by Heidi Reid | Sep 4, 2023 | Arts & Culture, September 2023
The Barefoot Movement brings about a fresh era with their new single.
If you aren’t barefoot, you’re overdressed. … From high school buddies to bandmates, Noah Wall and Tommy Norris have spent the last ~two decades making a name for themselves in the bluegrass world via their progressive Americana group, The Barefoot Movement.
After a forced pandemic hiatus, the dynamic duo—hailing from Oxford, NC—had to face a decision: move on or bring their music and motives through a renaissance. The power couple pushed on and just released their newest single, “Let It Out”—a “kind of battle cry for all who fight a war with anxiety and depression,” says Wall. Here, the bandmates take us back to their roots, delving into the deets of their latest song and giving us a sneak peak of what’s to come next. Play on…
Take us back to the meet-cute.
Noah: We met in high school in Granville County 18 years ago. [Tommy] brought a guitar to senior English class, and I was really intrigued by his musical abilities. At that point, we started playing together and kept it going through college. He picked up the mandolin somewhere along the way, while I’ve always been a fiddle player and singer. Throughout college, we collected different band members to support our sound on the road, and they’ve come and gone. … Now, it’s back to the two of us.
Tune us in to what you’ve been up to the last two decades.
Noah: We’ve put out three full length albums, two EPs, one live record, a Christmas album and a number of singles. We are ahead of our fourth album that comes out next year and our first single came out last week. We have gone from touring regionally and booking ourselves to acquiring a booking agency, which allows us to do more extensive touring. Now, we’ve been to most of the U.S., Burkina Faso, Africa and Canada.
Spill the tea on the new single.
Tommy: It’s called ‘Let It Out.’ I was falling asleep one night, and I had a melody pop in my head. That’s the worst time for a song to pop in your head because you have to make the decision to get up and record it, or try to remember it in the morning. Most of the time you don’t remember it. Being lazy, I didn’t decide to get up and record it. I took a risk and spent time figuring out how it would look in music notation, and, luckily, I remembered it.
Noah: Normally I would write lyrics first, but this time, the music came first. I listened to the music to see how it made me feel and what I wanted to say. The point of the song is when you are dealing with something, it’s important to let it out. You don’t want to bottle things up—there has to be a balance of knowing when you can move on.
Is the rest of the album going to follow the same tone?
Noah: We allowed ourselves to experiment a little bit more in the studio. I think in the past, we’ve been thinking more about how we would play it live, but this time we wanted to make a good record. We just followed the songs where they led. The song ‘Let it Out’ ended up being the album title as well because it works well with the rest of the songs, and now that it’s back to Tommy and I, we are a little more comfortable with our story. In the past, it’s been a band of four people. … We tried to make it more egalitarian and didn’t talk about our relationship, even though that has been the backbone of everything. We are willing to tap into some of our rock ’n’ roll influences and let go of any musical inhibitions.
Any musicians make their mark and influence your sound?
Noah: We both bonded over Led Zeppelin early on.
Tommy: Physical Graffiti or IV.
Noah: We were classic-rock kids and grew up in the grunge era. In small ways that has come out in our previous recordings, but we just let ourselves lean into that. I wouldn’t say it’s a rock ’n’ roll record—there are still a lot of folk elements in there. We definitely wanted to keep the fact that we play acoustic instruments at the center.
*Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
by Anna Beth Adcock | Sep 5, 2022 | September 2022, Stuff
North Carolina-based band LYLVC takes home Rock Band of the Year title at the 2022 Carolina Music Awards.
If you haven’t yet heard of Raleigh-based band LYLVC (pronounced lilac), well, they’re about to be everywhere.
With only two singles and an independently debuted EP—Perfect Drug—under their belt, the six-piece genre-defying band just took home the Rock Band of the Year award at the 2022 Carolina Music Awards… making this sweet victory only the beginning of a long and successful road.
