Lakeview, das US-Duo um die Sänger Luke und Jesse, verbindet Country-Herz mit Metal-Energie und einer klaren „Blue-Collar“-Haltung. Beim Wacken Open Air 2025 schrieben sie als erster Country-Act überhaupt auf dem Holy Ground Festivalgeschichte. Im Interview während des Festivals sprachen Luke und Jesse mit unserer Redakteurin Jacky über das Premierengefühl in Wacken und deutsche Publikumsenergie, ihre Blue-Collar-Mission sowie Herzschmerz als Thema.
Frontstage Magazine: How are you feeling at Wacken, finally?
Luke: It feels really good. We feel absolutely honored to be a part of this. It’s really great.
Frontstage Magazine: I can imagine, since you’re the first country act performing here. Do you have any words to describe this feeling?
Jesse: You do a few things in your life where you’re like „this is crazy“, this is for sure one of those things, and you’re just like, this is so fucking exciting.
Frontstage Magazine: Was there a special moment when you really realised that you are living your dream?
Jesse: We got everybody to start shouting „hey hey hey“ (gesture with fist in the sky).
Luke: That was like a goal of ours to get everybody to do that.
Jesse: You watch videos from this festival over the years, and you see the crowd. I mean, the crowds in Germany are just the best crowds in the world, so to get them involved like that is just something that’s super special.
Frontstage Magazine: Oh, is it true that the Germans are more engaged than the Americans are?
Luke: I wouldn’t say they’re more engaged, it’s just they’re engaged in a different way, and we always dreamed of doing that. When we saw Wacken on YouTube for the first time, we knew „Holy Shit, we need to do the Hey“. There’s nothing like this in America at this level for rock and metal. So when we see people going „hey“, we’re like we’ve got to do that.
Frontstage Magazine: Congratulations, you did it! Did Wacken or the size of the festival in some kind alter your performance?
Jesse: Really, I think we just do our best to play the same show if it’s 10, 10,000 or 85,000 people. You just got to give it, because the 10 people will end up turning into 10,000 people one day, so you just got to give the same show every time you play.
Luke: Yeah, everything, every time. We always give our best every time. Our dialogues might be a little bit more in depth in America. Here we try to speak in a way where everybody can understand us slower. That would probably be the only thing that changes. We give every show exactly the same amount of attention and energy.
Frontstage Magazine: Your show was really electrifying. You also mentioned you think Wacken is the coolest place on Earth. Would you still sign your statement?
Jesse: It’s one of the coolest festivals we’ve ever played, and we’ve always wanted to play here. It’s just the grounds itself and just the energy around everyone. The fact that the rain and the muddiness is part of the whole culture here is just so badass. We play festivals all the time in America. If what happened today, they would postpone the show. Here, it is the whole point.
Luke: There’s just something sacred about being able to play this. It is so special that you can’t really describe. The fact that we’re the first country rock band to get to do this was just really, really amazing.
Frontstage Magazine: Do you have a background more in country or in metal? Because I think it’s a very novel combination of those two genres. What is the background of your style?
Luke: I don’t think there was ever a definitive moment when me and Jesse started doing this. It was what we want to hear. No one’s a bigger fan of Lakeview than us. Both of us grew up on both rock and country. When I was a child, I was only allowed to listen to church and country music because it didn’t cost. Growing up, I didn’t understand country music fully. I didn’t understand the depth of that. You don’t go through heartbreak when you’re eight years old. When you get older, it starts making more and more sense. When we started touring as young men, we were playing in rock and metal bands. That’s where we cut our teeth in the scene, learned how to do all this shit ourselves, learned how to entertain a crowd, even if it was in a basement. In America, there’s five people there. That’s the realness of it. As we got older, country starts making more sense. I think it just organically happened.
Frontstage Magazine: Sometimes it also displays some kind of contrast, like the roughness combined with the heartbreak feeling. Does it also reflect conflicts in your persons?
Luke: Absolutely. Our biggest thing is we try to make it fun, even if it is about heartbreak. We have a lot of songs about heartbreak because we’ve been through a lot of relationships in our lives. There’s probably more to come. Regretfully (laughs) But unlike a lot of other country artists, more like the rock artists, we’re trying to create a show that is more energy and bringing people up, not down. It’s the feeling of this is about something you might be going through, but we’re here to fucking drink it off and have a good time. That’s important to us.
Frontstage Magazine: In your music, you’re talking a lot about your blue collar origin. I’m interested in what did you guys do previously for a living before you became musicians?
