The Lumineers: 2025
The Lumineers (photo by Noah Griffel, PR)
This FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.
As a young man growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey, Wesley Schultz was a regular listener of WFUV. During our recent chat at a midtown hotel, he proudly recalled even calling up and becoming a member!
The Lumineers, which Schultz founded 20 years ago with Ramsey High School classmate Jeremiah Fraites, have always been an easy fit for FUV. The band first came to our studios in 2012 after the release of their self-titled debut album. Propelled by the singles “Ho Hey” and “Stubborn Love,” that album went triple platinum and established The Lumineers as a band with a knack for writing effortlessly timeless songs.
Now, thirteen years later, comes The Lumineers’ fifth album, Automatic, and a tour that hits Citi Field in July. For this FUV Live session, Schultz and Fraites recorded a special duo performance of three songs on Automatic — “Same Old Song” “Keys on the Table” and “Plasticine” — at their practice space, 35 Left Studios in Denver.
We also spoke about the dues the pair have had to pay for years while in New York, before their fortunes changed after they relocated to Denver in 2009. Schultz spoke about how the New York years were essential in terms of learning their craft while doing things like recording his vocals in the bathroom of the Fraites’ family home.
More importantly, those lean years shaped the perspective contained in a lyric on "Same Old Songs," one of the new tunes: "Any one of us could make it big or could end up dead on the pavement."
The Lumineers are great, and for me, part of what makes them great is that they didn't believe that success was inevitable. Their appreciation of it makes them easy to love.
[Interview recorded on 2/18/25; Songs recorded at 35 Left Studios in Denver, Colorado; Engineered and mixed by Josh Osmond. Interview produced by Meghan Suma with associate producers Diana Juarez and Inna Volovich.]
