Events like Northside Festival are great for everyone involved. Running along the same model as CMJ Music Marathon, Northside aims to expose great new talent from the NYC music scene and beyond. With showcases going from Thursday until Sunday, countless artists will be taking the stage all across the L Line in North Brooklyn to try and get their name and music out there in one of the richest and overpopulated music scenes in the world.
Leggy is one of those bands that will be in town and taking advantage of the potential exposure that Northside provides. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Leggy is a relatively newer rock trio that spend most of their time on the road, a luxury for a young, independently financed band. They’ll be in town as part of our Pancakes & Whiskey Northside Showcase at Union Pool on Thursday, and will certainly be helping everyone get their weekend party started early at the event. I hopped on the phone with Chris and Véronique to talk about looking forward to Northside and how constant touring has helped a young band.
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P&W: You guys have played NYC before right?
Véronique: Yeah this is our sixth time I believe.
Chris: Yeah we’ve played Cake Shop, Baby’s All Right, Radio Bushwick, Palisades, and Glasslands a few weeks before it closed down which was a cool experience.
P&W: How does it feel when you come and play NYC?
Véronique: It definitely makes you step your game up because you can’t rely on your friends to come out and fill the room like when you’re in your hometown. Even if you promote your shows a lot, you still don’t know anyone and you have to win people over.
Chris: There’s so much more going on, as opposed to Ohio. It’s really fun to go out there without an established name and booking our own shows and that kind of fun stuff.
P&W: You guys have been fortunate enough to tour a lot early on, which is a luxury most young bands don’t have. How Many different cities and markets have you played in already?
Chris: We played about 130 shows in the first year or so. We’ve covered all the east coast so far, most of the Midwest and south so far.
Véronique: We’re hitting the west coast this summer too.
Chris: Yeah I think we’ll just have the southeast and the Pacific northwest and we’ll have almost the entire country covered at this point.
P&W: How nice is it to be able to leave life behind hit the road as hard as you guys have early on?
Véronique: We all just kind of dropped everything and committed to this project as a band. It helps only having three people in the band. We all have college degrees but we all work in food service to be able to do this. Being on the road and around each other was just so natural to us too since we also lived together until Kristen moved out to live with her boyfriend.
Chris: Just being able to book a month long tour is really exciting, energizing, and beneficial. We’ll go out on tour for a few weeks, make a bunch of friends, and come back to Cinci building on what we were able to accomplish on the road. Save up some money and plan another one.
I’m sure having lived with each other already definitely benefited you
Véronique: Definitely. It helped because we already knew what it was like being around each other all the time. Our house is a nice place, but it was definitely not a tight run ship. We named it Cavity Castle because we always had candy all the time.
Chris: We’d have parties and have our friends bands stay here while they’re in town.
P&W: What do you look to achieve while you’re in NYC during Northside?
Véronique: I think we’re trying to make any connections possible. We self-released the two EPs but we’d like to finish an album by the end of the year and release it via label. It’d be nice to have that option, but really we just want to come and play, have fun, and make some friends who are in the same mindset as we are.
Why stay in the mid-west? Why not move to and establish yourself in a market where there’s better media exposure for new bands?
Véronique: I think the scene here in the Ohio the last few years has put out some really good bands. We all want to be part of a growing scene as opposed to joining another big market.
Chris: There are so many great bands here and coming through town. It goes back to building something from the ground up and experiencing it ourselves. There’s more freedom. The cost of living is low here and that helps us consistently tour.
Véronique: We wouldn’t be able to afford a lifestyle like that if we lived in NYC. There are just benefits living in the Midwest that you can’t in a larger city. It helps that Cinci is centrally located. It’s only a day drive to most other major markets.
P&W: With not many consumers buying, or even caring about full length albums anymore, why focus on spending money and time on creating a full length album?
Véronique: I don’t wanna put out another EP.
Chris: I feel like when everything is finished it’ll still be a solid piece. If someone only wants to download only a few songs or stream it, or buy the whole thing, having the option that anyone can still enjoy it in different ways is something to take into consideration. We really enjoy doing things ourselves and being able to do a project like that is something we’d definitely like to accomplish.
Véronique: It also comes down to the songs that we’ve been writing have a unique sound to it that we’d love to put in one project big project.
P&W Northside Showcase
Article: Tom Shackleford
