Mystic Theatre presents Fruition

Three songwriters. Five bandmates. More than 15 years together, building a grassroots audience with a combination of stacked vocal harmonies and collaborative, song-driven Americana. Fruition is proof that there’s strength in numbers.

How To Make Mistakes, the band’s first studio album in four years, showcases a reinvigorated group at the peak of its powers. This is American roots music at its broadest and boldest — a melting pot of rock, soul, folk, and pop. What began as a busking string band has evolved into something more eclectic, rooted not only in the unique delivery of three different singers, but also the cohesion of five friends who prefer their music to be homegrown and honest… mistakes and all.

“This is the first studio album that we’ve recorded entirely live,” says Jay Cobb Anderson, who shares frontperson duties with fellow multi-instrumentalists Mimi Naja and Kellen Asebroek. “We recorded 17 songs in 7 days, with everybody playing together in real time, and we didn’t overdub anything. The songs sound honest and real. They sound like us.”

“If you listen closely,” Anderson points out, “you can hear tempos fluctuate. Maybe you’ll have somebody finger-picking slightly out of time. But that’s part of the whole idea of learning to embrace your true identity. We’re a band that would rather lean into a mistake than use studio tricks to erase it. With How To Make Mistakes, we wanted to say, ‘This is us, with all of our flaws and all of our strengths.'”

All of their strengths, indeed. Collaborative, consistent, and musically cohesive, How To Make Mistakes is the sound of a band rededicating itself to the long haul.