Neyla Pekarek: The Path of the Girl in the Band

Neyla also hasn’t given up her love for teaching, and has enjoyed invitations to visit and conduct workshops with kids in some of the local schools. One such invitation was from Graland, a Colorado middle school, where the seventh grade choir was performing The Lumineers’ hit song, Ho Hey, for their spring concert. “I had really great music teachers in school, which is what motivated me to want to be a music teacher,” Neyla smiled. “That’s because I was so inspired by them. I still look to my high school choir teacher as a very big mentor in my life.”

Where do you look to find an opening in an up-and-coming music sensation? Craigslist, of course!

That advice isn’t likely to work for most people, but, as chance would have it, a Craigslist ad was exactly what landed Neyla Pekarek her place in The Lumineers, a sensation in the indie folk genre. Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites, the two founders and songwriters for the group, had placed a Craigslist ad for a cellist, and Neyla answered it. “I had just graduated from college; I went to school to get a music education degree, and I hadn’t found a teaching job yet,” Neyla explained. “I was living with my parents and kind of just looking for something to do. I thought it would be a fun way to pass my time until I found something full time to do.”

Wesley and Jeremiah, however, were not just playing around with their music. They took it very seriously; this was one of the things that Neyla appreciated about them right from the start.

“These guys were very motivated,” offered Neyla. “They opened their house and had coffee at 9:30 in the morning and treated it like a job. It was lovely of them to let me into the project, something that they had worked on so hard for years before I had even met them.”

The band started out playing local venues in Denver. But the bigger focus was on their practice time together, improving their sound. After several months during which the three of them practiced together, they decided to try a 30-day tour on the road. They loaded all their musical gear into a van and set off to play wherever they could find an audience for their music—living rooms, coffee shops, bars. They traveled from Portland to New York City, with lots of stops in between. “We had a few little EPs we had made,” Neyla shared. “We had the EPs and T-shirts; hopefully we would sell enough at each gig to put gas in the car to go to the next place.” She insists it wasn’t too glamorous, especially the time the van broke down. But she looks at this way: “I was only 23 years old. If you are going to be in a band and do something stupid, it might as well be then.”

If things had turned out differently by the end of the 30-day tour, Neyla probably would have started putting in more applications for teaching jobs. Apparently, the timing was right for the original sound the band had to offer. They followed the 30-day tour with a West Coast tour and a weekly gig at The Living Room in New York City. It was during this time that they were also contacted by the management company they eventually signed with, which led to their finding a booking agent. “Everyone we’ve worked with are young, hungry people,” Neyla said. “We all had the same mentality of being the new kids on the block. This was new for everybody.”

After three years on the road, The Lumineers scheduled themselves a few months of down time this past summer. They spent 300 days together last year alone. Neyla is using the time to enjoy the many other areas of music that she enjoys. Number one on the list is barbershop singing, which she does competitively, and another big one is musical theater. “Barbershop has that connotation of being sort of an older person’s game,” Neyla admitted. “But there are so many young people doing it. It is sort of this underground society of people. There are barbershoppers in New Zealand and Sweden and all over the world who are doing this craft that you wouldn’t think of as common.”

She’s been working on a few projects during their break. She is collaborating with fellow band member Stelth Ulvang on music for a short film that some of her friends are making, and she’s enjoyed the challenge of working in the scoring and composition area of music. “I’ve always been a big fan of theater,” Neyla shared. “I went to school for musical theater for a little bit. I’d love to dabble in that world as well. I love going to shows and seeing plays. I’m a big show tunes freak.”

Neyla also hasn’t given up her love for teaching, and has enjoyed invitations to visit and conduct workshops with kids in some of the local schools. One such invitation was from Graland, a Colorado middle school, where the seventh grade choir was performing The Lumineers’ hit song, “Ho Hey,” for their spring concert. “I had really great music teachers in school, which is what motivated me to want to be a music teacher,” Neyla smiled. “That’s because I was so inspired by them. I still look to my high school choir teacher as a very big mentor in my life.”

From their recorded music, fans might assume that Neyla isn’t a big part of the vocals in The Lumineers, but if you’ve heard them live, you know that isn’t true. Neyla’s voice plays a much stronger part in their live performances than in most of their recorded pieces. That will change on their next release, which includes a song that Neyla and Wesley often sing in live performances, “The Duet.”

Neyla attributes the quick rise of The Lumineers from unknowns to their current popularity to a combination of hard work and good timing. “You have to decide what things you are willing to do without while you are trying to make this thing work,” Neyla reminds those who are aspiring to make it in the music industry. “You are probably going to live in places that aren’t very nice, and you are going to have to leave your friends and family. It’s a lifestyle that, even when you get really big, you are still working really hard and are away from home a lot. I think it’s something that you have to decide that you really, really, want to do.” As for the timing, Neyla says that they were as surprised as anyone that their folk style music was so widely received. She counts it as luck on their part, but also feels that the current resurgence of folk music is a natural fit with the general movement toward a more simplified, sustainable lifestyle. The Lumineers have already performed tours in Europe and Australia. November 2014 found them in Mexico and South America, then on to South Africa for December.

There have been many young musicians who have set their hopes on “making it” in the music business, only to settle into a career teaching music when it didn’t pan out as they hoped. For Neyla, it worked the opposite way. She set out to be a music teacher and ended up touring the world with a band that hit the top of the charts in less than two years’ time.

Neyla’s journey with The Lumineers shows that there is no set path to musical success. Work hard and roll the dice. You might just get lucky.

Follow The Lumineers via their website, thelumineers.com, or on Twitter @thelumineers.