Sibling Band Lawrence Returns to the Studio

Lawrence
( Photo by Deanie Chen )

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. On Saturday night the New York-based band Lawrence wrapped up a four-month tour that started at Yankee Stadium and ended at Barclays. And like any good New Yorkers, they took the subway to get there. It was a sibling-themed tour. Lawrence is fronted by siblings Clyde and Gracie Lawrence and the headliners were the Jonas Brothers.

The last time Lawrence stopped by our studio was in 2019 to perform some of the songs fromn their album Living Room. They also did a really killer version of With a Little Help from My Friends, the Joe Cocker version. They've since released the album Hotel TV, and over the course of the tour, they've been putting out new songs with more on the way. On top of all that, at the beginning of the year, you may have seen Clyde testify before Congress about the dynamics of ticketing and touring in the wake of the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster debacle.

Just this past Friday, six senators introduced a bill called The Fans First Act as a follow-up to those hearings. So to cap off a very busy year before they have the chance to completely decompress from the tour, we have them in our studio with the band's full lineup, vocal, keys, drums, bass guitar, sax, and trumpet. I think I got everybody. I did get everybody. Welcome back, you guys.

Gracie Lawrence: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Clyde Lawrence: Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: You're going to start us off with a song, what are we going to hear?

Gracie Lawrence: We're going to start off with a song called 23 which we released over the course of this tour and are really excited about it.

Alison Stewart: Let's do it.

[MUSIC - Lawrence:23]

At 23 you said goodbye (23, oh)

Waiting, I'm waiting

Might start complaining

This quarter-life crisis

Is not entertaining to me

La di di da

Oh, it's my party and I'm gonna cry

If I want to

You said that 23 would be the best year

That ever happened to me but

I'm 23 and that's a lie

You said that 23 would be our best year

But you were messing with me 'cause

At 23 you said goodbye

Oh, it's been the worst day, the worst day

Cake on a Thursday

Who says I can't have

Tears on my birthday, baby

La di di da

Yeah, it's my party and I'm gonna cry

If I want to

You said that 23 would be the best year

That ever happened to me but guess what

I'm 23 and that's a lie

You said that 23 would be our best year

But you were messing with me 'cause

At 23 you said goodbye

You said that, you said that

Oh, at 23 you said goodbye (Come on)

You said that, you said that

At 23 you said goodbye

(Dance break at home)

You said that, you said that

(Come on Clyde)

That was Clyde Lawrence on the key solo and he's also my brother. If you're at home listening to this, sing along, I can hear it. Ready. Okay

You said that 23 would be the best year

That ever happened to me but

But I'm 23 and that's a lie, lie, lie.

You said that 23 would be our best year

But you were messing with me 'cause

At 23 you said goodbye (What)

You said that 23 would be the best year

That ever happened to me but (guess what)

I'm 23 and that's a lie, lie, lie, lie

You said that 23 would be our best year

But you were messing with me 'cause

At 23 you said goodbye (you said that)

At 23 you said goodbye

Alison Stewart: That was Lawrence. I have to just tell you, we got two texts that said, one, "Wow, sounds so good." The other one said, "I hope someone is taking a video because this sounds amazing."

Gracie Lawrence: Oh.

Alison Stewart: I just want to let y'all know.

Gracie Lawrence: Cool.

Alison Stewart: Gracie, would you just tell us who everybody is just so we give everybody a shoutout?

Gracie Lawrence: Oh my God. I should know everyone's name because I've known them for probably like 20 years. This is my brother Clyde Lawrence.

Clyde Lawrence: Hello.

Gracie Lawrence: I'm Gracie Lawrence, by the way. That's Jordan Cohen on tenor sax. That's Sumner Becker on alto sax. That's Marc Langer on trumpet. That's Jonny Koh on guitar. That's Michael Karsh on bass. That is Sam Askin on the drums.

Alison Stewart: Hi, Sam Askin, sorry, I didn't see you there before.

Sam Askin. Hi.

Alison Stewart: All right. I can always spot the drummer in the room. First of all, how are you feeling now that the tour has ended?

Gracie Lawrence: We're feeling tired, but good. It was a four-month tour, which is a very long time, but it was so much fun. I feel like we got so much out of it and played to such amazing crowds that it's energizing, but we're also exhausted.

