Indie Pop Icons Lucius Play New Pride Festival at Wolf Trap

Powerhouse frontwomen Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig open up about singing what you can’t always say, sharing one superhero identity onstage and the undeniable lure of 9:30 Club’s signature cupcakes before taking the stage at Out & About Festival on June 24-25.

WORDS BY MONICA ALFORD

Lucius is a staple of the D.C. music community. Lead singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig formed their indie pop band in Brooklyn 16 years ago and are now based in LA, but it was their appearance on NPR Music’s “Tiny Desk Concerts” with creator and host Bob Boilen in 2013 that jumpstarted their national success. They have a soft spot for the District, and we have the bragging rights (thanks, Bob) for helping put them on the map.

A decade later, they’ve released three studio albums — each with its own thoughtfully curated sonic concept and visual aesthetic — and collaborated with everyone from Harry Styles and The Killers to Sheryl Crow and The War on Drugs. They’ve become close friends with queer country artist Brandi Carlile, often performing and recording together, and now they’re on the same bill for the debut of Wolf Trap’s Out & About Festival on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25.

The new festival, a particularly proud moment for the DMV during Pride month, will “spotlight LGBTQIA+ artists and allies who live out loud,” according to the venue. Fierce allies with deep roots in the queer music community, Wolfe and Laessig will take the stage on Sunday with guitarist Peter Lalish and drummer Dan Molad for a stacked lineup on three stages including Celisse, Brandy Clark, Oh He Dead, and of course, Carlile.

We had the opportunity to sneak in a Zoom call with the duo during a VIP party they were attending last month to pick their brains about the upcoming festival and what new concept they’re creating for their fans. Luckily, the call ran long, and we were able to chat about how they’ve swung the pendulum from the stripped-down, breathtakingly beautiful acoustic songs on 2018’s “Nudes” to a disco dance party filled with vulnerable lyrics surrounding divorce and motherhood on 2022’s “Second Nature” to an upcoming record they’re describing as surreal and centered on connection. Read on to learn more about the musicians, from the reason behind their identical onstage fashion to their favorite Ethiopian spot in D.C.

District Fray: Why was joining the lineup for Out & About Festival important to you?

Jess Wolfe: Those are our people. It totally made sense. This is about community and lifting people up and giving a voice to people who need to be given a voice. We’re just so proud to be a part of it and be considered. Even though we’re not ourselves queer, to be included in that community is everything to us. To be able to do something in our work that resonates with people who feel different and who feel seen? Hell yes, that’s everything.

Tell me about your friendship with Brandi Carlile.

Wolfe: She always talks about the Island of Misfit Toys and that resonated with us. We grew up not having a community and feeling different. Finding community once we met, going to music school and building this musical safe space with so many incredible artists and friends of all different backgrounds has been the proudest place I could ever imagine being in. I feel so incredibly grateful and privileged to have that, and the ability to open that up for other people. That comes from being in Brandi’s community and building our own audience and vision for the band. Brandi is intertwined with that feeling because that’s everything she stands for.

Who are you most excited to hang with at the festival?

Wolfe: Rufus Wainwright. We have mutual friends, but we’ve never really spent time together and I’ve been a fan of his for such a long time, ever since the Judy [Garland] Carnegie record. And Celisse is one of our best friends. Being with new and old friends together, celebrating and lifting each other up — it’s everything. The lineup is pretty tremendous. Jake Wesley Rogers is going to be there. He’s the sweetest guy ever. He just played Union Stage in D.C. I saw him at SXSW last year and interviewed him for last June’s issue.

Wolfe: He was actually an OG Lucius fan. We did a little radio show during the pandemic, and he showed us a photo of the three of us all together from maybe 10 years ago…

Holly Laessig: …at the merch table. It was awesome.

Wolfe: Yeah, he’s just a total gem. What are you excited to see?

You, obviously. And I haven’t had the chance to see Brandi live yet, which is wild, so I’m looking forward to that. Do you have a favorite D.C. memory?

Laessig: The first thing that comes to mind is the “Tiny Desk” that we did, because that put us on some sort of map. When we would be playing shows and go to the merch table afterwards and actually meet people who were not our relatives or friends [both laugh]. Like, “Oh, you know who we are?” “Yeah, we saw you on ‘Tiny Desk.’” That was the first thing that really helped us get to that next step, so it certainly is a fond memory.

