Nu-alternative dark pop band LONG AUTUMN is a five piece whose time together has been brief, but they have come so far with releasing not one but two EP's already. The band goes into much discussion about their releases and what is in-store for them.
1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
We all first got together back in the August of 2019. Our singer, Johnny, had a solo project that he was releasing music on himself under the alias “L 1 P S”. He’s from New Hampshire in the states. It just so happened that our bassist, Tim Donovan, stumbled across his music via a website called “bandmix.com”, which is an online platform where musicians can meet each other and, ultimately, form bands. Tim quickly realized that he lived only an hour south of Johnny in Acton, Massachusetts, and promptly got in touch with him to see if he’d be interested in meeting up & jamming. Johnny was obviously down. Ironically, Tim’s best friend since childhood, Nick Harvey, was living with him in the same house, and was an experienced guitarist equally as interested in joining the journey. The three of us immediately hit it off, and put the word out that we needed a drummer. Sure enough, within just a week or so, Conor Moran got back to us with an amazing cover video of our first single ‘Hands In The Soil’. He was just a half hour away from the boys, which made it just too easy. From there, we released our first 6-track EP ‘Too Minded’ just a couple of months later, and began HEAVILY gigging across New England, from Boston to New York City as a four piece, with Johnny on both rhythm guitar and vocals. It was in February of 2020 when Johnny, along with the band, decided he wanted to take the ground as frontman of the band, and hand off the six-string to someone else. He just wanted to improve himself as a singer. Fortunately, a long-time friend of Johnny’s, Jam Templeton, quickly expressed interest in hopping on board after tagging along on one of our photoshoots in Manchester, NH. Jam adapted so quickly man. He’s added a new vibe to our band and our sound, and we’ve been stronger than ever since turning into a 5-piece.
2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?
Our story is like many... our name doesn’t really hold any notable meaning or significance. The truth is, we had a list of names on the table. Johnny came up with most of them, since he had written the majority of the first EP and was trying to come up with a name that matched the vibe of the music. Names like Blue You, Dear Diary, Wander Way, Child Of Wayne and others were ideas. But, as a group, we eventually settled between Lone Autumn and Long Autumn. Long seemed to make more sense to us, and sounded prettier. That’s pretty much it!
3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
Well, we were formed in and are currently based out of a small town thirty minutes west of Boston called Acton, Massachusetts. We tend to say we’re out of Boston to make it easier for people to get an idea of where we’re located. As far as the Boston music scene goes, it’s pretty strong. There’s a very large range and variety of music and genres that we see when we play shows. There’s pop, electro, alternative, rock, metal, jazz, you name it. Seen them all. One of our favorite “buddy” bands that we’ve played a few shows with in the past are a group called The Fool’s Agenda. They’re really cool. Soul music.
4. How would you describe your style?
Man, it’s always sort of tricky to try and explain our music to people. I usually use words like atmospheric, dreamy, wavy, but that’s just one side of our sound. The other side, I would describe as dark. Melancholy. Heavy. Stoned. You make of it what you want. It’s versatile music.
5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?
Aside from our first EP back in late 2019, we only dropped two other singles in 2020, ‘Hard One’ and ‘Them’. However, those two singles, along with two new songs, will appear on our second EP ‘Change’ out now. It was a tough year to be motivated to create art, because everything in the music industry seemed to fall apart for awhile. We’re getting back on our feet now. We have set in stone plans to release a LOT more new, fresh music this year. Nothing to be announced quite yet, but it will come, and it will be better than anything we have done yet.
6. Do you have any new music in the works?
Our new EP ‘Change’ drops this upcoming Saturday, the 23rd of January. After that, we’ll be right back in the studio writing & recording our asses off. Johnny has a lot of lyrics in the bank, and when we’re all focused together at the computer, it doesn’t take us long to write riffs & beats. Maybe some singles, maybe some EP’s, maybe a full length record. It’ll come though, for damn sure.
7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?
In the past couple months, we played two Facebook/YouTube livestream shows at a venue in Boston called Midway Cafe. Both shows are actually on YouTube. They’ve been great at helping artists play out despite the gross nasty Covid. Last week actually, we got word that we’ll be playing our first festival this summer as well! It’s an annual festival in June at a venue called ‘Harry Brown’s Farm’ in Starks, Maine, US. The event page on Facebook has 25,000 likes and the crowd photos show thousands of people. We could not be more ready & excited. We were actually supposed to play the festival last year, but it got cancelled due to the virus. We are in the works of potentially scoring a couple of other festivals as well. Aside from that, we’ve just still been looking for clubs and bars that are having modern bands play.
8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?
We all made it pretty clear with each other that our goal with this band is to shoot for the stars & never give up. I think the reason we’re all on that page is because we absolutely love what we do, love each other, and have the most fun ever. Literally, our rehearsals are the top highlight of our weeks. Our overall goal is to create music that is unique, fun and beautiful, and connects with people emotionally. Johnny writes from a personal viewpoint, from the heart, but always tries to make it so that his lyrics can relate to people in one way or another. If we can change one person’s viewpoint on something, or help one person through a tough patch with one of our songs, that’s enough for us. But yeah, of course we want to be rockstars.
9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
Our music’s everywhere. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, Deezer, Tidal, Soundcloud, you name it. We did make our first batch of t-shirts, and plan on upping our merch game this year. If you’d so please, you can buy one at longautumnmusic.com. We’d really appreciate you repping us, and you’ll look fire.
10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?
Many people have let us know that they can’t exactly name a band that we “sound like”. We’ve always taken that as a compliment and always will. That’s sort of the goal. We want to be our own thing, our own entity. So, if someone can listen to our music and say “damn, this is really different!”, that’s cool as hell.
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