After sliding in next to me at a booth at Miller’s Downtown, one of the first things Louis Smith did was remove his cap, showing off his curly hair.
“The last guy who wrote about us said I had red hair, but I think it’s blonde,” he said. “Like a dirty blonde. Don’t say I have red hair.”
So began my interview with Kendall Street Company — the entirety of Kendall Street Company. When I set up the interview with manager Nick Campero, I had assumed that it would just be a few members of the band coming to Miller’s. I was proved very wrong when, at about 5 p.m. on a Monday, I watched a veritable parade of young men file into the restaurant.
A waitress helped us shove tables together so that everyone could fit, and then official introductions were in order. Starting at my left and going in a loop around the bandmates, I was introduced to sax player Jake Vanaman, electric guitarist Ben Laderberg, drummer Ryan Wood, bassist and backup vocalist Brian Roy, Andrew King and Price Gillock — both keyboardists, with the latter also playing the flute — and the admittedly blonde vocalist and lead guitarist Louis Smith. Somewhere in the mix was the manager Campero, also present for the interview.
I shook hands with all eight men, and the interview began. I started with a question about their upcoming documentary “Plan Accordingly, Please Advise,” to be released right before their new LP “Space for Days.”
“Can one of you guys tell me something about that?” I had no idea who to direct the question to, but Gillock immediately replied.
“We had a really productive two-month period and we also thought it would be kinda fun to throw together a documentary,” Gillock said. “We got a lot of nice footage of us just hanging out, and we thought it would be a nice way to introduce ourselves to people that may not know us personally…and of course, the end of the documentary, we hope, is gonna be footage of us at LOCK’N.”
The music festival, held Aug. 24-27, was at the time just a few days away. Most of Kendall Street Company seemed unconcerned about performing at the festival, despite the fact that LOCK’N’s lineup included such household names as The Avett Brothers and The String Cheese Incident.
“I think it’ll be one of the bigger shows we’ve ever played,” Wood said. “But the core of Kendall Street Company has been playing music together for four years now…We’ve gotten pretty tight with playing together…Despite a larger crowd, we’ll just hope that means a higher energy level.”
The conversation then shifted to the upcoming album “Space for Days.”
“How are you going to change things up with the new album?” I asked.
“It’s a little wilder...We go to some wild places,” Smith said.
At least three members added, “We go to space!”
Laderberg described it as “an incomplete, emotional journey open to interpretation,” leading me to cite their traditionally upbeat sound and ask whether the new music strays from that sound.
“Yeah, we’re definitely trying to get weird with it,” Laderberg said. “We’re exploring some genres — we’re going to places we’ve haven’t necessarily been before.”
“What does it mean that you guys “go to space” on the new album?” I inquired.
Smith explained that the original idea came from the bar at Miller’s itself.
“On Monday nights, it’s very spacious…And then there’s also just the idea of the deep abyss of the totally unexplored,” he said. “Nobody really knows what’s out there besides the scientists with the telescopes.”
It was partially Miller’s’ location on the Downtown Mall that brought the next question to mind.
“In light of recent events in Charlottesville, would you consider your music as an escape from reality or a more optimistic look on things? …What would you say is your role as a band, as people making art, to serve the community?” I asked.
The tone at the table grew more somber as Smith tackled the subject.
“I think we just want to portray a positive vibe, really,” he said. “You know, spread love and bring people together in a place where they can enjoy each other’s company.”
Roy added that uniting people is what the band is all about.
“That’s the essence of the band name, actually,” Roy said. “Company doesn’t mean corporation — it means a company that brings people together, like with music or love or art.”
Smith did his best to describe his band’s purpose.
“I don’t know if it’s an escape from reality or politically charged music, but I think our goal is really just to help people be happy,” he said.
Roy jumped in with his own thoughts about their goal.
“Or experience emotion,” he said. “That’s what music is — a vessel to share an emotion with a group of people and you share that with them, whether you’re playing guitar and singing with your friends in a living room or you’re playing for 3,000 people at LOCK’N. You’re trying to share that emotion with people, and the words might be kinda vague or the emotions might be kinda vague, but you want everyone to be in the same place.”
He finished by saying that, while the events in Charlottesville were “hard to think or talk about and...On all of our minds…It’s not so much escaping that and focusing on other emotions. It’s contextualizing that and moving on.”
The conversation moved to a happier topic — the band’s album release show on Sept. 1 at The Southern Café and Music Hall.
“It’s an evening with Kendall Street Company,” Roy said. “So we’ll play our whole new record … We’ll do covers and a few of our older or newer songs.”
The band will be joined by various musicians from Charlottesville. Among these are Erin Lunsford of Erin and the Wildfire and Asher McGlothlin, both University grads.
“It’s just a lot of fun playing with a lot of people,” Wood said. “It’s great having a six-piece band and then having other people to play on top of that.”
When asked if Kendall Street Company had anything to share with the student body, answers were varied. Gillock instructed everyone to “come to jazz nights on Thursdays at Miller’s” — with Smith enthusiastically agreeing — while Roy’s response was more broad.
“Get out and play with your friends, get your friends to come out and see live music,” Roy said. “There’s so much of it in Charlottesville — even just at U.Va. … Grades are important but you can learn a lot from this town that you’re not learning in class.”
The interview was over, but Campero invited me to stay for dinner. Everyone ordered, and then we were somehow joined by even more people — various friends of the band, including the previously mentioned McGlothlin. Our group grew to such a size that we moved to tables outside, where we were a noisy but overwhelmingly friendly force of nature on the Downtown Mall.
Sitting with these giants of the Charlottesville music scene, eating, talking and laughing with them like I had known them for years — I felt very lucky to be among their Company.
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