Bucks band Levee Drivers discusses the evolution that led to its first full-length album
By Samantha Bambino
The Times
For the guys of Levee Drivers, timing is everything.
After years of marching to the beat of its own drum, evolving from Americana to acoustic to “contained punk rock,” the Bucks County-based band is ready to buckle down and expand its scope beyond the local music scene. With the recent release of its first full-length album Motel City Honey, upcoming vinyl and creative DIY promotion tactics, Levee Drivers is picking up speed on its journey to living the dream.
Like many things regarding the band, its formation happened by pure chance, all starting with two outcasts in a Pennsbury High School music class. Frontman August John Lutz II was a talented musician, but had nothing in common with his jazz band peers. The same went for lead guitar and steel player Kyle Perella, a self-described jock. Naturally, the two formed an instant connection from their back-of-the-class seats.
“I respected what he did, he respected what I did,” Lutz said. “But we didn’t actually get together and play music until a couple years later.”
After graduation, the two reconnected when Perella came across Lutz’s band on MySpace and attended a show. As fate would have it, the band needed a bass player. Though Perella was a guitarist, he was up for the challenge of a new instrument. Since then, he has transitioned back to guitar and taken on pedal steel, which he called an “interesting transformation.”
As for Levee Drivers’ other members, Jon Covert took Perella’s spot on bass and Jeff Orlowski, a Conwell-Egan alum, is on drums. Like Perella, Orlowski has experienced an instrumental journey, transitioning from piano to drums, a switch that significantly impacted the band’s initial sound.
Since he and Perella were new to their respective instruments, they couldn’t overplay if they wanted to, giving Levee Drivers a uniquely limited, unintentional punk vibe.
“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Perella said. “We were good musicians but we weren’t on our natural instruments.”
Still, they made it work, eventually evolving into garage/punk/rock/country, a combination of each member’s influences. While Lutz grew up on Bruce Springsteen, Perella was spending his allowance on Green Day cassettes. The guys learned from each other and grew to appreciate a wider array of music, which ultimately shaped the sound heard on Motel City Honey.
The full-length album was officially introduced to the world in September, the band’s first release since its self-titled EP in 2014.
“It’s a very weird feeling because there was so much pressure to release a full-length,” Lutz said.
Motel City Honey has been a long time coming, but Levee Drivers doesn’t see the delay as a bad thing. Too often, the members see friends in other bands rush to release an album only to have its success fizzle out. For Lutz, it’s all about timing. If they released a full-length a few years prior, it would’ve been purely acoustic since Orlowski was taking time off in Japan. If they waited another year, the sound may have leaned toward Americana.
But what we have with Motel City Honey is a truly unique blend of, as Lutz described it, “contained punk rock” much like Velvet Underground or The Clash. While some songs such as the first single “There You Go” are loud and in-your-face, others like “Miss Recklessness” are more personal and lyrically charged. Overall, the album is a stark contrast from the country-inspired EP Levee Drivers.
“It’s more dirty, a more garage rock type of feel,” Lutz said. “We thought, let’s make something we haven’t done before rather than recycling the same sound.”
On Motel City Honey, there’s something for Levee Drivers fans both new and old. Three of the songs were written by Lutz exclusively for the album, while the other seven have been longtime live show staples. Whether the song is 10 months or 10 years old, each seamlessly follows into the next, making the album a coherent body of work.
“I’m obsessed with making a consistent record,” Lutz said.
In just seven days in a Mississippi studio, Motel City Honey was tracked, recorded and mixed. The speedy pace gave it a certain raw quality, though it left Perella second guessing some of their musical choices. But once he had the physical album in hand, it became his baby.
“Everything I was worried about that I thought was a flaw, now you own it. It’s ours,” he said.
Perella has without a doubt embraced ownership of Motel City Honey, voluntarily becoming the band’s self-taught social media guru to help grow its fan base. Thanks to his girlfriend, Katie Edwards, social media coordinator at Clean Air Council, he’s learning the ins and outs of platforms such as Instagram and Spotify.
Through the latter, Perella can see exactly who is listening to which tracks. Since the band is currently independent of a label, they utilize creative DIY tactics such as this to pinpoint where their fans are located before wasting money traveling to an unattended show.
“It’s very risky, it’s hit or miss,” Lutz said. “But I think we owe it to ourselves because we’ve been doing it and playing for so many years.”
So what’s on Levee Drivers’ agenda for 2018? By the end of March, expect a vinyl release of Motel City Honey and a music video for the third single, “Miss Recklessness.” With a full-length album finally under its belt, Levee Drivers is also optimistic about participating in the summer festival season, a surefire way to get its name out there. In the meantime, the band will continue to play at local favorites such as Johnny Brenda’s, Ortlieb’s and Triumph Brewery.
“We want to be more than a local band,” Lutz said. “But we can always fall back on that because we enjoy playing.” ••
Keep up with Levee Drivers at leveedrivers.com.
Samantha Bambino can be reached at sbambino@newspapermediagroup.com
