Human bodies and blow up dolls surf across the sold out crowd. Itap the night of April 3, and on stage, is making the noise of a band three times its size — screaming, kicking and crushing the one guitar and one drum set with a force matching the energy in the room. Sweat and beer splashes across the audience’s raised arms.
About 12 hours earlier, Nate Valdez and Eric Riley, who make up the Denver rock duo In The Whale, are sitting in their RiNo practice space sipping coffee and talking about professionalism, or lack-thereof, among young bands off stage.
“We pride ourselves in being a professional band when it comes to day of the show. We show up on time, we soundcheck super fast, we have everything dialed in and ready to go,” says Riley, In The Whale’s drummer. “We just want to have that reputation with everyone: We’re not drunk and we’re a real band that wants to do this.”
This professionalism (and if itap any evidence, Valdez and Riley were waiting outside of the scheduled interview location at least 15 minutes early), is what the band attributes to its string of astonishing developments in the last few months. Along with getting picked up on major national tours, this summer the band is playing one of the country’s top music festivals and releasing its fourth EP “Full Nelson” in May.
It all started in November when In The Whale played an opening set for ’s sold out show at Denver’s . Having impressed the right people with their sound check and performance, the band was asked to finish out the rest of the tour with Jane’s Addiction.
After a year of sacrifices and disappointments while playing nearly 100 shows across the country, In The Whale had finally gotten the attention of the right people.
A few months later, Valdez (In The Whale’s guitarist and vocalist) got a call that would make all the hard work and attitude checks worth it.
“I was driving a mortuary van on Wadsworth (Valdez has a day job working at a local mortuary), and our manager called and said, ‘You want some good news? You’re playing ’,” said Valdez, who didn’t believe what he was hearing. “I was like, ‘Don’t. Not today, man.’ And he said, ‘no you’re really playing Lollapalooza.’ ”
Just like that, In The Whale became one of five Colorado acts to play Lollapalooza in the last decade. They rank among major national acts from the state — and — who have taken the stage at the Chicago music festival.
Though they don’t know exactly what put their name in the hat to play Lollapalooza, Valdez and Riley think it was a combination of their impressive touring schedule throughout 2014, their relationship with Jane’s Addiction (the band’s vocalist Perry Farrell helped found Lollapalooza in 1991) and their work with Red Bull Sound Select.
After meeting in the relatively small Greeley music scene, Valdez and Riley moved to Denver in 2011 to seriously pursue music. They had nailed down their style of simple and thrashing guitar/drums rock and wanted to do anything it took to make it as a professional band.
“We wanted to make sure we were on the right track, so we called a bunch of people that we respected in the music scene like managers and promoters and said letap get a beer, letap talk,” Riley said.
By 2014, the band had started picking up its touring schedule around the country. The goal was to not only make a name for In The Whale locally, but to get out there as much as possible to other markets — even if it meant driving 18 hours to play for 30 people.
“For a lot of bands thatap hard,” Riley said. “A lot of these bands can sell out the Marquis (in Denver), but you go one state over and no one knows who you are. Thatap not an easy thing to take in.”
They call it Denver Band-Itus: Getting stuck in that local mindset and forgetting there are other necessary markets out there to experience. So they aggressively hit the road.
They’ve stayed in horrifying hotels during blizzards in Arkansas, slept on floors, driven hundreds of hours and sacrificed relationships at home all while maintaining a good attitude at every venue.
“We’ve had to check our ego,” Riley said.
This experience on the road became the inspiration for the new, five-song EP. A more aggressive album (even for an aggressive band), “Full Nelson” ends with the acoustic ballad “Mail” — the first mellow song in the In The Whale catalog.
“I’ve lost so many friends and relationships and neglected family reunions to go on tour, and thatap the beginning of the record,” Valdez said. “Then the end of the record is like, ‘I’ve burnt so many bridges…’ ”
