Scott Hermo Jr. described his first time on tour in winter of 2016 as “hilariously chaotic” as he and his band zigzagged between cities and played small crowds. But on a cold night playing a show in Ithaca, N.Y., home to Cornell University, something clicked. For the first time that tour, “people were dancing and really enjoying it.”
Nine years later, his band Boyscott is going stronger than ever. The group has made a name for themselves as a national touring group with their organic brand of indie rock that emphasizes reverb-laden guitars and airy vocals. Songs like “Nova Scotia 500” and “Killer Whale” are among the tracks that have helped the band amass over 450,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
Now, the band will be taking its talents to Storrs as the headlining act of this year’s “Sounds of Summer” concert hosted by WHUS Radio, the University of Connecticut’s student-run radio station, on Saturday, Sept. 13 at the Student Union Terrace.
Boyscott started in 2015 when Hermo Jr., the band’s leader and frontman, was attending Belmont University in Nashville. While playing a show in Memphis with another band, he met other musicians who “gave me the confidence to show them some of the songs I’d secretly been working on by myself” and encouraged him to make these into an album.
That summer, Hermo Jr. stayed in Nashville adding drums and fleshing out the arrangements. This was a welcome change for Hermo Jr., who had previously only worked on songs by himself, armed with his guitar and laptop. The result was “Goose Bumps,” the group’s debut 2015 release that combined dreamy bedroom pop and warm, repetitive guitar riffs.
After the album came out, the band started receiving requests to play shows. Hermo Jr. joked that he had forgotten about that aspect, as he had just been making an album with his friends.
Though Nashville is known as a mecca for country music, the Music City was also home to a bustling DIY scene at the time. Soon, Boyscott started appearing on bills at house shows and warehouse venues across the city, getting to a point where they would be playing five shows a week.
As Boyscott’s name grew, the band started getting invitations from touring bands making stops in Nashville. Venues like Exit/In and The Blue Room became frequent spots as they opened for artists like Eskimeaux (now known as Gabby’s World), Andrew Savage and Pinegrove.
The group soon expanded beyond Nashville and took their sound across the Eastern seaboard and beyond in the latter half of the 2010s. This was a formative time for the band, as Hermo Jr. said these shows came during the heyday of underground music scenes.
“It was still during the height of the DIY world before COVID closed things down, and it was so fun,” he said in a recent phone interview. “There was one tour where for 11 days in a row, we had a house show every single night down the East Coast.”
In their decade-long history, Boyscott has consisted of Hermo Jr. and a rotating lineup of musicians that varies with each tour, something that has its upsides and downsides.
“It’s brutal but also super fun because during every single tour, there’s new energy in the group,” he explained. “But it’s difficult as far as getting people rehearsed, ready to go and tight. It’s never an easy thing, but I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of really great people that way.”
Despite the rotating lineups, the group’s current tour features a lineup that’s familiar to Hermo Jr. He’ll be joined this Saturday by Tom Bora on drums, Emma Willer on bass and Noah Dardaris on drums, three of his long-time collaborators.
Another aspect of the band’s live shows is that for nearly every song, the band will change things up from the studio versions. Playing the songs with varied dynamics or tempo changes has been a staple of each tour and is a way to keep playing the songs still interesting and fun after a decade.
In October 2024, the band released its long-awaited second album “Spellbound.” Many of the songs on that record originated from when Hermo Jr. was working on “Goose Bumps,” though in very early, incomplete forms. He went through a long process of workshopping the songs for years to get them right, a process he expressed his gratitude for.
Boyscott will take the stage at WHUS Radio’s “Sounds of Summer” on Saturday, Sept. 13, at the Student Union Terrace. They will be joined by AshBaby and Hang Him to the Scales. The show starts at 4 p.m. and is free.
Featured photo courtesy of Prism.fm