There’s barely enough room for four guys to stand abreast onstage at The Box, an ornate, high-priced burlesque club and performance space located in the heart of New York’s Lower East Side. As the front-line members of The Wild Feathers thrash and wail on the venue’s petite proscenium, their shoulders nearly meet, forcing them to sway their instruments to and fro to negotiate the space. As awkward as the setup may be, it only seems to energize the players, who are treating the industry-friendly crowd to hors d’oeuvre-sized portions of their meaty new album, Lonely Is a Lifetime.

Not only does the intimacy of the venue concentrate the sound, but it also offers a perfect metaphor for a band in rare sync. The Nashville-based Wild Feathers have built an esteemed reputation, in part, through their ability to squeeze fresh feeling out of American rock clichés, updating the values of bands like Buffalo Springfield and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. At the same time, the Feathers hold the notion of collaborative songwriting as a sacred oath, honoring equanimity in a way that, in today’s ego-mad pop world, seems practically communist.

The Wild Feathers boast three formidable songwriters and four singers, in the tradition of great ‘60s and ‘70s hydra-headed acts like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Fleetwood Mac. While each Feathers vocalist and writer remains distinct in timbre and sensibility, they meld with surprising consistency. There’s no frontman here—just frontmen, creating an unbreakable showing of brotherly force.

The day after their showcase, the band’s core trio have congregated in the conference room of their record company, Warner Bros., bantering as fluidly as they write and play. To 31-year-old guitarist Ricky Young, the lure of their approach comes down to simple math. “If two heads are better than one, then three or four must be even better,” he says. “It increases your chances of coming up with something great.”

“When I’m writing, I actually wait on A lot of songs,” adds bassist Joel King, who is a year younger. “I could finish it, but then it won’t be as much a Wild Feathers song. If I take a song to the other guys, they’ll unlock something in it, and it becomes something more than I could do on my own.”

For the title track of the new album, the band’s second, their collective spirit reached an almost supernatural high. They wrote the track “Lonely Is a Lifetime” several years ago, during a stay at the historic Joshua Tree Inn, the hotel where Gram Parsons fatally overdosed. “Gram Parsons’ birthday was coming up and we said, ‘What if we stay in the room he died in?’” Young recounts.
“We figured there would be a thousand ‘Grampires’ trying to stay there,” reasons 31-year-old guitarist Taylor Burns, referring to those ghouls who savor Parson’s morbid, and mythic, end. (In 1973, Parson’s manager stole the star’s body during its transport to a funeral home and cremated him in Joshua Tree National Park).

As it turned out, the “death room”— No. 8—was vacant. “We checked in and went out to the local bars, got drunk and had a blast,” Young says. “Somehow, we made it back to the hotel. In the room, we picked up a guitar and wrote the song in 39 minutes.” Even the band’s sleeping arrangements that night speak to their closeness. “The room had only one bed,” King says. “At least it was a king,” quips Young.

The essential idea for a band of equals evolved early in The Wild Feathers’ formation. Nashville songwriter Young bounced his idea for a multi-pronged act off fellow Music City native King. At the time, each player had his own unsuccessful band, so King was open to Young’s notion. Still, things didn’t truly coalesce until a trip down to Austin, where the pair met Burns, who was performing in a band with guitarist Preston Wimberly. “It was the perfect storm,” Young says. Burns and Wimberly relocated to Nashville, where the four hired drummer Ben Dumas, cementing the initial fivesome. (Wimberly has since parted ways with the group.) Each of the main creative voices has their own strengths in terms of genre. “I come from more of a folk background,” Young says. “Taylor has a more blues background and Joel is full-blown rock-and-roll. Together, it’s a good recipe.”

Still, there were kinks to smooth out, especially with the vocals. “I never sang harmony before, so it was super difficult for me,” says Burns. “I kept going up to the melody. Also, I was used to being the frontman. It took adjustments on all of our parts. We had to swallow some pride.”

While none of the guys’ individual bands had broken through, they each enjoyed solid underground reputations. An A&R man at Interscope Records, Jeff Sosnow, had followed the individual work of Young and King. After befriending them and hearing the new lineup in 2010, he signed the Feathers before they played a single live show or recorded a song. The label made for an odd fit. While Interscope has had great success with hip-hop, R&B and pop, rock music is far from its specialty. “It was horrible,” says Burns. “No one there got us. They didn’t listen to the kind of music we did or have the same reference points.”

It didn’t come as a shock, then, when halfway through recording their debut album, the label dumped them. “It was hard to see at the time,” Burns says. “But it was a blessing in disguise.”

That’s because Sosnow ended up leaving the company and landing at Warner Bros., a label with a long legacy of breaking rock acts that recently shepherded the careers of current stars like Gary Clark Jr., Disturbed and Muse. In 2013, the band released their self-titled debut, shaped by producer Jay Joyce, known for his work with rock artists from The Wallflowers to Cage The Elephant. The Wild Feathers were self-conscious in the studio while signed to Interscope, building songs track by track. Joyce wanted them to work more organically, stressing a live approach.

Though the songs they had were mainly written on acoustic guitars, the band became more forceful in the studio. The result inserted a backbone into the dusty and rustic sound of Americana. “I listen to a lot of music that has become known as Americana, like Ryan Adams and Jason Isbell,” Burns says. “But I think our music falls more into an ‘American rock’ category.”

“If somebody thought we were ‘Americana’ and saw us live, they’d be like, ‘Holy shit. This is loud!” adds King. The simple fact that their individual vocals weren’t wildly dissimilar helped the budding group cohere in concert, as well as in the studio. Unlike so many harmony bands, where the singers vary greatly in pitch and texture, there’s no high-range or low-bass singer in the Feathers. Likewise, no one has a lot of gravel in his voice. The result distinguishes the band from the high-contrast vocal braids of Fleetwood Mac and Gomez. “If you listen to the Eagles, Don Henley and Glenn Frey sound like fucking opposites,” King says. “But then there’s that cool thing with The Band where, a lot of times, I can’t tell if it’s Rick Danko or Richard Manuel that’s singing.”

To further blur their voices, the Feathers mix them up fitfully. In certain songs, they’ll switch between three lead singers in a single verse. Combined with their mind-melding songwriting, the Feathers are more like a well-blended melting pot than a ‘60s-rock-style salad bowl, where each ingredient retains its own flavor and texture.

Despite the Feathers’ sympatico, their first album featured four tracks with individual songwriting credits. Lonely Is a Lifetime only boasts two. “We’re definitely getting more cohesive,” Burns says. They credit their relentless time on the road for tightening their bond. From 2012 to 2014, they toured nearly nonstop, opening for acts like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson. “In 2013, we did as much as a band can do without dying,” he adds. “The only interaction we had was with each other.

Their isolation from the rest of the world wound up informing most of the lyrics on the new album. Themes of dislocation and loneliness kept cropping up. “When you’re on the road that much, you feel like cowboys on the trail,” