There was a time when you could have reasonably called The Last Revel a Mankato band.
The three founding members met while attending Minnesota State University. And the nascency of their existence played out on Mankato-area stages, where their typical gigs earned drinks instead of paychecks.
Today, however, The Last Revel has long since graduated from the days when they were merely Mankato’s hottest band. The band members now live in different parts of the country and come together just for gigs.
And if you attend their show Friday at the Vetter Stone Amphitheater (with Minneapolis band Bad Bad Hats opening), you might notice something else that’s different (if you haven’t seen them perform live in a while): They’ve added a fourth permanent member, Lauren Anderson, a bass player whose presence has allowed the band to produce a fuller sound and brought new vigor to a band already known for high-energy shows.
“It brought new life to our older material,” band member Ryan Acker says. “It also really helps that Lauren is an incredible singer, so it added a kind of fourth harmony to the whole thing. It really has changed how the band functions musically. It’s been one of the best decisions the band has ever made.”
That new vitality, Acker says, has made the band better.
It seems The Last Revel has hit a sweet spot, so sweet that the members live hundreds of miles apart from each other.
Fiddle player Vinnie Donatelle lives in Minneapolis. Acker (banjo) and guitarist Lee Henke live in Livingston, Montana. And the newest member, Anderson, who is originally from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, resides in Los Angeles.
All of which is a far cry from those early days.
Acker, Henke and Donatelle were all MSU students when they met. They all loved music and loved to perform, so they decided to try their hands at an open mic night. They chose the Savoy, which has since closed, to start their musical journey.
Soon, their shows transformed from open mic night curiosities to Thursday night music destinations. Crowds appeared. Word spread. A following was born.
While this was happening, the scope of mainstream American music appreciation also was changing. A band called Mumford and Sons won a Grammy Award with its foot-stomping brand of folk music. A North Carolina band called the Avett Brothers was turning heads with its own blend of soul-searching bluegrass/pop/ragtime/country, as was a Minnesota bluegrass band called Trampled By Turtles, helmed by Mankato native Dave Simonett.
The Last Revel fit right in.
But as is often the case, what is popular today might not be so in five years (or even one). Acker, however, says the advent of streaming music services came along at just the right time. The Americana/bluegrass/indie peaked about the same time Spotify and Apple Music became must have apps for music lovers. This allowed people to fixate, and stay fixated, on the music they love, virtually locking in a fan base, at least for a while.
And while the current state of royalties from streaming services leaves a lot to be desired from an artist’s standpoint, it’s pure gold from an exposure standpoint.
Most streaming services have a feature that nudges listeners to similar content. So when someone plays the latest song by Mumford & Sons, Spotify’s algorithm suggests other artists. Sometimes, The Last Revel is among them.
“I have a love-hate relationship with Spotify and streaming services in general. And I do think there is a change coming as far as royalty payouts go,” Acker says. “That being said, our band has been fortunate in the sense that a lot of people have discovered our band because of suggested listening on streaming services. It’s brought us from a regional band to kind of slightly more of like a national or multi-regional level of notoriety. People will say, ‘I’ve been listening to you guys for quite a few years because I heard you on Spotify.’”
Speaking of Spotify, a recent check on streams shows “Blind in the Fray,” a song off 2017’s “Hazard and Fate” album, has more than 13 million streams. Another song off that album, “Engine Trouble,” has more than 6 million streams.