The Backroom Rumors

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage The Backroom Rumors. Singer Evan Loftin, 19, drummer Lily Pesikoff, 20, and guitarist Bo Farnell, 21, currently pursue their musical ambitions at colleges across the country. But the story of these local indie scene staples began during their high school days here in town.

Beginnings

Bo and Lily, 2022 graduates of St. John’s School (SJS), grew close while playing in the middle school jazz band and their subsequent cover band at SJS, Claremont Heir. 

When Claremont Heir began losing steam, Lily started thinking about her music career beyond high school. She wanted more commitment, a way to perform her songs, and an opportunity to sing in addition to drumming. She formed a musical alliance with Bo, who plays guitar, and started scouting for a bassist. When Lily reached out to a friend at Kinder HSPVA to find someone, she was given two contacts. Serendipitously, Evan, a junior at the time, was the one who responded to her text first. 

The HSPVA jazz program is a go-to recruiting pool for those looking to round out an ensemble with a technically skilled musician – “It’s like a game to see who can get the most gigs,” Evan said. His creative playing and writing style made him TBR’s top pick, and his notable talent gave him the edge to overcome being one year younger than Lily and Bo. The gap was most notable early in the band’s days when Bo had to drive Evan to practice. The first time he picked him up, Evan wore a floral dress shirt he bought for his middle school graduation. In his defense, he had dinner plans directly after. “He looked like some kind of cowboy,” Bo recalled. Even now, Evan almost always sports cowboy boots – currently, it’s a black ostrich-skin pair.

RUMOR HAS IT The indie band has garnered lots of fans, with their most popular single (Did I Say) Goodbye Too Soon receiving over 40,000 streams. (Photo courtesy of The Backroom Rumors)

From the back room to the stage 

The name “The Backroom Rumors” came from the literal back room of the Pesikoff house, which houses work-from-home equipment and some extra furniture in addition to some amps and Lily’s Gretsch Catalina drum kit. It makes for a good practice space for the trio. Tracy Pesikoff, Lily’s mother, would bake sweets for practices on Sundays, a tradition left over from when she moderated band practice in middle school. Unsurprisingly, musicians of all ages and skill levels welcome her banana bread. 

Just a month after that first practice in October 2021, the band performed their first gig as part of a five-band lineup at White Oak Music Hall.

The name “The Backroom Rumors” came from the literal back room of the Pesikoff house, where the band practices when they’re home in Houston. (Photo: Dylan Aguilar)

After a year jam-packed with 19 performances, not including solo sets, Bo headed to Dartmouth College in Hanover and Lily to Occidental College in LA, while Evan finished up his senior year at HSPVA. To keep up their artistic momentum, the band had to get creative. Each member continued practicing individually, with Bo joining a frat band at Dartmouth and Lily drumming for several ensembles at Occidental. Evan focused on producing the band’s pre-recorded work.

Today, the trio keeps in touch virtually but only reunites in person during school breaks, when they cram in as many practices and performances as possible. The band’s network is widespread, with their most popular single, 2023’s (Did I Say) Goodbye Too Soon, receiving over 40,000 streams across several continents. But the band’s heart remains in Houston. Lily’s single Rural Virginia features several references to her childhood in Houston, including mentions of the Astros World Series wins and Rice’s standoff against the construction of the Ashby Highrise. 

Lily is majoring in music production and hopes to get a job in the business side of the industry. She uses these skills to book most of TBR’s gigs – she says that emailing the venue “takes you 50 percent of the way there.” 

“As long as you’re able to set up a show, then you can ask a really dope band with a really good following to play it,” Lily said. “Then you’re taking the work off the venue.”

“That’s how the scene really started,” Evan chimed in. “We started setting up so many shows that people were like, ‘we’re actually going to have to actively avoid seeing them at this point.’”

Guitarist Bo Farnell has become known for jumping around the stage. (Photo: Lucy Walker)

The band plays at White Oak pretty frequently – in December, they rocked the venue for their annual Christmas show. They have also played gigs at other Houston nightlife staples like Axelrad and Super Happy Fun Land. 

Longtime fan Haley McClan, who grew up in Memorial, loves coming to shows that introduce her to new areas of Houston. “I had never been to Bohemeo’s on Telephone Road or somewhere with walls covered in doll heads,” she said. “It’s nice discovering places I wouldn’t have on my own.” Haley has known Lily since elementary school and keeps in touch to see how her music career is going. Now a senior at UT, she frequently rallies her friends to join her at TBR’s Austin gigs.

UH student band Elevator Days opened the December show and Evan's childhood friend Emma Ogier closed. The crowd was filled with SJS students and alums, many of whom have been TBR fans from the beginning – the spirited singalong to their song Rubber Band proved it. The school’s network has done a lot to support the band, including attending shows, playing their music on college radio stations, and designing cover art and merchandise.

