When it’s a week night and the band you’re seeing makes you forget you have to wake up early the next day for work, that’s definitely a band to catch. We were lucky enough to see Lost Cousins play at Rockwood Music Hall and catch up with them about how they started and playing their very first show in NYC.
Lost Cousins
Rockwood is best known for showcasing bands that you wish you had know about, but grateful for catching a new, favorite band. Playing songs from their album, Not Now What We Were, their stage presence is really fun and laid back. They kept it interesting with switching instruments, Lloyd would take bass and Dylan would take the guitar and also switch vocals, which reminded me of Grouplove where they literally place musical chairs onstage and switch instruments. Not only does this keep the performance fun, but it’s refreshing at the same time.
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Lost Cousins was formed and based in Kingston, ON, Canada in 2014 by its members Lloyd, Dylan, Thomas, and Cam who went to university, graduated and all live together which makes the songwriting all the more special. You can tell that they love what they do and they enjoy being in a band together. They also caught the attention of Noisey earlier this year, with their exclusive premiere of the band’s debut music video ‘Feel An Emotion‘ where the band was able to film overseas with a Polish director in Norway, Poland, and Berlin, Germany as well. As described by the band, it’s a visual realm in true art form that’s pretty special for them.
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We had the pleasure of talking to Lost Cousins before they rocked out onstage!
Is your song writing collaborative?
Dylan: It’s a pretty big team effort, a lot of times Cam and I would start an idea, but we do all of our arranging on our own. Sometimes even the part of the song starts with won’t even like end up in the actual song. We really try to bring our own influences to the table when we’re arranging.
This is your first NYC show!! How do you feel?
Dylan: (with a lot of excitement) This IS our first NYC show! We’re absolutely ecstatic! Yeah we’re definitely pumped!
Cam: Feels like a finally sort of thing. We’ve been wanting to do this for so long. To be able to do it, feels amazing.
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How did planning an NYC show come about?
Dylan: We wanted to start playing shows in the states because a lot of bands do cross Canada tours and we’re in Ontario and we can hit so many of these major cities especially like New York City and we’ve also hit Chicago on this tour. We really wanted to hit really big markets so we all got our working visas to cross into the states and started booking shows. We were able to get onto this bill and Rockwood was one of the first bills we were able to book, they do such a great job of getting small acts to play. So we actually booked the tour around Rockwood, there are some great cities in Canada that we’re focusing on, but they’re far apart so there’s not nearly as many venues on the border.
So band name, Lost Cousins, it seems like there’s an interesting story behind it. How did you guys come up with the name?
Cam: We all met in university so it was like a time in our life when we’re meeting many new people and also having to let go of people in our hometowns. We all came from towns in Ontario, that around the university that we went to. So basically we wrote a song called Lost Cousins a while ago – we don’t really play it anymore but it was a metaphor for friends come and gone and while we were at university the name just sort of made more sense for us.
Dylan: We also wanted a name that people could relate to as well. I think that many people have cousins who they’ve drifted apart from and things like that.
Favorite song to perform?
Cam and Dylan agreed on one of their newest songs “Mindmaker.”
Lloyd and Thomas also agreed on one of their newest songs called “Trails.”
Dylan: The stuff we’ve created most recently is typically what typically gets us stoked on stage. The new sounds and ideas we’re able to finally flesh and out and get to to perform for people are always the most exciting on our end.
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Most surreal experience as a band?
Cam: We’ve played a music festival called the “Wayhome Festival” in Canada which put on by the same people from Bonaroo – that was definitely the biggest stage we’ve played. It was crazy.
Dylan: It’s referred to as the Bonaroo of Canada kind of thing, we got to play the inaugural year and it was a massive festival, definitely the biggest crowd we’ve ever played for and a ton of our friends were there too so it was like a big thing for us too.
Lloyd: We all went to school together and a bunch of people from our university probably more than a hundred went to the festival.
Dylan: We all met in Kingston, Ontario and a lot of the other cities where we started touring in, like Toronto and Ottawa – all of our fans from those cities, they were all going to Wayhome because it was such a big destination for anyone in Ontario. A lot of our fan bases were able to see us play at that show as well as a lot of new people. It was such an amazing stage to play on.
You guys have a new album in the works will it sound similar to “Not Now What We Were” or will you guys give it a different sound?
I think out of all the songs on ‘Not Now What We Were’- Feel An Emotion would be more in the direction that we’re going. I think it’ll definitely be quite different from the first album as a whole. With that we recorded a bunch of different influences we had and wanted to show our diversity and influences we wanted to incorporate where we want to include in it in the album and make it cohesive. It’ll be more refined.
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Article: Karen Silva
Photos: Alx Bear
