- December 21, 2024
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Much of Lesa Silvermore’s young life has been spent in a pub.
It’s not what it sounds like, though. Growler’s Pub has been more than just a place for the 26-year-old musician to grab a beer. She’s been going to concerts at the iconic local haunt since she was 18 (before the age minimum was 21). It’s where she met half her bandmates, where she’s led open mic night for four years, where she held the release party/concert for her debut LP, “Dopplegänger,” last May and where she held her tour kickoff shorty after.
“It has given me and so many other musicians I know a place to express ourselves freely,” Silvermore says. “I think that’s what’s so special about Growler’s. It’s a bar for creatives.”
Silvermore got close to Growler’s co-owner Sherry Kolyno by booking bands and planning events together for the past several years. They work super well together, she says, which is why she found out a little over a month before it was publicly announced in March that the craft beer bar/music venue would be sold by Kolyno and her husband after eight years of ownership.
“At first I was taken back, and then I understood what she needed to do,” Silvermore says. “She wants to be able to live freely and be with her family, which I totally respect and understand.”
Naturally, Silvermore was surprised by the news, but to hear the watering hole would be sold and renamed also gave her the idea to make a name change of her own.
From now on, Silvermore’s band will be called Lesa Silvermore and The Growlers to honor the place that helped shape her music career (and those of her bandmates Josh Scheible and Dave Cornicelli).
The change has been a long time coming — she's wanted a new name basically since she started the band in 2016, she says — but she and her bandmates could never agree on one. That all changed when they heard the news about Growler’s new ownership.
“The band has been experiencing such a momentum lately, I think it needed to happen,” Silvermore says. “I want them (Scheible, Cornicelli and new lead Jake Anatra) to feel a part of the band.”
Silvermore says the timing works perfectly because this is a pivotal moment for her band. She’s always been known as the folk/acoustic girl, but she wants to switch her focus to rock first, folk second.
To change gears and move into that new style is scary, she says, because she’s not sure how the following she’s built up will respond, and she has to push herself to approach songwriting in a new way.
But she’s ready for the challenge, and she’s already performed a couple new songs and gotten a positive response.
“I don't want to just be one genre, I want a mosh of it,” she says. “I want a kitchen sink cookie of genres.”
The band is currently working on its second album, “The Machine,” which she says is about halfway done.
The future of the pub is uncertain, but for now, Silvermore is taking a step back while she focuses on the new album.
“Maybe it’s a little ridiculous to name your band after a pub, but whatever I’m a little ridiculous,” she says with a laugh. “If anyone knows me, they know how eccentric I am. I don’t do anything small.”
