Lake Street Dive

Lake Street Dive at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2022

Lake Street Dive released their first Signature Sounds Recordings album, Lake Street Dive, in November 2010. They credit Jim Olsen, president of Signature Sound, as being the band's dad, "because of all the support he gave us when we were so infantile."[8]

By 2012 the four-piece band decided to make a strong commitment as a group and to tour. Bridget Kearney left her other band, Joy Kills Sorrow, to concentrate on Lake Street Dive.[9] Mike Calabrese also left his other band, Ward Hayden and The Outliers (then known as Girls, Guns, and Glory), to focus on Lake Street Dive. They went into the studio[10] to record the album Fun Machine and some singles in November 2012.

Lead singer Rachael Price was still under contract with another label, Claire Vision. This prevented them from releasing the album recorded in the fall of 2012 featuring Price. In late 2013, an agreement was reached and Lake Street Dive announced the release of their album Bad Self Portraits in February 2014.[11]

In 2013 and 2014 they played over 300 gigs in more than 175 different cities, spread between 43 states and 8 countries.[12] Their Bad Self Portraits tour sold out in 40 venues at the start of 2014.[13]

On YouTube, their Jackson 5 cover of "I Want You Back" on a street corner has received more than 6 million views.[14] Its viral success helped promote the band's visibility and popularity.[1] Their performance at the 2013 FreshGrass Festival[15] was filmed and directed by noted Brooklyn audio/visual collective Mason Jar Music. In December 2013, T Bone Burnett asked them to perform on the Another Day, Another Time show at The Town Hall (New York City) featuring music from and inspired by the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. Lake Street Dive has appeared on many television shows: The Colbert Report,[16] The Late Show with David Letterman,[17] Conan , and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.[18] They are also frequent guests on the public radio variety show Live From Here.

The band has uploaded numerous videos, including their annual, humorous Halloween covers.[19]

The band made some significant changes in their operations in 2015. In the winter of that year they started work with Dave Cobb on a new record/CD in Nashville, signed with Nonesuch Records in November, and prepared for the release of the new album. In 2015 they performed at only 98 venues. However, they toured Australia and New Zealand in March, then picked up their usual pace until December.[20] Their traditional Halloween video was Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".[21]

Lake Street Dive signed with Nonesuch Records in 2015 and released Side Pony in February 2016 with their new label.[22] The album's name refers to a hairstyle adopted by Kearney and is slang for "unexpectedly diverting the mind's attention". The band made 183 appearances in 2017 and 2018, including tours through North America, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.[23]

The band released their second album with Nonesuch, Free Yourself Up in May 2018. Kearney says, "This album is based in the realities in our time which have inevitably become part of everyone's daily life. It's something you think about and obsess over—and write songs about. Free Yourself Up is about empowering yourself, emboldening yourself, no matter what's going wrong."[24] In November 2018, they released Freak Yourself Out, a five-song EP of songs written but not recorded for Free Yourself Up.[25]

The band wrote the theme song for Somebody Feed Phil with the show's creator Philip Rosenthal and recorded the song.[26] The song was nominated for an Emmy award for original main title theme music.[27]

On May 10, 2021, trumpeter and guitarist Mike "McDuck" Olson announced he would be leaving Lake Street Dive after 16 years of performing with the band.[28]

In 2021 the band was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July.[29]

In September 2022, the band released "Fun Machine: The Sequel" through Fantasy Records. Collectively, the band described the EP in this way, "Imagine you walk into your favorite local dive bar and Lake Street Dive is on stage, doing our regular weekly gig for $5 a head. These are the songs we’d be covering there and how we’d be playing them. Some deep cuts, some sentimental favorites and some (hopefully) epic crowd pleasers.".[30]