Wolfe: That was definitely one of the most pivotal moments in our career — an identifier of when things really shifted. We are indebted to D.C. in many ways, and we’ve always had particularly wonderful times in D.C. When we were on tour with Roger Waters, we actually got some time to explore all the sites and museums and walk around. It’s so beautiful.

Laessig: There’s a really good Ethiopian restaurant we’ve gone to a couple times with Bob [Boilen]: DAS Ethiopian.

Wolfe: There’s a lot of good Ethiopian restaurants. We love Ethiopian food. We always get it when we are in D.C. And just a couple weeks ago, we were in D.C. to honor Joni Mitchell at the Library of Congress. That was one of the most magical weeks in a long, long time just being able to celebrate her and be with so many of our friends: Brandi, Celisse, Marcus Mumford, Annie Lennox. We got to sing at the Library of Congress with Sara Bareilles and Brandi for Joni, and it was just so amazing.

I was just about to ask your favorite D.C. venue to perform, but now that I think of it, I’m guessing it’s probably the Library of Congress?

Wolfe: [Both laugh] That is a pretty good one, but D.C. has amazing venues.

Laessig: I mean, 9:30 Club always lures you in with those cupcakes. Every musician knows about those cupcakes.

I really appreciate you both being in the D.C. fan club, but I want to refocus and talk more about the two of you. One of the things that’s really special about your music is that you cover real topics like relationships and divorce and motherhood. How does that play into your songwriting process?

Laessig: The songs we end up loving the most that actually make it onto records are the ones that are the most honest. Sometimes we have songs we try as a character, but they don’t always work out. We’ve written a lot of songs that stay on the cutting table, or whatever the term is. The best art and the best music — or at least our favorites — are always the most real because people can relate to them. They’re the things you can’t always say, but you can sing through music.

What advice would you give women in the creative industry you wish someone had given you years ago?

Wolfe: If you want something and believe in something enough, you just do whatever it takes to make it work. And also, give yourself the space to have quiet and rest — to figure out the balance and honor yourself in doing that.

What do you want to do next sonically? Is there a new sound or concept you’re currently working on?

Laessig: We are working on a bunch of new music. It’s a little bit closer to the heart and more raw and getting back to our roots, so we’re excited about that. We have another record we finished, but I think we’ll wait on that because it’s a little bit more experimental.

Wolfe: But equal parts exciting. There will be a special way we present that one when the time is right.

What’s a shared vision you both have for a future project or collaboration that you’re equally excited about?

Wolfe: I think this record is part of that. We’ve been circling around the best way to connect it to some visual and maybe technological elements. It’s a very surreal record about connection and the different ways in which we connect, and how we are automatically connected to something when we come into this world and how we’re cut from connections and have to find them. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to bring it to life where it can best serve the record and its purpose.

Who are a few of your forever music influences, and/or a new one on your radar?

Wolfe: Danielle Ponder is on tour with us right now and she’s supremely gifted. It’s been such a pleasure to listen to her every night. We were doing Instagram Live open mics during the pandemic and she signed up one night and sang, and we were like, “Oh, shit, this girl is the real deal.” She’s tremendous. Laessig: My OG forever is Bowie. That would be mine. I need to listen to more new music is the truth. Danielle is amazing. We always reference Radiohead, like every other musician.

Wolfe: Bowie, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Aretha, Roy Orbison: These are the people who made me believe in the power of music.

You’re iconic for always rocking a nearly identical style. How do you come up with a concept or a look in a collaborative way that you both feel really good about?

Wolfe: Both of our moms are visual artists, and I grew up in the theatre, so having an automatic landscape to transport us and our audience is a big deal. It makes us feel automatically connected. It’s like putting on our uniform — our superhero outfit — and matching makes it much easier for people to see us as one, to see us as they hear us. That’s the root of it. And we just love fashion. We love artists who always had a strong visual representation of their music: Bowie, Björk, James Brown, The Supremes — people who dress the sound. We have a different visual idea for every album, and we let ourselves go all the way in that direction. We’ve been able to still make it a Lucius thing because we do it together, and that commitment between the two of us makes it us. It’s always evolving and when we’re writing songs, we’re actually collecting imagery and starting to visualize how we want it to look.

So it becomes a whole mood board.

Wolfe: Yeah. We love a mood board. [both laugh]

Learn more about Lucius at ilovelucius.com and follow them on Instagram @ilovelucius. Catch them on Sunday, June 25 at Wolf Trap’s brand-new Out & About Festival. Tickets start at $59 and are available at wolftrap.org.

Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts: 1551 Trap Rd. Vienna, VA; @wolf_trap