Leland Blue
Photo Credit: Liz Freel
Leland Blue is a family band: two brothers and their cousin. Their alt/pop rock sound has caught on since they began making music professionally, with their quick and easy cohesion as a band only adding to the enjoyable listening experience. They made an incredible debut with their 2017 single “Sofia…”, which now has over 1.7 million streams. “Lying to Myself” and “Cold Comfort” have hundreds of thousands of streams as well, contributing to a quickly growing fanbase. They’ve amassed a following of 50K monthly listeners since their start, with over 4K Spotify followers. They may have achieved much in their short tenure so far, but the best is yet to come. We recently spoke with Leland Blue about growing up together, their plans for the future, and more!
How did you start making music?
Connor: Me and Ben’s Dad and our uncle (Satchel’s dad) have been musicians their whole lives and have been in bands together so we grew up watching them play and at a really young age we decided what instrument we were all gonna play and started doing covers and stuff at school talent shows. We’ve been playing together for a little over 10 years now.
It’s your day off: How are you spending it?
Connor: Totally depends on the season. But, it’s likely that my girlfriend and I are taking her dog for a walk to get coffee and then I work on music all day and finish my night with a bonfire:)
Ben: Considering we're in Michigan, this can totally depend on the time of year. Right now it's hot and beautiful, so I try to spend time near a body of water as much as possible. We've also had plenty of free time in these past few months, but the songwriting has definitely been the most productive consistency.
Who’s your choice for a dream collab?
Connor: Woah, Ummmm I’ve been listening to a lot of Julien Casablancas today so I’ll roll with that. He’s so cool.
Ben: I'd love to work with Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi). He's been very inspiring to me for the last few years and he seems like a great hang.
We loved “Lying to Myself”. What was the inspiration for the song?
Ben: "Lying to Myself" spawned from a series of terrible dates I had with an individual. Things just seemed to go wrong at every turn but I couldn't stop trying to convince myself that it would be fine. It never ended up that way and now we have this song, so at least we got that out of it!
Where is your go-to location when it's time to song write?
Connor: Honestly, my bedroom. Or at the piano in my dining room. I’ve tried giving the whole “bring an acoustic guitar to the lake thing before and while it’s extremely beautiful, it’s never yielded better results than the comfort of my room.
Ben: I'm with Connor on this one. That's where all our musical toys are, and hashing out songs on a guitar then going right to the computer to track stuff down seems to be the most efficient way for us to write.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a career in music?
Connor: Have a plan. Do not cut any corners. Surround yourself with a team of people you enjoy being around.
Ben: Couldn't have answered that better myself.
Any future projects for fans to get excited about?
We just released an EP called Another Night in July along with a video for our song “Starting Over”!
