Originally published by the Belmont Vision.
With a focus on relationships and resilience, alumni band Wild Love seems to have found its sweet spot.
The band’s performance at Live on the Green on Saturday will be its biggest to date, and hopefully the catalyst to even more opportunities.
“This is definitely different from playing smaller venues, where you can hide your mistakes,” said guitarist Michael Crecca. “This is far more legit, and it’s just a big, big moment. But we kind of thrive in that.”
Wild Love came onto Lightning 100’s radar in 2018 during their Music City Mayhem series. Though they didn’t win the competition, they made it as far as the live show at Marathon Music Works and pulled off a strong performance.
“We just played a killer show, I guess, and they really liked us,” lead vocalist Brandon Gorman said.
This created a lasting relationship between the growing band and the radio station that led to more airtime, showcase opportunities and eventually, the slot at Live on the Green.
“Literally since they saw us they believed in us,” Crecca said. “It’s a good relationship and good people. It comes from them just being good people who care about music above everything else.”
They’ve been able to find those genuine connections all over Nashville. The band relocated here after gaining popularity while most of the members were in high school.
“We kind of hit a ceiling in Virginia at that point,” Gorman said. “So we wanted to go somewhere with more of a challenge, a more competitive market where we could learn and realize that we’re not as good as we thought we were.”
They decided on Nashville. Belmont wasn’t the central reason for their decision, but Gorman attended the first few days of orientation where he met a slew of new contacts — including Crecca.
“I realized it wasn’t for me, but the orientation was fantastic,” Gorman said. “It’s so crazy that before taking any classes I met so many people that have such an impact on my life and the band’s path.”
After only two months of being an official band member, Crecca and the band were selected to play the set at Marathon Music Works. He graduated with a music business degree in 2017, but found some of the most lasting lessons happened outside of the classroom.
“Actually doing business in the music scene, making music and connecting is more experience than you’ll get from any class or internship,” he said.
With their upcoming performance and a new single released this week, they’re putting that experience to good use. Looking back, the band can see exactly what went right and find better ways to deal with what went wrong. Their insight proves the importance of giving every opportunity a shot and really learning by doing.
“It was a tough year — for some of us we got close to saying this isn’t something that we can do anymore and now we’ve ended up at Live on the Green,” Gorman said.
The band has gone through their fair share of tough times and disappointment. But they somehow have the resilience to keep pushing. For them, the key to success is finding a balance between hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. They credit this resilience to the diversity in the perspectives of the members.
While Gorman and Crecca claim to be the dreamer and realist respectively, they say their bassist Si Geçener is always there to offer a kind word and drummer Nolan Speer is up for anything.
“Adversity really forces you to look in the mirror and figure out what we’re really doing. It was very much ‘bite your lip, power through’ and then, all of a sudden, the heavens kind of opened up, and that’s music in a nutshell.” Crecca
The slot at Live on the Green seemed to be that break in the clouds. The band prefers live shows and touring to releasing music, so playing to a crowd like this energizes them to take full advantage of the moment.
“A live show is fun because it can never be the same again,” Crecca said. “You can rehearse all you want but at the end of the day it’s up to you to just get up there and perform in the moment and be able to respond to all the different things.”