photo: Drake Whitney

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For a band that’s built its reputation on choice live performances, it may come as a surprise that Houseplant is the result of the 2020 COVID quarantine period. Louisville, Ky.-mandolinist Tavis Conley and bassist Tommy Arnspiger first started batting around the idea for an original project in late 2019 but really used The Great Pause to put together what became their self-described “genre-fluid” band Houseplant.

“We talk about the pandemic being a blessing for Houseplant because, with any other project, we would have started, and we would have been really anxious to get out there and play gigs,” Conley says. “And since we couldn’t do that, it really allowed us to develop these original songs. And then our very first gig was May of 2021, a year after we began. We had a whole repertoire of original songs that were developed and ready to play—and a handful of covers that we threw in there.” Once concerts could safely return, the ensemble started gigging out, gradually adding keyboardist Sam Richardson and guitarist Chris Rodahaffer. “Tavis was just passionate and adamant that this was going to be an original project,” Arnspiger says. “There’s a handful of great cover bands in Louisville and around the region, but he knew he didn’t want to do that.”

The latest addition to the permanent Houseplant lineup is Brooklyn, N.Y.-based drummer Ben Atkind, who first met Conley and his family when his former band Goose was on the rise. “I was never able to tour with jambands when I was younger, and I was not familiar with that sort of thing,” Atkind says, “And, all of a sudden, I was on the road, and we would have Tavis and his wife Colleen, who is now Houseplant’s manager, at every show. Most of the time two of their older sons would be at the shows as well and they started this crew of all ages, races and walks of life that had each other’s back and were like a family. It blew me away.”

Tapping to Conley’s interests in emotive indie-rock songwriting, Houseplant quickly amassed a slew of original tunes, releasing a mix of live and studio tracks as their sound coalesced. Some of those recordings were documented at the Greenhouse, their home rehearsal space, showcasing their knack for advanced arrangements and improvisation.  2025’s Explorations Vol.: The Opal Sun is the first to include Atkind, featuring six songs and 50 minutes of music, including the 17-minute track “South Nepal.” “The idea for Opal Sun is that we wanted new music with this new lineup for our run of shows with Ben,” Conley says. “The very first run with Ben as a part of the band was three shows opening up for Dogs in a Pile and a couple solo shows. We just took little snippets of jams from that run, we put it all together and made the Opal Sun recording, which is an all-instrumental album with this lineup.”

More recently, they dropped the new single “You (and Yourself),” which is available on streaming services. “When I started this project, I wanted it to be improvisational music in the jamband scene but, at the same time, I wanted to write songs that had some good arrangements. I was hoping for that—some good lyrics, some indie vibes,” Conley says. “I was a huge fan of Radiohead and The National and some of those awesome indie bands and wanted to take influence from that. I’m not sure if we accomplished that or not but that was the thought.”