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Jon Steingard
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Supplied
Franklin-bred indie rockers Colony House have set January 24 for the release of their third album, Leave What’s Lost Behind. But despite the title, they’re not letting the past fade away just yet. The following night they’ll commandeer the entire Cannery Row complex for a uniquely devised multi-show sellout, tracking the band’s progress by playing each of their three albums in succession—one in each room.
“It’s a really crazy idea, and one that I’m really afraid of,” frontman Caleb Chapman says with a laugh, admitting he’s never tried anything remotely so ambitious. “But in the words of my friend Jon Foreman [of Switchfoot], ‘If it scares you, It’s probably worth going after.’ So we’re going for it.”
Over four hours the group— comprised of Chapman and his brother Will (sons of Grammy-winning contemporary Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman), plus guitarist Scott Mills and bassist Parke Cottrell— will perform all of 2014’s When I Was Younger, 2017’s RCA-backed Only the Lonely and Leave What’s Lost Behind, starting at the High Watt and rocking their way through Mercy Lounge toward a grand finale at Cannery Ballroom.
Along the way they’ll showcase an evolution from the tightly wound garage pop of their breakout single, “Silhouettes,” into the epic, expansive atmosphere of their new effort. And according to Chapman, it’ll take a marathon-like training approach to cover that ground— both sonically and thematically.
“I think a lot of transitions happened at the end of the Only the Lonely cycle,” he explains. “With any change in season there’s a lot of uncertainty, and it’s easy to want to jump ahead and read the end of the book when you’re in the middle of it. But in life you can’t do that.”
With Leave What’s Lost Behind, Chapman sought to confront his own insecurities and connect them to a bigger picture— and in doing so ended up deciding to give himself a break.
“I was being real honest about not feeling like I was good enough … but not letting these invisible, made-up voices tell me who I am or what I have to offer,” he explains.
That transformative theme is revealed over 13 tracks from the supportive lead single, “Looking for Some Light,” to the uplifting closer, “The Hope Inside,” and on Cannery Row the group will put it into practice. They’ll trace a blood-pumping path from the shadows of obscurity to selling out a patch of their home city’s hallowed ground—a building that has hosted everyone from Snoop Dogg to Katy Perry. But even those icons never pulled a stunt quite like this.
“Slow and steady has been the pace of Colony House,” Chapman says. “But when something like this happens and you sell out a big show super quick, it’s one of those things like, ‘Let’s celebrate this and be stoked, and then get back to work.’”
Leave What’s Lost Behind comes out January 24, and Colony House will take over Cannery Row January 25.