With their Virginia residency currently going on, Kendall Street Company is making noise in the Virginia area, and they’re only bound to get bigger.
It is obvious that they are genuinely having fun, and the chemistry and overall consistency definitely shows with now seven studio albums and four EPs in just six years.
“I started playing in Virginia Beach with our original saxophone player [Andrew Drehoff], and we came to UVA together as roommates, and then we met Brian [Roy] and Ryan [Wood],” Louis Smith said. Ryan and Andrew met through the UVA marching band, while Roy and Smith met through a student-run record company.
“It kinda all came together, it was the four of us for a while, and then we started playing with some other musicians, which is how Ben Laderberg, our lead guitarist, came into the band,” Roy said. They started off as mainly a cover band, covering Jack Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Dave Matthews Band, and other similar artists.
The classic Kendall Street Company sound evolved over time into what is now too unique to even put a label on it. “We have always been really open to those changes, and as we listen, and get inspired by different things, the sound evolves,” Smith said.
Their strong jazz roots come from saxophone player Jake Vanaman who joined in 2016, replacing Andrew Drehoff. Vanaman started off playing jazz, and you can hear that prominently in the songs. Alongside that, everyone in the band originated playing different genres, and that’s what all comes together to build that unique sound.
Kendall Street Company has grown a lot since their first Virginia residency–they are now on their third one and still growing. “It’s a time for us to grow as a band,” Roy said. “Over that month, you play over twenty shows in four weeks, and you get really tight playing together.”
Not only have they grown musically, but they have grown tremendously as a business. “Being a band is like running a restaurant and the music is our food; we’re serving that to people, but we also need to put butts in the seats.”
Before their residency ends, you can see Kendall Street Company perform on the last three Thursdays of February: the 15th, the 22nd, and the 29th at The Southern at 8:30PM
$12 – Advance
$18 – Door
$40 – 4 Pack