Clyde Lawrence: There's this thing that happens the second tour ends where, at least for me, I just always get sick, My body does a good job of--

Gracie Lawrence: Yes, no one get near Clide right now.

Clyde Lawrence: My body does a good job of staying, I don't know if it's adrenaline or whatever, while we're on tour. Then just the second tour ends, my body, or my brain tells my body something and then I just get a cold after every tour without fail.

Alison Stewart: All right, we'll get you out of here and get you some tea and honey.

Clyde Lawrence: Oh, no. This is fun. I'm enjoying it.

Alison Stewart: Gracie, do you have a stop from the tour that's going to be the one that you tell everybody about, the memorable stop, the memorable moment?

Gracie Lawrence: I feel bad that my answer is no because what's so interesting about a four-month tour that's mostly arenas is that the arena setup is so similar in every venue. It's this weird Groundhog Day-like social experiment where you walk into a venue and you're like, "Wait, there's something a little different about this, but it almost looks exactly the same as yesterday." I will say that the stadiums themselves, those were really different from each other, and there were a bunch of those on the tour. I think starting the tour off with two Yankee stadiums as New Yorkers was pretty iconic if I can say so myself.

Alison Stewart: Clyde, what's something that you know about your band now that you didn't know four months ago?

Gracie Lawrence: We're siblings.

Clyde Lawrence: I feel like I know all these people far better than I ever hope to know anyone.

Gracie Lawrence: Before the tour, yes.

Clyde Lawrence: Yes. We've all been best friends for a really long time. Obviously, Gracie and I are siblings. Jordan's been our best friend since we were little kids. I'm talking five, six years old, Gracie was one or two or whatever. Then everyone else in the band. Sam on drums is someone that I went to middle school, and then high school, and then college with, and then everyone else we met in college. We were already a really close-knit friend group before we even started touring, and that was like seven years ago, or eight years ago, or whenever we started touring.

I felt like coming into this tour, I already knew these people as well as I possibly could. I'm really proud of how we conducted ourselves on a four-month tour. We've done a ton of touring, but never a four-month straight. There was a lot of challenges and crazy moments, and I'm just really proud of as a group of people how we all handled it.

Alison Stewart: Gracie, there's still a venue you'd like to play given that you've already played Yankee Stadium and Barclays?

Gracie Lawrence: Oh, my God, so many. Well, I hope to one day headline those same places. I will give a shout-out to Citi Field because we are Mets fans. I think that the real pinnacle of our New Yorker energy would be playing Citi.

Clyde Lawrence: Yes, Yankee Stadium was nothing.

Gracie Lawrence: Yankee Stadium was insulting. Probably MSG, all the New York places that we care so much about. Rockefeller Center, that kind of stuff.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that would be fun. My guests are The Band Lawrence. We got Clyde. We got Gracie. We got Marc, Sumner, Jordan, Johnny, Sam, and Michael. My producer went to see the show at Barclays over the weekend. He said you guys looked like you were having so much fun on stage that there's just like people doing pushups and you all pretending to bowl and all this. [laughs] How do you think about, this was maybe a little bit too essay question-sh, but how do you think about your onstage presence? Is it the kind of thing where you just go out and have fun?

Gracie Lawrence: Just hide the tears, hide the--

Clyde Lawrence: Yes. I was saying this before, we started as a college band. Our first gigs were in college basements and frat parties or school functions or whatever so we were just trying to have a lot of fun with it, but we were writing songs that we thought were really serious good songs about real things. We were trying to, in those days, make those college parties the most professional show musical experience version of a dirty college party.

Then now that we're playing these, legitimate venues would be an understatement in this tour's case, we're trying to bring some of that college party silliness to those venues, so yes, whatever funny antics we think of. We just try to be ourselves. We take the music really seriously but we don't take ourselves that seriously. We really don't plan out the antics that much. The horn section guys, even you're talking about the pretending to bowl or any of the fun dances that they do, a lot of those things are just things that someone does in the moment, and then other people catch on, and then it becomes a tradition.

Gracie Lawrence: I do pushups every night on stage, which that was consistent, but Johnny would occasionally surprise me by sitting on my back while I did the pushup. I never really knew when that was going to happen.

Alison Stewart: I like authentic shenanigans.

