Nashville Band JUDAH AND THE LION Open Up About Their Latest Album, Favorite Artists And Much More!

Nashville band Judah & the Lion are thrilled to announce select dates supporting Kaleo in early April 2017 including shows in Calgary, Vancouver, Seattle, and San Francisco. The Spring dates with Kaleo come as the band adds several new holiday radio shows to their already busy holiday schedule, including LA’s 98.7’s Altimate December (Dec. 12), Milwaukee’s 102.1’s Big Snow Show (Dec. 8), and Philadelphia’s 104.5 Winter Jam (Jan. 15).

Judah & the Lion’s breakout single, “Take It All Back,” moves up the Top 10 this week, hitting a new peak at #6 on the Alternative Radio chart. Now with 12 straight weeks of growth in sales, streaming, and consumption, the official video is set to break 1 million streams and the song aims to hit 5 million total streams on Spotify recently.

Learn more about Judah And The Lion in the following All Access interview:

Thanks for your time! Now that we are well into the fall of 2016, what are some words you would use to describe this year? What have been some of the highlights for the band and your music?

Excitement, roller-coaster, freeing, growth. One highlight was playing at Bonnaroo this summer, it was a long time dream of ours, and to have thousands of crazy hippies dancing and singing along with us was a cool moment.

Growing up, did you all always want to be musicians? Can you recall your earliest musical memories?

I think we all did want to be musicians from a young age. Nate’s parents play in the Symphony in Colorado Springs, so they always encouraged him to pursue music. Judah had family members that sang and played growing up and he started writing songs and playing guitar in High School. Spencer “came out of the womb wanting to hit a drum.” and Brian watched his older sister play piano at a young age and wanted to learn for himself.

Let’s talk about your latest album, “Folk Hop ‘N Roll.” How do you think this collection compares to your previous albums? What was different about the way you made this album?

Folk Hop N Roll blends more of our genres into the album. We live in a generation that takes in a lot of information at once, and people find themselves listening to so many different genres since it’s so accessible. We are very much that way as a band. Each of us have very different tastes in music, that intersect on some level, and we hope to capture that in our music.

What was the inspiration for “Folk Hop N’Roll”? Do you think that what motivates you all to create and write songs changed over the years?

Creativity is so fluid, I would definitely say that our creative motivations change over the years and even day to day. It just has to do with what we are going through at the time, as a band and as individuals. Our first album Kids These Days had a young and free vibe to it. A burst of happy energy. In Folk Hop N Roll we definitely still have moments like that, but we also explored some of the human condition. Feelings of loneliness, augmented by Electric guitar and Gang vocals.

You had a very busy summer and now fall touring all over the US. What have been some of your favorites venues? Where are you looking forward to playing at next? How do you maintain the energy night after night on the road?

One of our favorites is the Tabernacle in Atlanta. It’s just a great vibe, great theater, always an amazing crowd. We’re doing some Christmas shows in December, one in Minneapolis at the Target Center. That’s gonna be super fun, we always love being way up North and experiencing a real Winter!! It’s hard to keep energy up on the road. During the shows, we can feed off the crowd. . .otherwise it takes getting all the sleep we can get, eating healthy, and Red Bull when we need to. . .!!!

What if anything has surprised you about the music industry? What do you think has been your biggest challenge? And what do you think has come really naturally to you?

It’s surprising how quickly things can change for bands. Constantly, we are looking back on the 6 months behind us and the 6 months ahead thinking, wow how did we get here. . .what were we thinking back then? It’s fun to be on this journey as a band. One of the biggest challenges is staying true to ourselves. We are so thankful that we get to do what we do. We don’t ever want to take that for granted, and we always want to make music that is true to us not music based on our success or what people or expect from us.

How do you keep up with your social media outlets? Do you find challenging or more fun than anything?

We try to stay as active as possible, and spend a lot of time studying our socials. It is definitely challenging, but very rewarding. We get to connect with our fans in so many different ways and that is special.

Who are some of your favorite artists and what bands continue to inspire you and your music? Who would you all still love to work with in the future?

Like I mentioned earlier, we have a ton of influences. I’ll name a few.

50 Cent, Coldplay, Billy Joel, Manchester Orchestra, Chance the Rapper.

We have a Spotify Playlist curated by us, that shows you what we’ve been listening to most recently.

I think we would love to collaborate with a hip hop artist in the future. . .My favorite right now would have to be Chance!!!

When you aren’t performing, working in the studio, what do you like to do for fun? How do you all unwind from it all?

We all have different individual hobbies, running, songwriting, coffee, books. Lately we’ve been playing a lot of home run derby and Pickup baseball when we’ve been home in Nashville. That’s been a ton of fun and a good way to stay active.

At the end of the day, what do you hope is the message of your music? What do you hope listeners take away from your songs?

If I had to pick one word, I would say Hope. We want people to come to our shows and then leave happier than they came. We want to bring the party and create an environment where people can totally be themselves.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers about yourself or your music?

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” G.K. Chesterton