Preston Lovinggood is true to his lyrics.
“Oh there is nothing else that I know how to do/I can’t stop singing about/All the things I’ve seen and heard,” the lead singer of indie rock band Wild Sweet Orange sings on “Seeing and Believing,” the third track of the band’s full-length LP, “We Have Cause To Be Uneasy.”
The album, released at the end of July, is Lovinggood’s poignant interpretation of the suburban Birmingham, Ala., community he grew up in.
“Since a young age, [I’ve had] this fascination with the home and the house in general, it being a place of environment, of not love, not a peaceful place. It made me look for beauty in this crazy, environmental-eating kind of society, and it gave me this sick, twisted need for drama too,” the songwriter said. “It made me find the good in what can be a community, and constantly searching for that.”
Putting the debut album out took almost four years, Lovinggood said. “[We struggled] with management and a label that we didn’t want to be with anymore, we had to get a lawyer. It took a dramatic situation like that to learn what kind of band we wanted to be. We wanted to make each song really good so that they could take us where we wanted to be, and that’s how it went down.”
Despite touring with fellow musicians like The Whigs and Counting Crows, seeing their performance on David Letterman’s show in the spring and working with producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Patty Griffin), “we’ve made it” moments are few and far between for Wild Sweet Orange.
“Our dreams are so big, ya know, so you can be dissatisfied with smaller things, or you can enjoy them,” Lovinggood said. “Right now we’re just trying to enjoy the slow burn, enjoy the 50 kids that come out to the shows. For those 40 minutes, we feel like we really have ‘made it.’ ”
Wild Sweet Orange’s performing “Ten Dead Dogs” on David Letterman
IF YOU GO
Wild Sweet Orange
Where: Fletcher’s, 701 S. Bond St., Baltimore
When: 8 tonight
Tickets: $5
Info: www.wildsweetmusic.com
