LIILY play The Roxy Theatre Mar. 9; press photo
LIILY, an alternative indie rock group hailing from Orange County, shall be making a stop in Southern California as part of their first major musical tour. The four-man group can be seen live at The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood on Mar. 9.
Maxx Morando, the group’s drummer, notes that this appearance will come one day after the release of the group’s first EP album I Can Fool Anybody in This Town. Concertgoers he says will get, in addition to a great show, the opportunity to listen to some of its songs live.”
“They should look forward to hearing some new songs and they should look forward to watching us go crazy,” Morando promised. “We’ll be playing the day after the EP comes out so they can hear those songs played live.”
Morando says he and his bandmates always look forward to playing in Southern California, especially in the Los Angeles area.
“It’s fun playing there because people that come to our shows kind of go crazy in the crowd and we feed off that energy and it makes us have a good time,” Morando said. “I think in Southern California in general that’s the vibe: it’s a good time and its very fun.”
Southern California is also the official birthplace of the group and where Morando first met Sam De La Torre, the group’s guitar player.
“When Sam and I were younger, we were at a music school and we became friends and we wanted to start a band, so we started a band.”
It was during this time that the two also cemented their group’s name.
“We needed a name and one of our good friends, Lily Rosenthal, just said, ‘hey, why don’t you name it Lily?’ and we were like ‘okay,’ and then we put two I’s in it,” recalls Morando. “There was just two people in the band at the time, but we just kept the name.”
Not long afterwards, the group saw the inclusion of Charlie Anastasis, the bass player, as well as Dylan Nash, the vocalist.
“I was in music theory with Charlie and we went to an all-boys catholic school,” Morando says. “We needed a bass player, so we asked Charlie to join the band. Then Dylan also went to the music school that Sam and I went to when we were younger, so we hit him up and that’s how the band formed.”
I Can Fool Anybody In This Town EP cover
LIILY has been officially playing since around 2015. The songs they play are described by Morando as being “hyper high energy” with songs he describes as being about “everything and nothing” which he uses to describe some of the weird things that happen in our lives and how we overcome them.
Ideas for these songs start off very simple according to Morando.
“Usually it starts with someone in the band having an idea,” Morando noted. “We have a backlog of a bunch of ideas and then we expand on an idea. We like to see it to its natural conclusion. That’s pretty much what we do song writing-wise. Everybody has their input on what the song should turn out to be, but it usually starts with one person having an idea and the rest of us then go, ‘let’s see where this one goes?’”
This process was used in the making of I Can Fool Anybody in This Town. The album and its six songs represent what Morando says is effectively LIILY’s way of fully committing themselves to a full-time musical career.
“We’ve been doing a lot of things outside of this band and it’s taken us a while to make this band all our focus and now that it is this album is pretty much us wanting us to get out there and do something and say something and make real art. This is kind of like dipping our toes in the water I think.”
The group though, definitely has experience playing live. Morando cites The Echo as being one of LILLY’s most favored venues to play. But no matter where LILLY goes Morando states, he and his bandmates always look forward to the experience of playing live.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Morando said. “It’s a nice energy release, you know, different from recording and writing. It’s a very nice release of whatever you’re feeling and it’s just a lot of fun. I think we all really enjoy playing live.”
Morando says that this experience shall become more of a norm as the group starts embarking on its first ambitious musical tour and first major record release.
“We’re going to release this EP soon and we’re going to start touring soon as much as possible and then work on the next project. That’s pretty much it: just keep writing songs and see what happens.”