Love and Theft

The band formed as a trio, with Stephen Liles, Eric Gunderson and Brian Bandas forming to play music that was as informed by their shared church-going backgrounds as it was by their shared juvenile delinquency. Fortunately, there isn’t a genre around that’s as informed by both wholesome family values and hell-raising debauchery like country music so in the trios adopted hometown of Nashville, they fit right in. After forming in 2006 the trio played as many dive bars, clubs and concert halls they could find and made as many contacts as they could until their big break came in 2008, when they toured as the opening act for some no-hoper called Taylor Swift.

With their profile significantly raised thanks to the tour, the band were called to perform for executives from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. This performance would eventually lead to a record contract with Carolwood Records, the sister label of Lyric Street Records, the Walt Disney Corporation’s country record label. As with most recent signings in the world of country music, rather than release their debut single right off the bat the band proved themselves as songwriters first. Liles ended up writing with Martina McBride and had a song featured on the soundtrack for the Hollywood movie Country Strong, but the bands future was very much in the spotlight, not behind the scenes.

In March 2009 the band performed at the Grand Ole Opry shortly before they released their debut single. The performance went down so well that the single “Runaway” ended up charting at number 10 on the Country charts by the November of that year, the same position that their debut album “World Wide Open” charted at on the Country Album charts when it was released in August 2009. The band seemed to be unstoppable, and indeed they might have been, as it was no fault of their own that Lyric Street Records went bust in April 2010. The band were left without a record contract but with a burgeoning fanbase, however, their trouble weren’t over just yet.

Bandas became tired with the direction of the band and decided to quit in 2011, just as the band were on the cusp of signing with RCA Nashville. Liles and Gunderson went ahead and signed as a duo and ever since then their fortunes have been enviable, with their first single released on RCA “Angel Eyes” spending a year on the Hot Country Songs chart, peaking at number one a year after it was released. The band released their second, self-titled album in 2012 and saw it chart at number four of the Country charts and at a highly respectable number 21 on the Billboard 200. The sky is very much the limit for the duo, and in their prime they’ll be utterly unmissable. Highly recommended.