Lead singer and guitarist Joey Vannucchi might be stranded roadside between Washington and Idaho while his alt-rock band, From Indian Lakes, works to fix a blowout, but the good on their tour has definitely outweighed the bad.
“We ate at Pine Street in Portland, and they gave us a bag full of free biscuits,” he said. “That's pretty cool.”
Even beyond the gratis baked goods, things are going pretty swell.
“For being an unsigned, independent band, it's amazing to go to a place like Las Vegas and have 200 people show up to see us,” Vannucchi said. “It's not something that happens to many bands now days.”
Hailing from the beautiful Yosemite Valley in California and borrowing from bands like mewithoutYou, Brand New and Copeland, From Indian Lakes’ soaring guitar anthems and more quaint acoustic ballads have afforded the group the sort of following that only a few indie acts ever find without large label support.
“It sounds and feels like something kind of real and raw,” Vannucchi said. “Someone told us we sound like At the Drive-In, which I think we are kind of far away from, but people get the vibe that we're not fake about what we do. Even if we look dorky, we just roll with it and not try and look like rock stars. People would know we weren't really rock stars.”
The group’s 2009 debut album, The Man with Wooden Legs, was followed by last year’s fittingly titled Acoustic EP to satiate fans awaiting From Indian Lakes’ sophomore effort, which will hit shelves this winter.
“It's evolving into something a little tighter in a lot of ways. We decided a long time ago we weren't going to be one of those bands that turned into a different band every album,” Vannucchi said. “We wanted to keep trying to perfect what we started with.”
The band might actually find a home on a record label to reach a wider audience, while a tour with emo-pop band The Dangerous Summer later this, well, summer should help in that quest. Which is good, being that Vannucchi thinks it might be the best thing he’s done to date.
“We got home from tracking the first record, and I immediately started writing,” he said. “The challenge was making a better record when keeping what made people like us in the first place. I think that we did it … hopefully.”