Jesse: We did everything from construction to landscaping and roofing and flooring, just anything to make some money to go on tour and play some shows. The blue collar thing, that’s an American saying, but it’s basically just a term for people who work with their hands, do the hard labor to keep everything moving around. There’s a lot of shit that happened today at this festival that wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for some random person who carried some heavy thing from point A to point B and put it down. We are those people, so we make music for those people. I think what’s cool about what we do is that that energy and that mission statement is kind of a universal language. It doesn’t matter if you’re in America or Germany or the UK or wherever. If you work hard for what you have and you’re proud of it, then Lakeview is the band for you.
Frontstage Magazine: Possibly you’re putting this kind of mindset also in your music. Is this the reason why you achieve so many streamings lately, for example?
Luke: I’ll never ever forget. My body won’t let me forget the stuff I’ve done to get us together to do what we’re doing now. When I look out in the crowd and I see this guy walking out there in the mud with a keg on his back to sell beers, that’s a blue-collar job. When we showed up and there was an aluminum road underneath the mud, the whole time I’m only thinking who set this up? There’s probably a team of guys who set this up. They will never get a thank you. They’re the unsung heroes of this whole festival. This wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for these couple people that came together and worked hard on this in the worst weather, the worst conditions, so everybody else can still have Wacken. Those are the people we want to run up a flagpole and say, thank you so much, we do see it because we’ve been there. And there’s so many folks that don’t get a thank you or acknowledge for what they do, and that’s what we stand for. That’s blue-collar.
Frontstage Magazine: Okay, I see it. I can imagine that your community is really engaged and has an emotional connection to you. How does it manifest?
Jesse: There’s definitely an energy in the room as a physical manifestation of it. People get our logo tattooed. Whenever you find your audience, and they feel like it resonates with them and it speaks to them, they feel like they’re in the band just as much as I’m in the band. It’s been cool to take that thing and bring it around the world and be like, oh, we have those fans here in Germany, and we have those fans in the UK and all over Europe. It’s really fucking cool.
Frontstage Magazine: So there are many people who get Lakeview tattoos? What’s the weirdest spot you noticed?
Jesse: Not so much the spot, it’s more so much the size, really fucking big.
Luke: Full arm! I’ll be honest, it looks cool. We’re really prideful about how this stuff comes off and how it looks. But I’m just like, wow, that is a lot.
Frontstage Magazine: I get from what you’re saying that the live interaction is also always important for you. Is it more important than seeing those streaming numbers at the moment, which also rise through the ceiling?
Jesse: I don’t look at the numbers.
Luke: Yeah, I never do. Only our manager tells us. It always feels good to get acknowledged for what we’re doing. But that’s why we do what we’re doing, because we’re out here to acknowledge people for what they’re doing. Because like we said earlier, there’s a lot of people that do stuff every single day that never gets acknowledged and never gets a pat on the back. There’s a lot of people that come home after a long day that never get a thank you for anything they’ve ever done. And that just sucks. We know that feeling firsthand. We’ve built things for people that we’ll never have in our life. We’ll never have them. And that’s okay. But it’s cool to be able to pay it forward and especially come all the way to Germany and say, hey, thank you. Thank you so much for working your ass off and doing what you’re doing. That’s all the payment we need.
Frontstage Magazine: Lovely. Will it also be a topic in your new single „Name in a Song„?
Jesse: The „Name in a Song“ is more about the heartbreak. We have another song coming out this year that is kind of like an anthem for that person that is unapologetically their self.
Luke: I think there’s a lot of pressure in the world right now to try to fall into a mold. And I think people shouldn’t have to feel like they do that. You know what’s best for your family. And I know what’s best for mine. And we can get along. It’s okay to be different than someone else because we’re designed that way. Where you fall short, I pick up. Where I fall short, you pick up. And that’s where it lives.
Jesse: But „Name in a Song“ is just more of like a relational track. It comes out August 15th.
Frontstage Magazine: I actually have a very last question: What was the last time you were actually really excited except anything for music like festivals or concerts?
Jesse: Holy shit. We were on tour for like a million weeks and then I got to go and see my daughter and that was pretty badass. So, that’s really the only thing that actually gets me excited these days besides what we do out on the road.
Luke: I agree with Jesse. Honestly, to go home and see his daughter is actually freaking awesome. She is just the sweetest girl in the world.
Frontstage Magazine: Thank you so much for your time! It was a pleasure to have you.
Both: Thank you. Cheers.
Fotocredits: Kevin Randy Emmers
