Even though East of Apollo is a new band at USC, they aren’t new to the music scene. East of Apollo, formally known as Let Me Fly, formed at the beginning of this year. Let Me Fly vamped up their style, changed their musical direction, and Alec Courtright (lead vocals), Tommy Merritt (guitar), Drew Lewis (drums) and Steven Kucklick (bass) are now known as East of Apollo.
After being asked to describe the band, each member had a different idea for what East of Apollo means to them.
Lewis: "When I think of the band East of Apollo, I think of the word potential, because I think we have a lot of potential as a group. I think we’ve written some great songs and I really believe in the stuff that we’ve written. We’ve grown so much as musicians and people and friends from freshman year."
Merritt: "East of Apollo to me is that we’re really good friends. We have a great group of friends that come out to like every show. I think of how important unity is. It’s not 'we’re up here and the crowd is down there' it’s like 'everybody come hangout and party.'"
Kucklick: "I want people to think 'damn I really want to go see those guys live,' and 'I’ll go drive four hours to see those guys live.' I want people to understand how dedicated we are, so they want to come see us."
Courtright: "I think for our lyrics on the musical side, I think it’s really important that it’s tangible. So the music is really personal for us, but I think what’s really important is that people can connect emotionally to your music, so if they can see a little bit of themselves or a little bit of their own struggle that they can really grasp that."
This bluesy, southern, soulful, jazzy, high-energy rock band originally met their freshman year at USC. Their name is a play on the novel “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck and Apollo, the Greek god of music.
“We spent literally two months trying to come up with a band name. We had a group text that was just band name after band name,” said Kucklick, a fourth-year history student.
Fans have compared East of Apollo to bands such as Kings of Leon and Young the Giant in terms of song structure, but they draw from Young the Giant musically and are inspired by Sameer Gadhia’s vocal performance. Vocally, a major influence for Courtright is singer Chris Cornell. The band strives to one day tour and collaborate with Young the Giant or Pearl Jam.
East of Apollo is releasing their first full-length album called “Home Grown” that is expected to be released in late April. As Let Me Fly, they recorded a three song EP where their sound was all over the place. They all described this new album as more focused and want the tracks to be more straightforward than their last EP.
Before they start writing, Kucklick explained that they pick an exact theme for the song that they want to communicate. The major themes of the album include clarity, self-discovery, love, heartbreak and confident rebellion. East of Apollo is working towards getting the album on Spotify and a single on SoundCloud.
“The original sound was kind of like all of us were bringing our particular influences and we were just kind of clustering it all together, but since we’ve been playing together for three, almost four years now it’s like we’ve developed a sound together," said Courtright, a fourth-year environmental science student. "It’s very high energy, soulful, melodic, if you will. It has a little bit of that punk angst, but with just enough grace to be classy."
As for the song writing process, Courtright writes most of the lyrics while Merritt comes up with most of the riffs. Lewis and Merritt will write the hook while Courtright dreams up the melody. They all write their own parts creating a collaborative piece of music that represents the whole group. The band members are so close they feel comfortable giving each other constructive criticism or suggesting potential ideas.
The album "showcases us individually through every song. No one is put on the backburner. We’re all four front and center, which I don’t think happened with our first band. Everyone’s in the spotlight together,” Kucklick said.
They’ve played all over Columbia, such as the New Brookland Tavern, Blazing Copper and Tin Roof; they also played a house show that the cops busted. There are no shows in the immediate future due to recording in the studio.
One of their goals is to play at the Apollo Theater solely for the irony, but their main goal is to be able to support themselves and make a living off of the band, even if it means sleeping on a bus and eating McDonald's.
“Something that’s important to us is just saying something and not just making noise. This album has a lot more direction," Merritt said.