Gracie Lawrence: Yes.

Clyde Lawrence: Yes, that's a great-- I'm going to steal that phrase. 'Authentic Shenanigans,' is exactly our brand.

Gracie Lawrence: Put it on a t-shirt.

Alison Stewart: That is my gift to you. Can we hear another song?

Gracie Lawrence: Yes.

Clyde Lawrence: Yes. This is a brand new song that we've never really played before.

Gracie Lawrence: It's unreleased.

Clyde Lawrence: Unreleased, but we're going to, hopefully, release it soon. We're working on a whole bunch of new music for an album and this is a-

Gracie Lawrence: Clyde, give me the tambourine before we play this song.

Clyde Lawrence: All right.

Gracie Lawrence: Thank you.

Clyde Lawrence: This song is called Guy I Used to Be. It's a debut other than when we played it in Syracuse a couple of weeks ago for some fans. All right. Let's see. Do I have the right sound up? Yes, I do. 1, 2-- 1, 2, 3, 4.

[MUSIC- Lawrence: Guy I Used to Be]

Goodbye

Fire, Oh used to have my past on fire

before you I was towing on the wire

But somehow you're taking me higher, higher

And I want you and I need you and I got you

And I'll never be happy without you

And I want you, and I--

Goodbye to the guy I used to be, to the life I used to live

Because now I see you're the only thing that matters to me

To the man I was before, you don't matter anymore

Because now I see you're the only thing that matters to me

Goodbye

Fire

Oh, it's over baby send in the choir, choir

And I want you and I need you and I got you

And I'll never be happy without you

And I want you, and I--

Goodbye to the guy I used to be, to the life I used to live

Because now I see you're the only thing that matters to me

To the man I was before, you don't matter anymore

Because now I see you're the only thing that matters to me

You're the only thing that matters to me

And I want you and I need you and I got you

And I'll never be happy without you

And I want you, and I--

Never be happy without you, baby

And I want you and I need you and I got you

And I'll never even be happy--

No more [unintelligible 00:15:15]

Goodbye to the guy I used to be, to the life I used to live

Because now I see you're the only thing that matters to me

To the man I was before, you don't matter anymore

Because now I see you're the only thing that matters to me

Come on

Oh, yes

Goodbye

And I want you, and I need you baby

Goodbye

Alison Stewart: That was The Band Lawrence coming to you from WNYC's Studio Five. Got a text that says, a Twix, Twitter, whatever, "Really love that Lawrence's performance. It's so cool to see them grow and succeed. #Let'sgoMets." [laughs]

Gracie Lawrence: Oh, my gosh. Let's go Mets.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about a serious subject just for a minute. I want to talk about you testifying in front of Congress, you and your bandmate Jordan testify before Congress about the outside influence of Ticketmaster and Live Nation on the music industry. Clyde, why was that important to you to testify about that?

Clyde Lawrence: Well, I think that-- One thing I'm really proud of, to back up for a second about the band is that we're super DIY. We do a lot of roles ourselves that would often be farmed out to other people. I think that by doing that, we've gained a really nitty-gritty understanding of our own business. Jordan and I, among the rest of the band as well, for years have been paying attention to our deals that we're signing with the contracts for the shows and the settlements in a way that I think a lot of other artists don't have access to or are even sometimes shielded from, or don't take the initiative to take an interest in. So I think we've had a lot of things we've realized seemed a little bit backwards for years.

Then, of course, there was this whole Taylor Swift on sale that seemed like it went totally wrong and actually, that had very little to do with our specific issues that we were having, but there was all of a sudden this appetite for a discussion about the live music industry and the economics of it. That just snowballed into us working on a piece that ended up as an op-ed in The New York Times and then snowballed into us speaking at The Senate. We were just like, "Yes, we're here to talk about artists' rights and whoever wants to listen, we're here to talk about it." It was totally not some grand years-long plan to end up there, but we're happy that it has and with the change that's come of it.

Alison Stewart: Any surprising reactions to the testimony?

Clyde Lawrence: Yes. I think, honestly, anything would've been a surprise because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. It's so not my arena.

