Lost Kings kicked off their I Think I Think Too Much Tour in Chicago on February 17 at Concord Music Hall. The duo said they can’t wait to be on stage and make waves across the country after the pandemic’s restrictions have been lifted.
The duo is made up of Nick Shanholtz and Robert Abisi, who said that their mission is not only to produce music that sounds good, but feels good too, and reaches a wide range of people.
“Our sound… it’s more so about being relatable through our music,” said Shanholtz, the lead producer of the pair. “In the dance space, that doesn’t really happen too often… and we have things that we go through… that we put into our music and we want that to shine through so people can see it.”
While they identify with dance and house genres, Lost Kings said they like to push the boundaries of the world of DJing in order to enhance their music.
“We tap into different genres all of the time…We don’t like being put in a box, from a sound perspective,” Shanholtz said. “We like trying new things and experimenting. That’s always been the goal.”
The pair originally met through a mutual friend and describe their partnership as unique and strong given its unlikelihood.
“We are very different, but that’s why it works… and we are very different performers, but I think that’s what makes the show great,” Shanholtz said.
The duo will continue showcasing their dynamic stage presence in an ongoing, national tour which includes seven official stops, ending on March 11 in Los Angeles. Plans to tour were prompted by the end of the pandemic restrictions, an opportune moment for the pair to reignite the music scene and perform their newest music.
“Obviously COVID happened and shut the world down for two years… So our plans [to tour] kind of got pushed,” said Abisi, the team’s primary DJ. “We haven’t done a tour like this in a while, to play rooms where our fans, our true fans, get to come see us… and we couldn’t be more excited.”
Since it has been a while since the pair performed, they said that they have to re-adjust to performing for such big crowds.
“We were just so happy to just be playing shows when everything did come back (after COVID), so it didn’t really matter, but I think the pre-show anxiety never leaves you,” Shanholtz said.
While a last-minute show in New York technically commenced the tour, both musicians expressed their excitement that their Chicago show would be the official kickstarter for their tour. “Our shows in Chicago are always so much fun and the fans there are amazing,” Abisi said.
The duo explained that DJ’s sets on tour are unique, given that off-the-cuff mixing makes each show unique, especially depending on the setting of the performance.
“There’s a lot of crossover in sets, but it’s very different, because when you’re playing a Miami nightclub not everybody that’s coming to that nightclub knows who we are,” Shanholtz said. “So we can’t play the set that we’re going to play in Chicago… where people are there to see us.”
According to Abisi and Shanholtz, the musical spontaneity that takes place during sets is crucial to the role of a DJ and requires an intentional reading of a crowd.
“In clubs you can visibly see what people are reacting to… and people may not be fully engaged… but then you get that moment and you’re able to hold it, and you kind of realize, ‘Oh this is working, or this style is working, let’s play a couple more this way,’” Abisi said.
Lost Kings explained that developing the skill to read crowds takes time, but doesn’t necessarily require big crowds for practice. Abisi said he started off DJing at small college parties.
The duo said that aspiring student DJs should take advantage of the wide range of perspectives and music preferences of students at a large school, especially one like Northwestern University.
“If you’re at a school where you get so many walks of life, use that,” Abisi said. “You can just grow so much from that and not be stuck in one thing and be able to adapt and relate to other people. For Nick and I that’s how we always take [on] our sets.”
Looking ahead, the musical duo has a lot in store, and they plan to use their tour to introduce some new tracks that they worked on throughout the pandemic.
“We have music that we’re ready to drop, but we’re going to use the tour to tease and test that music to see how it’s going to work and how it’s going to feel,” Shanholtz said.
The duo said that this tour is just one small piece of their ever-growing musical presence, and as of late there hasn’t been a dull moment.
“Ever since we got back to playing shows post-pandemic, it’s just been going crazy, [we’re] doing as much stuff as possible,” Shanholtz said. “We’re just going to keep dropping music, and that’s it, that’s really the goal… just to keep evolving, keep getting better… it’s pretty simple.”
