Lost Leaders Generate Bold, Daring Songs for New Album, 'Hungry Ghosts'
Featuring Peter Cole and Byron Isaacs—bass player for The Lumineers—Lost Leaders maintain an enduring track record of adventurous and inspiring music with their new album.
Lost Leaders is Byron Isaacs, left, and Peter Cole.
The band Lost Leaders is as much about color, context and texture as it as about melody, rhythm and the plain, simple, glorious act of generating sound.
When I think of the many times I’ve seen Lost Leaders perform—Garcia’s at The Capitol Theatre in Westchester County, NY, Daryl’s House in Pawling, NY, and lots of other places—I can’t help but envision one of those classic old cars that Neil Young keeps in his garage, the ones from decades ago that look like they rolled off the assembly line yesterday because of the chrome that glistens.
These vehicles have an old spirit but sacrifice nothing when it comes to power and acceleration and a glistening paint job, fine leather seats and yeah, all that freaking chrome that sparkles in the sun.
“With your chrome heart shining/In the sun/Long May You Run,” Neil encourages us all in the song, “Long May You Run.”
You want to experience the shine of a chrome heart? The warmth? The alluring sparkle? The mystery? The magic? Then check out Lost Leaders. They are unpredictable. They are raw. They come at you from the inside out. They are seismic and hot to the touch. They take no prisoners.
And they have a new record out, called “Hungry Ghosts.”
Lost Leaders is Byron Isaacs on bass and vocals and Peter Cole on guitar and vocals, and they will be showcasing their new songs from “Hungry Ghosts” with multiple upcoming gigs. Lost Leaders are set to consume performance halls whole, and the audiences that fill them, when they roll into The Falcon in Marlboro, NY, on Friday, Sept. 20; The Pines in Mt. Tremper, NY, not far from Woodstock, on Saturday, Sept. 21; Fete Lounge in Providence, Rhode Island, Sept. 24; Spotlight at the Paramount, in Huntington on Long Island, Sept. 26; Heaven Can Wait in New York City on Oct. 1; and Concerts in the Studio in Freehold, NJ—where Bruce Springsteen grew up—on Oct. 26.
Peter and Byron will be joined by Will Bryant on keyboards and Randy Schrager on drums at The Falcon. The show at The Pines will be a trio with Schrager.
“Hungry Ghosts” was recorded at The Building Recording Studio in Marlboro, not far from The Falcon. Lee Falco, who often plays drums in Lost Leaders but is currently on tour with Amos Lee, owns both establishments and has, with his late father, curated an artistic landscape in Marlboro that provides a strong sense of place and reinforces what we already know, but don’t always place front and center—the arts drive the economy.
Both Byron and Peter illustrate all of this with music that treads narrow, mountaintop paths, steep escarpments, wide open fields, busy city boulevards, bustling crowds and quiet Catskill Mountain getaways.
When I attend a Lost Leaders performance, I envision both Byron and Peter opening the door to a space capsule, making sure I’m strapped in and assuring me that they’ll greet me upon landing before closing the hatch and seeing me off. They leave it up to me to navigate the interstellar musical journey that follows.
In the coming weeks, the soundtrack to my space adventures will be songs off “Hungry Ghosts”—authentic, original tunes that have been time-stamped with the past, present and future, have their chrome-heart-a-glistening and remain anchored, elusive, all-consuming and all-evolving, driven by the generous spirit of two musicians, two creators, two people with plenty of gravity to share, who want nothing more than to recalibrate your timing belt with their music.
“Gone So Fast” is probably my favorite song on “Hungry Ghosts.” It makes me feel as if I’m sitting in the open bow of a speedboat on a choppy lake, rising and falling with the uncertain crests and the troughs as I marvel at the world around me, sea spray coating my face while inspiration burns in my heart.
Lost Leaders at The Building Recording Studio in Marlboro, where they recorded their latest album, “Hungry Ghosts.”
And speaking of maritime adventures, Lost Leaders offer “The Undertow.”
“Watch the moon swim away/Full tsunami from a tiny wave/Pebble that you never throw/Could move oceans.”
Byron, you should know, is the bass player for The Lumineers and tours the world with them, playing stadiums and arenas. He also played bass for the Levon Helm Band.
He and Peter connected years ago when Peter’s jazz trio, which played Monday night gigs in Manhattan, needed a bass player and Byron was recommended by the drummer. Peter and Byron not long after teamed up to create their own music, and the early stages of that partnership set the stage for Lost Leaders.
“Byron has a really interesting sense of harmonic motion,” Peter said. “I don’t mean harmonic rhythm; I don’t mean time. I mean the quality of the chord changes that he comes up with and the relationships of those chords to each other—he’s the only writer I’ve ever come across who has that distinctive mark, and a tremendous ear for harmony. I have the most fun working on songs he wrote.”
Peter, Byron said, has a gift for melody and hooks.
“Pete knows when a hook hits,” he said. “He doesn’t always just have your standard pop kind of sensibility with the hooks. They are very unusual turns of melody that are just instantly hook-ey. He just has a gift for it. He’s also a very special, singular guitar player with a whole concept and approach, not just as a rhythm player and riff-meister, but also as soloist. A real voice.”
Peter and Byron, in the recording studio and live on stage, blow everything up, then put it back together again, song after song. And then it’s lather, rinse, repeat.
As for the new record, Lost Leaders on Facebook explained things like this:
“Hungry Ghosts is a Buddhist concept about people searching to fill the void,” these musicians wrote on Facebook. “This album captures Lost Leaders in all of our moods: pointedly snarky, whimsical and outlandish, reflective and confessional.
“It starts very worldly, getting caught up in the surge, moves to psychedelia, then the journey ends with getting yourself back home. In the end things are alright.
“It’s almost like the first half is The Iliad—and the second half is The Odyssey.”
Visit lostleaders.net to learn more.