Gracie Lawrence: I remember that when you guys-- They found out very close to when they were doing it that they were doing it. I just remember before it, you guys were told like, "There will be a lot of questions after, maybe a few will be directed towards you, but not many." I was sitting behind them and I just remember so many questions being directed to you guys. Because I think what you were saying was so surprising and compelling to everyone there that it became--

Clyde Lawrence: Yes. We ended up getting the most questions of anyone, which was surprising in the moment. So we had to think on our feet because we weren't expecting to get a ton of questions. I think the reaction was mostly positive. I think in terms of surprises, the biggest thing that comes to mind is just the fact that some actual change has happened.

Live Nation recently rolled out a sweeping new program that they're calling On the Road Again that basically packages a number of new initiatives that are largely the proposals that Jordan and I made both during the testimony and in the conversations we've had with Live Nation since then, in which we've had an opportunity to voice the things that we think really matter most to artists. A big one--

Gracie Lawrence: They've been receptive.

Clyde Lawrence: Yes, they've been receptive to that. I think the most high-profile aspect of that program is that merch cuts, Live Nation is no longer taking any percentage of artists' merch cuts--

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow. That's huge.

Clyde Lawrence: -- at their venues that they own under 3,000 capacity. That's going to literally-- I don't have the numbers in front of me, but that is going to put millions and millions and millions of dollars back into developing artists' pockets for hopefully a very long time, and that's just one of the many things that's included in that program. The fact that that's come out of it, and hopefully there'll be even more is awesome.

Alison Stewart: Gracie, I know that you've made a point at Saturday Night's Show to talk about how you're an independent band. Why is that important to you and to your people?

Gracie Lawrence: Well, I think that the music industry is changing. I guess the reason it's important to us is just because our mission for our music or for our careers rather has just always been to be able to make the music we want to make and exactly the way we want to make it, which sounds, probably to anyone who isn't an artist, such a reasonable goal but I think given the landscape of the music industry, and how it's been for many years, that's often a real challenge for artists.

I think the fact that we've made this choice to be independent artists thus far, and we work with an amazing team, and we actually are a part of this very small label, Jon Bellion who we love, who is an amazing artist and producer, and we work with him, but yes, we're independent artists and it's important to us in that it allows us to do what we want to do.

Alison Stewart: We're going to get you to play us out.

Gracie Lawrence: Awesome.

Alison Stewart: One last song, let's do it.

Clyde Lawrence: Let's do it.

Gracie Lawrence: This song is called Don't Lose Sight. Speaking of independent artists, this was the highest-charting song on Top 40 radio last year for a truly independent band. Just keep making the music you want to make, people, and it could work out.

Alison Stewart: This is Lawrence. Thanks for coming to the studio.

[MUSIC - Lawrence: Don't Lose Sight]

This thing's gonna kill me

But I won't let it

And I try to give 'em hell

But they don't get it

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

Are you kidding me?

I'm getting sick of the industry

I've had enough of the make-believe

Oh please, oh please

Am I lost or found?

I'm getting sick of the ups and downs

No need to give me the run-around

I'm out, I'm out

let's clap

This thing's gonna kill me but I won't (let it)

And I try to give 'em hell but they don't (get it)

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

And they try to give me up but I won't (give in)

And this life will get ya down but I keep (livin')

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

Are you kidding me?

I'm getting sick of the in-between

Running in place isn't interesting

To me, to me

Am I good enough?

Does that even matter or is it luck?

I'm checking the prices on giving up

Now what? Now what?

This thing's gonna kill me but I won't let it

And I try to give 'em hell but they don't get it

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

And they try to give me up but I won't (give in)

And this life will get ya down but I keep (livin')

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

And this thing ain't ever gonna change

It ain't ever gonna change

(let's sing it all together)

And this thing ain't ever gonna change

It ain't ever gonna change

It ain't ever gonna change (come on)

gonna change (everybody)

This thing's gonna kill me but I won't let it

And I try to give 'em hell but they don't get it

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

And they try to give me up but I won't (give in)

And this life will get ya down but I keep (livin')

So I tell myself when I sleep at night

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

And this thing ain't ever gonna change

It ain't ever gonna change

And this thing ain't ever gonna change

It ain't ever gonna change

Don't lose sight, baby, don't lose sight

Clyde Lawrence: Thank you guys for having us [unintelligible 00:26:42] We got a new album coming out next year, a whole new tour. Stay tuned. Let's see you guys in 2024.

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