Photo by Tobin Voggesser

The city of Lakewood, Colo. is about 12 miles from Red Rocks Amphitheatre if you take Route 6 to the interstate. But the journey from Point A to Point B took the Miller brothers about 12 years to complete, and the road that they took was much more arduous than some of these Rocky Mountain back roads in the dead of winter. Twin brothers Luke and Jesse play guitar and bass, respectively, in Lotus, a band that Luke first formed in 1999.

On July 2, 2011, in front of an 8,000-strong audience that included many of their childhood friends and family, Lotus co-headlined Red Rocks with The Glitch Mob.

“On the one hand, it felt really good,” reflects Luke. “It felt like a moment that we had been working toward for more than 10 years. On the other hand – I don’t know if this means that I’m jaded or something – but it almost felt like it was just another day on the job.”

Now, before you judge him as ungrateful, consider his earnest explanation: “I enjoy every concert and I try to put 100 percent into every show.” Luke concedes that the band has, by now, played to audiences two or three times larger than Red Rocks thanks to the ever-growing festival circuit. “But it did feel really good being up there – it felt like a kind of milestone, for sure.”

Especially given that the Lakewood natives nearly played the iconic mountain venue at the end of their senior year of high school when their graduation was held there. They figured that their band at the time – the only one in their class – was a shoo-in. When it didn’t work out, Luke “vowed to make it back to Red Rocks the real way.” Consider it a promise kept. But, for Lotus, it’s just one step higher on a ladder that they intend to continue climbing for some time.

Indeed, with s decade now behind them, Lotus’ best days are yet to come. But before we look at where they’re going, let’s first assess where they’ve been.

The Lotus story begins in Lakewood, when Luke and Jesse were adolescents forced to take piano lessons once a week at the insistence of their mother. By the time that middle school rolled around, however, they dropped the lessons because, according to Luke, “it didn’t really seem cool at that point.”

Fast forward a few years to high school, when someone left an acoustic guitar at their house, and the brothers begin what would become their lifelong love of making music. Luke bought a better guitar, Jesse bought a bass and the brothers jammed. They formed a ska band and even worked on horn charts together until college when Jesse went off to study music performance at St. John’s college in Santa Fe, N.M. At night, he tinkered around in jazz ensembles and bluegrass bands. Luke, meanwhile, went off to Indiana to pursue a double major in music performance – and peace and justice – at Goshen College.

Luke formed Lotus with fellow guitarist Mike Rempel during his freshman year. At the end of that first summer, and unfulfilled by his musical pursuits at St. John’s, Jesse made the move to Indiana to join his brother’s new band. Whatever Lotus turned out to be, was better than playing bluegrass in New Mexico.

During Lotus’ first few years, they were a band in search of an identity. Instrumental by choice – they sang a couple of songs at first but made the conscious decision to become all-instrumental by 2001 – and jammy by nature, Lotus almost sprouted as musician’s musicians from the get-go, aided and abetted by the raw talent of Rempel’s sometimes jaw-dropping guitar playing.

“I don’t think anyone in the beginning said, ‘This is going to be our sound’ or ‘This is exactly who we want to be,’” says Jesse. “We always looked forward and looked at how to evolve the sound.”

Granted, his bands before then – going back to the high school ska band that almost played at Red Rocks – were always clearly defined by genre. It was ska, jazz, bluegrass or punk. “When you set out with a genre like that, it’s kind of limiting,” Jesse explains. “I feel like you can do something as far as you can take it and then it’s kind of done. But with Lotus, we’ve always set it up as something that can continually evolve and where we can try new stuff. And that’s a big part of the reason that we’re still going 11 or 12 years after we started this off.”

Photo by Dave Vann

At first, of course, the band needed day jobs to support themselves while, at night, they figured out just what, exactly, Lotus was going to look and sound like as an entity. The twins took landscaping jobs, albeit for different landscaping companies. When I suggest, via a late-night text message, that some parallel might be drawn between working on landscapes by day and creating soundscapes by night, Jesse immediately shoots back the following SMS: “If trimming bushes and mowing lawns was anything like writing music, I’d probably still be at it.”
But, alas, the brothers were able to quit their landscaping jobs – and the other guys in the band were able to walk away from various stints as house painters, junk removers and the like – and focus on Lotus full-time around 2004.

That’s when they all, collectively, realized that Lotus wasn’t just going to be a band they were in until they found another one – Lotus was it. “I went all in at that point,” says Jesse.

Lotus was still a group in search of an identity. Early reviews compared them to more established acts in the then-fledgling jamband scene – groups such as The Slip (likely because Rempel’s spiraling guitar licks sometimes recalled Brad Barr’s agile fingerwork). Still other comparisons misguidedly – but understandably – likened them to the electronic-leaning, instrumental, jam rock pioneers of the day, Sound Tribe Sector Nine.

These days, when Lotus performs at electronic festivals such as Ultra in Miami, or even on multi-act bills with DJs and groups like The New Deal, they’re often cited as being the rock band representatives.

“It’s a funny change,” says Jesse, “because when we first got into the festival scene, we were always the electronic group. There would be a bunch of roots-rock or even bluegrass groups and then we’d get up there and there would be wires going everywhere and instruments that people in those other groups had never even seen.”

