Any college band could play in the campus coffee shop.
For members of the Wldlfe, staging a rock concert in the lobby of a girls dorm was a more guerrilla approach to their music.
The rock quartet wanted to put on a show that people would be talking about. They would make their own venue, bringing professional sound and lighting into the dorm, and packing it with people.
“Usually, it’s not a big deal when someone’s playing on campus. So we bypassed what everyone else had done, and thought about what would make this an event,” said Jason Boucouras, guitarist for the band. “We did something no one else thought to do.”
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Thinking outside of the traditional music norms has paid off for the Wldlfe. The up-and-coming band based at Anderson University has spent the past year laying the groundwork for future success, building an audience through regional touring and online music releases.
The members already have a short album out, and the first single off of their new album, “Text Me,” had 70,000 plays on Spotify in three weeks. They just released a music video for the song, and hope to have a full album out early next year.
“It’s been surreal,” said Geoff Jones, drummer for the band and a 2013 Center Grove High School graduate. “We definitely just started doing this to have a good time and play music together. As soon as we released music and started having a good time, it turned into us getting noticed by people.”
The band was born after all of the members attended music business camp at Anderson University when they were still in high school. Boucouras and bassist Jack Crane attended the camp together in 2012, and Jones and lead singer Jansen Hogan were in the same group during the 2013 session.
When they all ended up attending Anderson University as undergrads, those connections strengthened. Jones, Boucouras and Crane all lived together on the same floor in the freshman dorm, and were friends with Hogan.
Their shared interest in music finally sparked a more formal playing arrangement. By 2015, Hogan decided he wanted to form a band.
Jones and Boucouras were the first to join up with him. At first, they were simply playing original songs that Hogan had written and performed as a solo artist.
By January of 2016, they had become the Wldlfe. Crane was the final piece of the band to officially join, coming on board in the summer.
“It’s been both a slow and a quick process from there,” Jones said.
Despite their shared interest, each member of the band comes from diverse musical backgrounds. Jones had been in the drumline at Center Grove High School, Boucouras was entrenched in indie rock and Hogan were playing more pop-oriented songs. Crane was in a hardcore scream-rock band.
But since coming together, those multi-faceted influences have served as an incubator for their creativity. Each member brings a slightly different perspective, making the music more rich and textured.
“We have an indie-pop sound, with a new wave that we’re trying to create. There are so many influences from our backgrounds that it creates this sound that just works,” Jones said.
That diversity has been useful for them as a band, but has made slotting their music into industry standards difficult. Their manager had been contacting representatives for Sirius XM over the summer, trying to get some of the Wldlfe’s songs on the satellite radio provider’s channels.
Over and over, the band heard that their music wasn’t quite right — too alternative for pop, too pop-centric for indie rock.
“We hit this dead middle between pop and alternative, so we have that fusion,” Boucouras said.
Hogan is the main songwriter for the group, putting together the bones of a song: chord progression, lyrics and melodies. From there, the rest of the band offers input and suggestions from their individual specialties.
“We don’t have much of a defined process. It’s more just let the creative energy flow,” Boucouras said. “You don’t want to feel like you’re factory-producing songs.”
After releasing an EP, “New,” the band is back in the studio working on a new album. They’ve been spending spare time at the Varsity Recording Co. under the production of Jon Class to put the polish and sheen on those songs
The Wldlfe hopes to have the album finished and ready in the first half of 2017.
“It’s been stressful but exciting. It’s a lot of stress for you to come in, to come in and be on the spot as an artist. But it’s also exciting to see what you can dig out of yourself and put into this album,” Jones said. “When it’s all said and done, we all created that together.”
The band has tried to build it profile around central Indiana with shows on campus and in the area. On Nov. 11, the band headlined a show at the Hi-Fi, an intimate concert space in Fountain Square
“That was our favorite show in Indy so far. It was a blast,” Boucouras said.
They’ve also traveled throughout Michigan doing a handful of concerts, and hope to encroach in neighboring states in 2017. While at a concert in Winfield, Illinois, they found themselves performing on top of a parking garage that had been rented out.
“There was no roof, just the stars and sky and the lights. It was really fun,” Crane said.
All of the work to this point is a kind of head-start for when they can take the band more seriously. As students, it’s tough to devote the time they know they need to to be successful in the music industry.
“We’ve tried to do as much as we can, since we’re all still in school,” Crane said. “It’s not as easy to break away for two weeks and do all of the shows we want to do.”
But Jones graduates in December, while Crane and Boucouras get their degrees in May 2017. Hogan will graduate in 2018.
“We’re all college students, so we all have this schedule where we have to get stuff done. But we still have this drive and motivation to work hard and get it done early,” Jones said.
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The Wldlfe
Members:
- Lead singer: Jansen Hogan, Winfield, Illinois
- Drums: Geoff Jones, Center Grove area
- Guitar: Jason Boucouras, Worthington, Ohio
- Bass: Jack Crane, Attica
Where: Anderson University
What: Pop music with a more honest quality enhanced by telling stories through their lyrics while keeping catchy melodies in the fold.
Influences: The 1975, LANY, Oh Wonder, The Neighbourhood, Betty Who, Colony House
When did they form: 2016
How to listen to them: iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud
Information: thewldlfemsc.com
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