photo courtesy of artist

Bonnaroo first timers Lake Street Dive take their jazzy tunes to the Farm. Known as DIY and indie jazz, Bridget Kearney talks about their inspirations, their favorite acts in the ‘Roo lineup and her favorite type of beer!

Blue Indian: Is this your first time going to Bonnaroo? If so, are you excited? If not, what are you looking forward to this year?

This is my first time going to Bonnaroo. I’m incredibly excited! I’ve heard about Bonnaroo for so many years. The lineup is always incredible and we’re honored to be among so many of our favorite bands! I’m especially excited to see Elton John.

Blue Indian: How do you think your sound has “grown” from your self-titled album to Bad Self Portraits? Would you say your EP was a springboard to your developing sound?

I think our learning process as a band has a lot to do with trial and error. Every time we go into the studio we experiment with new sounds in the songs that we bring in and the way we record them. And after it’s all over you look back and assess which of the things you tried succeeded, and those things become a part of your wheelhouse. Hopefully our wheelhouse will keep growing and ratio of trials/errors will continue to improve, but I hope we never get to a point where we’re not failing at all because that means we’re not taking any risks!

Blue Indian: For being an indie jazz band from Boston, Mass. you sound like you could fit in incredibly well in New Orleans, LA. Have you ever been there? Better yet, have you been to Jazzfest in New Orleans?

We’ve been to New Orleans once but never to Jazzfest, sadly! Hope to go one of these days.

Blue Indian: In several reviews, the term DIY has been thrown around with your name. What aspects of the band would you DIY?

We’ve grown to a point now where it would be impossible for us to continue doing everything ourselves, but I would certainly say we started out as DIY! We were a one stop shop, booking our own shows, managing our own tours, releasing our own records (let alone writing and performing our own music!) for probably the first 5 years of our band-dom. I think a lot of this has to do with us being very music-centric and not music-industry-centric. We still, to this day, understand very little about the music industry. The growth of our fan base has been completely grass roots. At one of our earlier shows in Portsmouth, NH, the show was promoted by a guy actually going door to door letting people in the town know that a band called Lake Street Dive was about to play in town! When we got to a point where someone wanted to take over non-musical aspects of our band’s needs, we were more than happy to hand them over to the professionals and this leaves us in the very fortunate position of being completely music-centric!

Blue Indian: Which Bonnaroo acts will you guys be seeing this year? If you’re not staying, which ones would you see if you were to stay for the festival?

Elton John, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Dr. Dog, Vampire Weekend and The Flaming Lips!

Blue Indian: What’s your go-to drink at the bar? 

Imperial Pale Ale!

Lake Street Dive makes their Bonnaroo debut this Sunday at 1:00pm. View the full Bonnaroo 2014 schedule HERE.