Retro City debuts EP live at local house show

Retro City, a band of current and former Southeast students, has seen success beyond what its members could have imagined, all before having ever played a live set.

The debut of two singles, "Holiday" and "Waves," on Spotify and other streaming platforms resulted in more than 100,000 listens in a matter of months. The band attributes the popularity to the songs' landing on playlists such as Spotify's Release Radar and Discover Weekly and CNN This Morning.

The band formed just over a year ago, when Southeast students and members of Lambi Chi Alpha Raleigh Davis (drums) and Nathan Higgins (vocals) began jamming with alumnus Taylor Bridges (lead guitar) and mutual friend Tyler Myers (rhythm guitar and sound engineer).

On Feb. 15, Retro City released its debut EP, a five-track record including the pre-released singles. But before the album was made available to fans around the world, it was revealed to some 100 local "super fans" in a unique setting -- a massive house in northern Cape Girardeau owned by Davis' uncle.

Shivelbines' Music provided gig-equipment for the house show, making for a notably orchestrated live premiere complete with color-coordinated spotlights and some 16 amps and monitors. Two Nashville musicians and friends of the band joined the four core members for the house show to help fill out the multi-layered sound Retro City creates in the studio.

Mark McMahan, a Nashville musician, fills in on the keyboard during the Retro City band's live debut show Feb. 8 at a home in Cape Girardeau.Kate Marshall ~ Southeast Arrow

Myers said their overnight establishment was the result of an attempt to "build something and make it stick."

"[We took a] completely different approach from a normal band, and it happened kind of accidentally," Myers said.

Lead guitarist Taylor Bridges said the group was unsure of whether they would ever play a live show, but after gaining a respectable following, decided to roll with it.

The EP was originally scheduled to release last summer but their deadline was pushed back again and again because they wanted to get it right.

"We had some super rough demos," Davis said. "Since we were able to use La Croix [Church] as our studio, we had crazy access to that, so after 5:30 two nights a week we'd go in there and we did most of our writing, most of our tweaking, all that stuff, in studio. So that's half of what took us so long. We'd be like, 'Ah dude, what if we just added four more parts tonight?' and then there's another month to our schedule."

The first two singles gained traction fast and continued to rise -- "Holiday," which debuted Dec. 14, has more than 90,000 listens, "Waves" is nearing 30,000 and there are some 60,000 followers of the group on Spotify alone.

Davis said they used a marketing company helping get the songs onto editorial playlists by providing "diversification across social media platforms."

"Our friends and stuff helped us rack up some listens right away," Bridges said. "Then about a month in, we see a 1,000-listen spike, and we were stoked about that, and then a couple weeks later we got a 12,000-listen spike in one day. And we're like, 'Ah man, what just happened?'"

Myers said it was interesting to watch the spread of their songs from Cape Girardeau to St. Louis and Chicago to Los Angeles and New York City. The band now has followers on six continents.

Davis said the EP's production was incredibly cheap and they "didn't need to fight the Cape Bar Scene" in order to gain a following -- rather the following came to them.

"It was crazy how quickly it picked up," Davis said. "We didn't put in nearly as much work as we should have to get that amount of streams. We just kind of tossed it out there and it kind of took off on its own."

The hometown support though, Davis said, was the coolest part. Bridges said the initial spike in sharing efforts by friends of the band was responsible for grabbing the attention of Spotify's algorithms.

The EP

The leading single "Holiday," written by Myers, is perhaps the most mainstream-indie-pop sound on the record. The song tells the story of a couple falling for each other on the Fourth of July with a catchy guitar riff and narrative lyrics.

"Waves," a heavily layered track reminiscent of Young the Giant's sophomore album "Mind of Matter," falls directly in Higgin's vocal-wheelhouse and showcase's Bridges ability to construct interesting leads on the electric six-string.

The third track, "I Don't Mind," reveals a grungier side of Retro City. Higgin said the lyrics for the song are his depiction of teenage angst. At the Feb. 8 house show, Bridges stood atop an amplifier while picking out a pinch-harmonic-driven solo, and the audience responded enthusiastically.

"Rooftops" and "LMK," two final songs on the EP, are the band's renditions of peaceful slow-jams maintain ingtheir melodic and multi-layered style.

The music of Retro City is available on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. For more about the band, visit its Facebook page.

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