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Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers probably looks familiar to a lot of New Yorkers. Maybe you saw him performing on Letterman. Perhaps you were one of the 21 million people to log on and watch the video for their Top 5 breakthrough hit “Ho Hey.” Or maybe you came across in him in the blur of attention they’ve received since getting two Grammy nominations — one for Best New Artist and the other Best Americana Album for their self-titled debut.
But cast your mind back a few years, and you actually may have first laid eyes on Schultz as he served you an iced coffee or an IPA. Schultz worked in Gotham back in 2008-09 as both a barista in Starbucks and a bartender in the Williamsburg hipster joint Surf Bar.
“The cost of living was very frustrating,” he explains, recalling the effort he put into getting the Lumineers off the ground while keeping his own head above water. “I found that the time you have to work on your art can be very limited. But at the same time, it’s one of the most colorful places in the world and I wouldn’t trade the time I lived there for the world.”
It proved to be too much of a challenge for the singer, so both he and his multi-instrumentalist bandmate, Jeremiah Fraites, decided to move to Denver with little more than a suitcase each. It was there that they met cellist Neyla Pekarek, thus completing the core lineup of the group and the trio finally set about carving the rustic, folk-rock sound that has seen them rise to fame so quickly over the last year.
“There’s that saying that it takes 10 years to be an overnight success,” Schultz adds dryly. “That sort of applies to us. We’ve been knocking on the door for a while but all of a sudden, everyone’s inviting us over. But having to wait that long has helped us forge a stronger identity and it’s helped us to realize that the music business is quite a fickle thing.”
You’d expect Schultz to be more effusive about the Lumineers’ accolades but instead, it’s almost like he’s talking about taking out the trash. He’s obviously been around the block too many times to get carried away, but the one thing that seems to spark some glee into him is the Lumineers’ current tour, opening for Dave Matthews Band (a jaunt which calls at the Barclays Center this Friday). It’s an experience that evidently means more to him than any Grammy nods.
“One of the reasons I got into playing guitar was because I went to a Dave Matthews Band show when I was 15 or 16,” he says. “And here I am all these years later, opening for them. It’s pretty exciting.”