Love and Theft is a complete package deal: amazing vocalists and instrumentalists, great stage presence, incredibly personable and down to earth, funny, good looking and insanely talented. Before they performed at the NECM Festival on August 7th, they sat down for an interview to talk about performing and a couple other fun things.
Eric and Stephen had a good friend that told them about the New England Country Music Festival, in which they wanted to try to be a part of. One thing led to another and this year they performed at the festival and they couldn’t have been more excited to do so! The guys thought that performing at the festival would help promote their music more in this area of the country because they haven’t really toured up this way before.
Before performing Eric has a pre-performance ritual. “I eat four Ice Breaker Sours,” he then proceeded to joke around with Stephen in saying “then I bite one in half and bury it 4 ½ inches below the soil beneath the stage and then I go and find it and if it hasn’t disintegrated that means we had a good show.” This got Stephen cracking up on the side of him.
Stephen’s favorite song to perform during their set at the moment is ‘Whiskey On My Breath‘ because “most likely this is the first time people are hearing it live and because that’s our most powerful song and it means the most on an emotional level.” Eric’s response when asked what his favorite song to perform is was, “I don’t like any of them,” which he then glanced at Stephen and cracked up laughing. He agreed that ‘Whiskey On My Breath‘ was a favorite and also ‘Angel Eyes.’ The guys performed a song that could potentially be their next single during their set at the festival which is titled ‘Candyland.‘
Good news for “Theftheads” everywhere, the guys are working on a new album in which they are about half way done with. They will start up on the second half in October. This will be their first album released from Curb Records. However, contractually it will be their second album through Curb because they bought Love and Theft’s first independently published record.
For the first time this fall the guys aren’t doing a headlining tour. Instead they will be doing a bunch of USO shows. “It’s something we have never done before” Stephen said. “We’ve always wanted to but we’ve either had a fall tour or something come up but our agent finally booked it early before we booked anything else for the fall. We’re also trying to bring our music to other markets too.” Eric and Stephen will be traveling to Saudi Arabia and the Asia area for the shows.
When the guys aren’t working they do a ton of different things to decompress. “I like to build stuff and workout, those are my two go to things,” Eric said. Stephen has a more relaxing route of decompressing. “I like to go out on my boat and hang out, go to the pool, hang out with my wife and kid.” On the road Stephen likes to play golf, which he played right before performing at the NECM Fest. “It’s either golf or sleep, and I’m trying not to sleep as much, I’m trying to do more things” Stephen said with a grin.
The guys of Love and Theft are truly charismatic and gave a super fun interview. They made everything so light and easy to talk about and it was like talking to some old friends. Stay waiting patiently for their new album which will hopefully come in the next year or so. NECM is wishing the guys safe travels abroad and the best of luck performing at the USO shows!