The Lumineers are one of the biggest touring acts in the world right now.
Yet, Wesley Schultz still clearly remembers the times when his Denver folk-rock act had a hard time drawing dozens, let alone thousands, to a show.
One particular gig in Reno, Nevada, stands out in his memory.
“Our band outnumbered the patrons in the bar,” Schultz says. “We had to bribe this school teacher to stay late.
“We just bought her a beer and were like, ‘Will you just please stay for our set?’ She was like, ‘I’ve got school tomorrow.’ And we’re like, ‘Come on, it’s going to be great.’”
These days, Schultz and his Lumineers co-founder Jeremiah Fraites don’t have to rely on bribes to get people to attend their shows.
Instead, they just let their top-10-charting albums — like this year’s “Brightside” — do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to ticket sales. Having a reputation as a topnotch live act doesn’t hurt matters either.
I recently had the chance to speak with Schultz, the vocalist-guitarist who leads the Lumineers into Northern California for three big shows this month.
The band performs July 30 at SAP Center in San Jose, Aug. 2 at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento and Aug. 3 at Chase Center in San Francisco, ticketmaster.com.
Q: Most bands would be content to book a single arena date in Northern California. Yet, the Lumineers are playing three different arenas in the same general area in the span of just five days. That’s amazing. Back when you and Fraites started this, did you ever in your wildest dreams think you would pull off such an incredible feat?
A: That’s bonkers. No — to answer your question — simply no.
It’s not that long ago where we were sitting here going, “Can you believe that all these people came to Bottom of the Hill or Cafe du Nord?”
There’s no wrapping your head around playing anything over a couple of hundred people. I don’t even think about it. I just show up onstage.
But it is a little overwhelming. It wasn’t 10 years ago that we were struggling just to fill a little coffee shop up.
Q: The Lumineers were one of a number of happy folk-rock acts that blossomed in the early 2010s. Did you feel like you were part of a musical movement at the time?
A: I felt like it was something that we were naturally doing — and then the dominoes just fell our way.
I grew up watching a lot of football and Joe Namath was like, “I was right on time.” And I felt like that was us.
Q: It probably didn’t hurt matters that the likes of the Avett Brothers, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Mumford & Sons were already finding success.
A: Those three bands did so much for other bands, like us, who came after them. They broke down the door so that other bands, like us, could walk through it.
No one did it for each other on purpose, but the timing of it was so fortunate.
We were already making this music. I have recordings of writing “Ho Hey” in like 2008. That stuff didn’t stuff really catch on, and wasn’t taken as seriously in the mainstream, until about 2012, 2011.
Q: Speaking of “Ho Hey,” that song seemed to be absolutely everywhere in 2012. It was so ubiquitous, in fact, that I’m wondering if there were any initial concerns that it might end up pigeonholing the Lumineers as, well, the “Ho Hey” band.
A: No band wants to wants to be defined by one moment, one song. Everybody prefers a body of work, for the most part.
I think I was so naive. We had never gotten a break — I was 30 — and all of a sudden things started happening.
I remember one of the bands who was opening for us was like, “Is (the success of ‘Ho Hey’) freaking you out? Is this bad?” And I was like, “Why would this be bad?”
It was almost like “Ho Hey” became a song that we cover every night now. It’s like part of the karaoke tapestry of the world now.
A big help was having “Ophelia” do as well as it did and having “Cleopatra.”
Maybe as an act of rebellion, we did – and still do – play the song really early in the set.
Q: Take me back to early 2020. You had just released your third album — “III” — and you planned to take to the road for a lengthy tour. Then COVID hit and your plans had to change. What was that like?
A: It was like going through grieving or something, where you go through these cycles — first you are sad, then you are mad, then you are grieving the loss of the life you thought you had in front of you.
It was a strange process. I would have thought — looking at another musician — “Oh, this is going to be a time of total inspiration. You have all this time, you are home — you can just write.”
But I think a lot of the inspiration for writing comes from moving around and being different places, being on tour, just being around people. And, for me, writing songs about the contradictions of people and just like the psychology of it all.
So, being isolated, I think really stunted everything at first.
Q: Yet, it turned out to be a period of great productivity for the Lumineers. Both you and Fraites would release solo albums. And, unexpectedly, you would record a fourth Lumineers outing — “Brightside” — as well.
A: It began kind of like how my wife and I met, where she was like, “I am not looking to date anyone.” And I’m like, “Me neither, let’s just hang out.”
And then it kind of happened.
It’s sometimes better when you don’t make these big plans.
Q: So, that’s the mindset that you took into recording “Brightside.”
A: We went into the studio and we said, “Let’s record one or two songs. It will give us a head start on the next record — whatever it may be.”
Basically, it was this low expectation, low bar thing that allowed us to act very differently than we would normally act in the studio — act a lot more freely and sort of spontaneous.
We just felt, “Well, we just made ‘III’ in essence, so we are playing with house money here. Let’s just have a good time and experiment a lot more.
It made for a very different record.
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