Chicago soul band Hollyy released their debut album last week. They’re celebrating this Friday with their fifth annual holiday show, dubbed Hollyy-Days, at Thalia Hall. The band will perform songs from the new album, plus their favorite Christmas covers.
Hollyy has been making music for seven years — the anniversary of the group’s founding was Dec. 1 — and the album, “The Weight of This Heart,” has been in the works for three. The six-piece band is currently made up of Tanner Dane (vocals, guitar), Rafe Soto (drums), Peter Giere (keyboard), Dom Zeier (bass), Blase Cermak (trumpet) and Nate France (saxophone). Dane, the group’s lead singer, said that although many of the album’s 14 songs have been released and performed over the years, he is still looking forward to premiering the new material at Friday’s show.
“It’s exciting for us, too, because there will be a lot of people out there that are gonna hear songs for the first time — and then even for us, playing them for the first time,” Dane said in a conversation with Vocalo’s Nudia Hernandez.
Hollyy hosted several pop-up shows this summer on the North Side lakefront, setting up speakers, mics and instruments on the concrete steps near the AIDS Garden, just south of Belmont Harbor. They’ll take the stage inside Thalia Hall on Friday, accompanied by fellow Chicago artists Rudy de Anda and Samuel Aaron.
Dane and keyboardist Peter Giere stopped by Vocalo’s studio to talk about the album and what Hollyy-Days attendees can expect. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Nudia Hernandez: You guys are a Chicago-formed group, been together seven years, but you’ve seen multiple iterations of people coming and going. What have you found is the magic between the group you’re working with now?
Tanner Dane: I come from a background of playing with basically the same people I played with since I was 11 years old, almost. This year specifically has, for the first time in my life, switched that up. I think we had some growing pains at the top of the year.
This year has been so great in the sense that we’ve just stuck with our core unit and pushed through and just kept making music. We have a lot of goals, don’t get me wrong, but less to reach all these crazy new heights, and more so just to do it for us.
Peter Giere: The magic is not quitting and then also just trying it. I think it started with us trying out some TikToks of the core members being in the basement, doing little covers and little snippets of our songs. Then we kind of parlayed that into the lakeside shows and just watched it grow from there. The big thing is, I don’t think we’ve compromised anything about ourselves. I think we leaned into the authenticity, and it’s been awesome to be on the ride and watch it grow.
When it comes to having a common goal as a band, is that a conversation you have?
Dane: Well, famously, every January we do this, like …
Do you guys do a vision board?
Dane: A little bit. Sometimes it’s the end of December, sometimes it’s January. We throw things up on the wall and we’re just like, “Alright, here.” We revisit last year’s goal chart …
Giere: And have a good laugh.
Dane: This year was, again, a great lesson. Oftentimes you just stay the course, and you let things come to you, and then, boom, you have your best year, instead of worrying too much about the metrics and the outside noise.
Giere: And also, things can surprise you. You think it’s gonna go one way, organically, and then all of a sudden, it takes another turn that you didn’t really expect. And that’s the beauty of it.
Do you guys have a personal favorite off the album?
Giere: It waxes and wanes all over the place. I really like a song called “Feel So Lonely” that came out back in August as a single. Kind of a jammy R&B track that was a nice idea Tanner came in with. Sometimes it can be a bit of a grind, trying to figure out how to write collectively, and everybody’s doing their thing. But it was one of those tracks that came together pretty quick.
Dane: Obviously, you feel like you’re slighting some of the other songs. For me, I think the only thing that I have to differentiate is, “I love playing it live.” Sometimes it’s the reception that you get from it, and you could see it connecting with people. That’s a really cool feeling.
I really enjoy playing “Running From You.” We love to end songs with a big outro — maybe too much, to be honest — but it’s really fun to play. We’ve always joked that’s our stage-dive song at the end. So if you’re there on Dec. 19, that’s the goal.