Greenhouse is a four-piece alternative-rock outfit based in Hartford, CT. With influences ranging from reggae, vibes of Sublime and to the funky feel of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Greenhouse produces a tone with much familiarity for us to vibe to.
The band recently released their newest single titled “One Thing” The melodic groove begins with a stylistic guitar and rhythmic drum arrangement. Their vocals has this canorous delivery that we love. I like how “One Thing” reminds me of a timeless bop that’s almost hard to forget like the music Maroon 5 manufactures. Maroon 5 has a way of executing an exciting love bop, a dwell-some single, in an upbeat and memorable manner, the same way Greenhouse was able to properly project with their single “One Thing”. You can’t really categorize this song into one particular genre of music because it’s fused with a lot of elements of various different styles of music like reggae and pop. We love the slight island flare to “One Thing” because it sprinkles artistic flavor and flare!
Listen to “One Thing” here and get to know Greenhouse in our interview below!
Hey there, care to introduce yourselves to our readers?
Absolutely! We are GreenHouse (capital G and capital H – there’s a lot of other Greenhouses out there) hailing from Hartford, CT. Sean Lemkey is our lead singer and plays guitar, Greg Ganci is our lead guitarist and also does vocals, Nick Delaney plays bass and is also on vocals, and Ben Wahlberg is our drummer and percussionist.
How did Greenhouse form and what was the inspiration behind the name?
So there is a long history of all of us playing together in different capacities since about 2013, but this project started in early 2016 when Sean and Greg were jamming together a bit on some old 311 and Sublime songs. Nick and Ben soon joined, and we just started playing songs we grew up on, sort of in the reggae/rock realm. It only took about 2 or 3 rehearsals to start writing some original music, which we turned into tracks that you can hear today! It was kind of awesome because even though the 4 of us never played together as a quartet, we all kind of knew each other’s style and played off one another really well because we had all played with each other in some capacity on other projects. I think Ben and Sean were the only two that hadn’t played together before our first rehearsal, but they’re both so good it didn’t matter, sounded awesome.
The name exists because we started rehearsing in a friend’s Greenhouse. It was an oasis. Literally, like a 3 acre plot of land in nearby Bloomfield, CT where we could make as much noise as possible and stay as long as we wanted. Sean, Nick and Greg live together now and built a semi-studio/practice space in the basement of their house, so that’s where the everything goes down now, but shout out to Jim Shepard, the legend who made the GH our second home.
What’s the legacy you hope your band leave behind?
I think as a band our philosophy is to create the best product we possibly can according to us. We love the folks that come to our shows and listen to our music and we want to keep them happy –that’s definitely a huge focus - but our primary drive is to stay true to our sound because we all believe we found something special. We are constantly writing new tunes and jamming on things we come up with at rehearsals, but what’s great is that we even look to build on songs that we’ve had for over 2 years now. When you are constantly improving and adding to your arsenal, that’s a great indicator of progress, so I think the legacy is predicated on that philosophy. 4 guys who loved to play music and stayed true to themselves.
What emotion do you think your music generally evokes into your listeners?
That’s a great question. Our songs are very diverse and don’t necessarily follow a central theme, but at the same time, you can tell it’s a GreenHouse track if you have heard our sound. Especially during our live shows, we play with a lot of energy and are upbeat throughout all of our sets, and we really like to engage with our audience, so I don’t really know if one emotion can capture it. Gun to our head, I think our sound is full-spirited, fun and energetic, while at the same time having a laid-back, chilled-out undertone. Does that make sense? Let’s go with it.
Out of all your musical influences, who has impacted the band most on your music and why?
You could ask all 4 of us this question and we would likely give you 4 different answers. Our musical tastes are on a gigantic, never-ending spectrum and we keep adding new sub-genres to our Spotify playlists all the time. That said as a band, I think we draw off of groups like 311 and Sublime because that is kind of where it all started, but after a while it sort of shifted to bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Maroon 5. We added a kind of pop-meets-straight-ahead rock element to our original music that parallels the latter two, so I think those bands have really influenced the way we come up with certain arrangements, riffs, lines etc. We’ve gotten to the point where we come to a loose arrangement of a new tune or a cool little riff that turns into something and say something like “man that really sounds like a RHCP song” which is probably a huge diss to them, and toolish of us, but it’s kinda true haha.
Have you performed live yet? If so, what’s the most exciting part about it! Any upcoming live performances?
Yes we’ve been performing live for a while now. We had a big 2017, and an even bigger 2018 and are so pumped for what 2019 has in store for us. We try to arrange strings of about 6-8 shows every season, so we have a sort of consistent schedule and allows us opportunities to have a break and write new material (which we always are doing anyway). We’ve been all over the Northeast, including New York City, at places like Pianos, Arlene’s Grocery and Rockwood Music Hall. We also try to stick to our roots and get back to the beach as often as possible, so lots of shows on the Rhode Island shore and Block Island. Then of course in our home state, between Hartford and New Haven, we’ve been just about everywhere that has live music, including our EP release show (our EP is entitled ‘Wave’ – find it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, iTunes or anywhere else) that we just recently had on 12/8/18 at the infamous Arch Street Tavern in downtown Hartford.
The most exciting part about playing out is definitely the fan response. When you see people vibing to a song YOU wrote with your best friends, and they are singing the words back to you from the crowd, wearing your band’s name, stickers or pins on their shirt, dancing ferociously, whatever – there is really no better feeling. Being in the studio is awesome, but engaging with people who come to your shows is an ultimate high.
We are actually in the midst of a little Winter Tour right now, we are 3 shows in of a 7 stop run, and we are actually playing a very renowned establishment by the name of Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT on 1/17/19 which we are very excited about. A lot of very high-profile acts have been on that main stage and we really looking forward to it. Going to be a blast! Beyond that, we are putting together a little something this summer that gets us past New York, hopefully a bit further down the East Coast so we hope to check in with you guys again soon –in the meantime follow us on Instagram/Twittter @greenhousetunes, on facebook (facebook.com/greenhousetunes) and our website greenhousetunes.com.