The excitement of the Hopscotch Music Festival continues as musicians roll into town. Preparations are being made for round two of the widely successful gathering that made a great deal of noise one year ago. Veterans from the festival’s first year, The Future Islands, are coming back for more. Originally from North Carolina, but now in Baltimore, Maryland, the band has viewed this occasion as somewhat of a homecoming.
After having recently returning from Los Angeles for another festival, Sam Herring, the lead vocalist and lyricist for the Future Islands, felt ready to come to the Hopscotch Festival as soon as possible.
“We’re North Carolina boys originally, and have spent so much time down there honing our craft, before we realized that’s what we were doing,” Herring said.
Since moving to Baltimore, the band has grown in popularity in different areas around the country. This may be attributed to the effort the band puts into their music-making process.
“We all have a hand in the structuring of the songs and I take a big role in that just in the writing,” Herring said. “If I catch something and I say ‘This feels like the verse to me’ … we just work around that and build up the changes. I was never the one writing the music, I just help out with the structure to find the best way to tell a story.”
The other members of the band are Gerrit Welmers on the keys and William Cashion playing bass. Being a band of only three members, the group does not have difficulty in finding a majority when voting on which songs stay and which songs go. The trio together make their signature sound, throwing out opinions and ideas to make each piece as good as the next.
“For me I just work off inspiration of the guys’ music. That makes me able to write, and if I’m able to write a good song we’ll keep up with it.” Herring also explained the opposite side of writing: “I mean, the guys have written songs that were beautiful, but didn’t move me. So we keep those songs as scraps. So I’m the bad guy here.”
Another North Carolinian school, East Carolina University, was where Welmers and Herring began to form the band. Herring met their current bassist their first day of classes, and after swapping different members in previous bands, they now make up The Future Islands.
With their original fan base rooted in North Carolina, the boys are excited to return to the homeland. “It’s actually a really awesome thing for us to be considered a Baltimore band from North Carolina,” Herring said. “It’s important for us to stick to those roots even though we don’t live back home. If it wasn’t for all those times down South we wouldn’t have this.”
Herring continued, “Last year we were just excited that something like this was happening in North Carolina; it’s a big deal. Just the name, the bands coming in, it’s a highly covered festival. We were really lucky enough to be asked to come play.”
This band, as well as others, will represent a different approach to the progressive areas of music. Joining various other bands, the Future Islands will be playing on the final day of the festival at the Lincoln Theatre , located on 126 E Cabarrus St. in downtown Raleigh.
