The Lumineers’ Wesley Schultz talks lockdown, family and why getting a late break might just be the best thing that ever happened
Alex Green catches up with the Ho Hey frontman.
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Your support makes all the difference.The Lumineers frontman Wesley Schultz is torn.
Speaking from his home in Denver Colorado the singer and guitarist cannot decide whether lockdown has been good or bad for him.
“Being gone two or three hundred days a year – home is exotic,” he muses. “Now I have been home so long, the road has become exotic again.”
His band, with drummer Jeremiah Fraites (Jer to his friends) is known for a few things: energetic live shows, folksy Americana and the inescapable 2012 single Ho Hey.
But they have spent much of the past year and a half stuck at home like the rest of us.
“Collectively, as a band – and as a country – it has been really hard to put into words,” Schultz offers. “Everybody has been through a collective trauma.”
The Lumineers came straight off touring their third album, titled III, and into lockdown. And despite living a short drive away from each other in Denver, they didn’t get together for almost six months.
“Everybody was being super cautious. It was very difficult at the beginning.”
The first months of lockdown saw The Lumineers find other musical outlets. Schultz recorded a covers album entitled Vignettes, featuring songs by a roll call of his heroes, including Springsteen and Dylan. Fraites completed an album of intimate piano-centric instrumentals that had been in the works for about a decade.
“Jer made his own beautiful solo record of instrumental songs and I think that helped us to wade back into the waters. Then we started making our demos for the next record after that.
“I feel that’s been the highlight, aside from I had a daughter in March. So new life in a time where it felt really, really dire for the last couple of years.”
Schultz is excited at the prospect of a full return to normality, but remains cautious in his optimism.
“It’s like you have been through something that has resulted in PTSD ” he half-laughs. “You don’t know what to count on any more. I don’t trust that much and I’m not taking anything for granted at the moment. I hope all these dates happen.”
Schultz already had a son, Lenny, born in 2018, with his wife Brandy before they welcomed their daughter during the pandemic.
“It was a mixed bag,” he confesses of the lockdown. “But I can say, my son – who is now three – I got to witness two of the most important years of his life, they say, with development. And I felt so lucky for that. I got to wake up with him every day and take a lot of care of him.
“In that way, it was a huge, huge blessing and one that you didn’t feel that guilty about, because there was nothing to be done.”
Lockdown has prompted The Lumineers to look back at their 20 years in music. “I wouldn’t have chosen for it to be this way,” Schultz explains when asked about their ascent. “It required a lot of patience. I was about 30 when we got a break.”
However, there were some benefits to delayed gratification.
“To have that was a blessing in disguise,” he continues. “Because I was more formed and I could say no to things that I wasn’t comfortable with. Small example, but if you have album art you want to use and you are 30 or 20, you are going to have a different level of willingness to fight for it.”
Schultz points to a framed image behind him on the wall.
It’s the cover of The Lumineers’ eponymous debut album – a black and white childhood photograph of his mother holding a parasol as his grandmother looks on.
Live From The Last Night Of The Tour is out now. The Lumineers tour the UK and Europe in early 2022.