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<\/p>\n New Orleans band Loucey<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n New Orleans band Loucey has always been more about the journey than the destination, says singer-guitarist Cherie McCabe. That can easily be seen in Loucey\u2019s first full-length album, the beat-heavy indie rock record \u201cParticipation Trophy Wife,\u201d released earlier this year.<\/p>\n When Cherie, her now-husband Sam McCabe, Jeremy Phipps and Ben Lorio began making music together almost eight years ago, it was in a studio setting. Although it didn\u2019t take long for the band to start playing live, Loucey<\/a> was an outlet for the friends to play around with a mix of their influences, like \u201990s guitar rock, pop and electronica.<\/p>\n An EP, \u201cTether,\u201d<\/a> followed in 2017. “We played some shows, took a break when I gave birth to our first-born, and then came back with \u2018Quitter\u2019 (a 2020 EP). That was when the pandemic hit,\u201d Cherie McCabe says. \u201cThat was a moment that altered all of our worlds and made all of us kind of pause and reassess where we were at, what we\u2019re doing with our lives, our careers.\u201d<\/p>\n And there was a lot going on: The McCabes were focused on their young family and their jobs, Phipps was busy with the synth-pop band People Museum<\/a> (and many other bands) and Lorio, a producer and audio engineer<\/a>, was working at the Music Shed and running his own studio, Below Productions. But after the pandemic started, Lorio, a drummer, had time on his hands and picked up a reissue of the E-mu SP-1200, the drum machine foundational to hip-hop<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n Provided photo by Katie Sikora Photography<\/span>
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