Much like the fabled fruit from the lotus flower of Greek legend, the fruit that the band produces creates a dreamlike state of contentedness, rooted firmly in the now. Perhaps all improvisationally-laced music leans on this, but when the listener is fully tuned into a Lotus jam, they are fully in a moment. And although, harmonically and rhythmically, each new moment is intrinsically tied to both the past and the future, the effect can be a slight intoxication by way of amnesia.

The band’s sound has finally crystallized in the past few years. In the 2000s, the group released albums that went on to earn Jammy Award nominations ( Nomad, Escaping Sargasso Sea ) or served as take-home souvenirs of the band’s improvisation-heavy live shows. Be that as it may, the band members still tried to avoid the dreaded “jamband” stigma.

“I think, in some circles, Lotus will always be identified as a jamband – and to some people that isn’t a bad thing,” admits Jesse. “But when you read it in the press, it’s often meant as some kind of slam against the band and it usually has nothing to do with music. It’s become a code word for a certain type of fan or something and really has no reflection on the music. I think someone in the media writes ‘jamband’ and they want to compare it to the crowd that goes to see Phish or something like that.”

On the band’s new self-titled album, they have full-on vocals on one track and electronic-based grooves and synth-driven sounds on most others. “It wasn’t like we sat down and said, ‘Let’s become more electronic’ or anything,” maintains Luke. “It’s evolved naturally.”

The sentiment is akin to Luke’s interest in the burgeoning electronic scene. He relays that while there hasn’t been a single watershed moment that he can recall, he remembers being newly exposed to some DJs in the early 2000s and, on some nights, getting lost in the beat. “I wish I had that cathartic moment, but I can’t really say I have. It’s been more of a collection of experiences,” he says.

And it’s been that kind of “collection of experiences” that has led Lotus, during the past few years, to explore electronic textures while maintaining their commitment to being a band that plays and performs on live instruments.

Photo by Dave Vann

“Going into the making of this album, we didn’t set out on a theme or in a direction,” says Jesse.

As he explains this, he and Luke are sitting on a couch backstage at the Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco. Some of the other bands performing include Muse, Girl Talk and Phish. Deadmau5 takes top billing on the stage that Lotus played earlier in the day while Arcade Fire headlines another.

SCI Fidelity – a label that was formed and financed by the members of The String Cheese Incident – released the band’s previous album, Hammerstrike, in 2008. Still, despite another incidental tie to the jamband scene, the album is a far cry from “Drums” > “Space.”

By Jesse’s description, Hammerstrike was somewhat “guitar-driven, post-rock. And maybe, unconsciously, as an answer to that, we started writing more synth-driven stuff. And that kind of led to some of the more electronic and dancey stuff that ended up on this album.”

The new self-titled release also marks the first studio album to feature Lotus’ new lineup. After the band remained united for most of their career, original drummer Steve Clemens dropped out of the band in the fall of 2009 to spend more time with his family. (Lotus tours relentlessly, playing nearly 100 shows a year. It’s a way to carve out a living but not a great way to start a family.) A year after Clemens left, percussionist Chuck Morris also resigned around the time that his wife gave birth to their second child.

Clemens’ departure was initially supposed to be for one season. In order for them to on the road – and unwilling to take the full electronic leap into drum machines – Lotus found themselves in search of a drummer, which is a daunting task for any band. Lotus unanimously decided that if they could have any drummer in the world join them, then it would be Mike Greenfield.

They first met him eight years earlier when Greenfield’s band at the time, The Ally, opened for them in Indiana. In addition to Greenfield, The Ally featured bassist Ira Tuton who would soon attain indie rock fame with the band Yeasayer.

Greenfield had become something of a drummer for hire in the Northeast live music scene for awhile, subbing with the Disco Biscuits on several occasions and performing with several of that band’s offshoots and side-projects that, in turn, also featured members of Further (Joe Russo), The New Deal (Jamie Shields) and the guys from Brothers Past. He also played for State Radio, which featured Chad Urmston from Dispatch.

Almost as a long shot, Lotus contacted him and, much to their surprise, he was available to join the band full time. “That eliminated a lot of the work or headache that could’ve been involved,” Jesse says, mildly. “We’re blessed to have Mike Greenfield be a part of the project.”

For his part, Greenfield relays that he was on a temporary contract at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. when Lotus contacted him. “Prior to receiving their email, I had given up on my dream of playing an extensive cross-country tour in a tour bus,” he says. “But, with that email, the dream came to fruition. I was beyond elated and immediately began to tackle their 100-song catalog.” The group now performs as a four piece, with Greenfield having secured a permanent position on drums and nobody, as of yet, replacing Morris.

Greenfield’s addition is the perfect placeholder for the band’s new era. Coming from a background that merged improvisational-friendly rock music with more modern, electronic beats, he swears that his entrance into Lotus had little relevance to the group’s latest electronic explorations. “When I joined the band, the Millers were already starting to change their writing style in a noticeable way,” he says. “The songs were becoming more electronic and assertive, and I feel that my playing complements that style very well.”

So, while the band consistently picks up new fans and continues to expand their reach, they may find themselves always and forever trying to explain or define just exactly what kind of music they play. “I really wish that we could have a simple name that would encapsulate what we do,” confesses Luke. “We’ve tried over the years but nothing seems to really stick or encapsulate the entirety of Lotus, so it’s been a hindrance not to have that. Still, to this day, when people ask what kind of music we play, I fumble around.”