Referred to by Hollywood Life as a group that “delivers an emotionally-fueled anthem for those who are doing their best to keep it together despite all the demons living behind their eyes,” LYLVC artistically blends powerful female vocals with rap and rock music, managing to be edgy and feminine, rough and profound with a one-of-a-kind sound. And we’re here for it.
Raleigh Mag recently got the chance to chat with lead vocalists Alyse Zavala and Oscar Romero about their group’s comeup, music-making process and what’s next for the band. Take a beat to read our conversation. Rock on!
For starters, how did LYLVC bloom into the band it is today?
Alyse: When the pandemic happened, I wanted to start a band to combine multiple genres and break standard rock music. I’ve always loved the band Linkin Park and how they combine hip-hop and rock, so I wanted to create something similar—but with female vocals and more modernized choruses. Once I started auditioning members, I found Cam (keyboardist) through a mutual friend; Oscar through Craigslist; and the other members through Craigslist, Bandmix or on Facebook. We quarantined together and wrote songs, then, before we knew it, we were sending out demos to different producers to be considered for recording. We ended up working with Mike Plotnikoff and Joe Rickard from West Valley Studios in California to record our first EP, Perfect Drug.
What was it like packing up and hitting the road to record your first EP?
Oscar: It was an incredible experience. All of us were fortunate enough to be able to take the trip out to California together as a band, and we spent the whole week in a confined space working toward our goal of writing the EP, and the entire energy around us musically was such an amazing high. It was a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience to spend a week away and focus on our music, writing songs and putting together the idea of what we wanted to accomplish.
Recording in CA with such a prominent recording studio must’ve raised the bar for your band.
A: If you haven’t heard of West Valley, they’ve produced people like Three Days Grace, Seether, Halestorm and My Chemical Romance. We were pushed and pushed—the standards were so high. If you miss a note, some other studios might edit it, but we were held to crazy standards. If we missed a note, we might have to do the whole song over again. I would sing at all these different keys, and it really pushed me to be the best vocalist I could possibly be, and the same was true for everyone else in the band.
And what was it like to work with Plotnikoff?
A: Plotnikoff actually gave us a homework assignment two weeks before we had to go to California. We already had five songs we were planning to record, and he wanted us to write a new song because sometimes the best hits are written when the pressure is on. We were still writing the song and the chorus up until the last day we were there for Perfect Drug. The moment we were supposed to record, the song wasn’t done and we were freaking out and racking our brains over the last lyric. Then the internet went out, and we finished the song and it sounded perfect. Mike loved it; we loved it; and right when that happened, the internet came back on.
Talk about fate! So how would you describe LYLVC to people who have never heard of you before?
O: LYLVC is a mix of hard rock, electronic and hip-hop—and there’s some metal vibes in the music as well. That’s what’s been so cool about finding and building our fan base… people who find flavor in different things we do, who love strong female artists—and just to see how wide our reach has been.
What’s your goal when it comes to songwriting?
O: I think what we try to do with our music is create personal stories. We want our songs to be stories people can grasp. Our new song ‘Undertow’ is about feeling overwhelmed and drowning in a new life stage and the process of overcoming that feeling. I’ve felt that way sometimes, and I’m sure others have too. We really want to create a personal connection with our music to remind people they aren’t alone.
Did it rock when LYLVC won Rock Band of the Year at the 2022 Carolina Music Awards?!
O: We were all shocked but crazy excited. … We had some explosive feelings when we found out we won it. It was just a great evening because we got to connect with artists of all genres from all over the Carolinas. We were just super excited to be there.
What’s next for LYLVC?
A: We are going on tour with New Year’s Day starting Oct. 8 in CA! Our tour will go through Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and then back up to North Carolina, where it ends Oct. 23. We are very excited. This will be our first nationwide tour from the west coast to the east coast. We are also planning a release of our new upcoming single and music video for the song ‘Undertow,’ and we’ll be announcing when we do the full EP release very soon. There will be a lot of music coming at people, and we’re writing a lot of music right now too.
Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
