concert at the Troubadour . The music video really gives you an idea of what it’s like to be at one of our live concerts. It was a really fun shoot and I hope it will be very well received. I hope it will make people who have seen us before nostalgic of the days and for those who haven’t seen us it, it will give them an idea of what it’s like to be there. We also have a couple of lyric videos that will be coming out and one is a concept video for “Do or Die.” The other is kind of a comical video we put out on April Fool’s Day, which is odd for us, for the song “All for Something” and if this one doesn’t go off right, then I will be in so much trouble. The idea for this video came from somewhere weird inside of my mind, so if it gets a bad response I am dead. I think it will be funny, but I humor myself a lot, so we’ll see.
EVOLOVE – “All For Something” (Lyric Video)
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Are there any tour plans that we can talk about?
We definitely would like to do some extensive touring, but we don’t have anything that we can talk about right now. We’ve been putting some feelers out there to see who is out there and interested. We’ve been talking to some people, but we really don’t have anything that we can announce just yet, but hopefully we’ll have some fun things to report soon. I can tell you that our next show will be on April 19 at Lucky Strike Live in Los Angeles with Varna and Cage9.
The money to tour with really seems to be one of the biggest hurdles for most indie bands.
The biggest problem when you are an independent band is that the guarantees that most clubs can afford to pay don’t always really pay the travel fees involved. So, financing is a tough issue when everyone’s on a budget. If we have any super wealthy fans out there who would like to talk to us about financing the next tour, then let’s talk!
How about we end this interview with a fun question that can be revealing as well? Do you have any guilty pleasures that might surprise even your most die-hard fans?
I do enjoy baking and gardening. I don’t know if it’s really a guilty pleasure, but it’s how I get a little Zen when I’m stressed out. I haven’t done it for a while because I was living in an apartment. I just recently moved into a home and I rediscovered how much I love it.
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By: Johnny Price, Lead Senior Journalist