Singer and bassist Evan Loftin calls himself the “recording geek” of the group. (Photo: Lucy Walker)

“I think us being apart for a majority of the year is what makes seeing each other again so special,” Lily said. “It’s not just the fans who get to see us for the first time in a while, it’s also us. We’re just as excited to be back.”

With the kids away at school, Lily’s mom Tracy says having a quiet house has been an adjustment. Her older son, Joshua, is an accomplished pianist and would often practice at the same time as Lily’s band on Sundays. Now that they are both grown, Tracy misses the “beautiful chaos” that soundtracked her work as a jewelry artist. 

“Bo especially has been in my house every Sunday since seventh grade. One of the coolest things has been to witness the progression of the musicianship,” Tracy said. “The songwriting, collaboration of instruments and recording of music has been fabulously exciting!”

Bo and Lily’s families make an effort to reunite often and spend holidays together – most recently, the Pesikoffs hosted the Farnells for a New Year’s Eve game night. From what I gathered, Boggle got pretty serious.

RUMOR HAS IT The indie band has garnered lots of fans, with their most popular single (Did I Say) Goodbye Too Soon receiving over 40,000 streams. (Photo: Lucy Walker)

Making music together 

The three band members have each been making music since they were kids. Bo first begged his mom for guitar lessons at age six, but his teacher redirected him to the piano because he was too little. He finally graduated to electric guitar in sixth grade. Evan picked up the bass at five after being inspired by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and began playing guitar and writing songs during quarantine.

Lily has been writing songs since middle school and says much of her composing happens in her iPhone Notes app, which she estimates holds several hundred songs.

She first started drumming the summer of second grade at Camp Jam, a national program that helps youngsters learn a new instrument. After putting drums down as her intended instrument on a whim, Lily quickly realized she had a talent.

Singer and drummer Lily Pesikoff stands out for her talents, as most drummers as men. The band plans to release their debut album within the next few months. (Photo: Lucy Walker)

Her teacher recommended private lessons and she soon connected with Jordan Almes, a Rice student at the time. They have worked together for over 10 years. “Now they play and record,” Tracy said. “It’s been so amazing watching them grow up together.”

Lily’s niche as a girl drummer makes her stand out – according to the magazine Drumeo, over 90 percent of drummers are men. In her freshman year of college, several bands reached out to recruit her for gigs. She was often let into clubs to play a set and then made to leave because she was underage. She wrote the first song the band arranged, but most of their other work is a group effort. The songwriting responsibilities of the band are divided up like this: Lily is the brains and business manager, Evan is the recording geek, and Bo is the “resident shredder.” 

Bo once posited that the band is like a pair of pants: Evan and Lily are each a leg, and he holds them together. “You could say I’m like the belt.” Because of his antics with Claremont Heir, TBR, and his frat band at Dartmouth, Bo has become known for jumping around the stage in his signature busted Birks or no shoes at all. He has a reputation as a free-spirited goof – his bandmates have likened him to Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc. and the evil penguin from Wallace and Gromit – but he says he actually wears them because his feet get sweaty. An ex-cross-country captain, Bo recalls that “the girls would tell me that I have nasty toes. This is not true.”

The rest of the band is pretty active, too. Evan says he could never go open-toed, as he plays soccer for SUNY Purchase College. Lily has also picked up a sport and is captain of Occidental’s intramural ultimate frisbee team. While in school, she has notably opened for artist Indigo DeSouza and met all three members of the supergroup boygenius at the Occidental pool. She was both surprised and in awe — she says her songwriting inspiration is “100 percent Phoebe Bridgers.” 

“The broader the song is the worse it is, so I always appreciated that she’s telling some niche story and you’re like, okay, I’ll try to relate to this. And then you do.” Bo’s influences are primarily classic dad rock and Evan is inspired by jazz and country. 

Indie band The Backroom Rumors – students Bo Farnell, Lily Pesikoff, and Evan Loftin – reunite for shows over college breaks. (Photo: Dylan Aguilar)

What’s in the queue

Bo plans to join Lily in Los Angeles this summer for an internship. When they brought this up, Evan felt left out: “So you’re telling me I need to move to L.A.?”

Fans will be delighted to hear that the band plans to release their long-awaited debut album within the next few months. The LP will feature six unreleased songs in addition to their three singles. Because TBR’s previous producer, Aden Harris, has been away in Japan working on his rapping career, Evan has enlisted the help of Hayden Havard from the up-and-coming Austin-based band The Irons. “He’s just an absolute wizard,” Evan said. “It wasn’t my best work, and the studio was a little messed up, but he made it sound so good.”

It took two “brutal” weeks’ worth of 12- hour days to record the album, and the files have sat untouched for two years: “If you want to drop an album, you also have to do everything around it, like planning, getting the art together, paying for things, and getting it mixed. But it’ll happen soon.”

Check out the band’s music on Apple Music and Spotify and stay connected with them on Instagram @thebackroomrumors.