"We get a lot of musical advice that is like, 'Little bands like you don't release full-length albums. Little bands like you should put out five songs,' " said KC Weldon, founder of the rock group The Just Luckies. "But I guess that's not really our style. We go all the way, always."
That group ethos has been the modus operandi of the band (which includes Shea Briggs, Noam Greene and Lucy Diavolo) from the beginning. Weldon founded the group after a series of condescending, patronizing encounters in a previous band.
"I was just around a lot of men," Weldon said. "It was always like, 'Can you harmonize to these male vocals, or can you play the tambourine?' Nobody ever wanted me to play the guitar." Raised in Alabama, Weldon described even her introduction to guitar as an adolescent as yet another experience in which she (and others like her) were treated differently because of their sex.
But it was that previous band experience that left an indelible mark on her creative goals. Weldon described her previous band as difficult. It was a struggle even to get a word in edgewise. "It was hard to grow as musicians when you're put into a position where you're sort of told what to do and not really given the opportunity to grow," she added.
The Just Luckies began with a true sense of purpose. Rather than fade away into the background, Weldon wanted to start a project featuring marginalized voices like hers. She's been successful so far.
Weldon said the group's songwriting process has turned into a more collaborative effort, compared with its origins, when she was the primary songwriter. "I think the way that it works is that I'm constantly going and going and going, and my trust team sort of calms me down, brings me back down to Earth and sort of helps edit and manage all of these ideas we have," she said.
The band's last album, "Lovesick Politics," released this past June, is a compilation of those collective feelings working together. "We have this really diverse group of influences coming together," Weldon said, "so we always joke we're like a punk band meets a country band singing sad queer songs."
Most importantly, those disparate influences merge to form something altogether new and compelling. When artists are given the freedom to think, perform and create without hindrance from others, something truly magical can happen.
Although the group's latest album came out only a few months ago, it is already hard at work on creating new music, with four new songs currently in the mix. The Just Luckies wants to tour more extensively outside of the Chicago area, but until then, they'll continue to create and promote their music to give voice to the voiceless. Fundraising, as Weldon noted, is a core component of the group's current mission. Most recently, they collected money for Tent City, the recently displaced homeless community living in the city's Uptown area. And they're next set at the popular Glitter Creeps showcase supports the Trans Liberation Coalition. It's a collective, supportive group effort, just as Weldon intended.
"We're just trying to help marginalized groups," Weldon said. "I think it's really, really important to me that everyone feels like they have the space to be creative and share their own voice."
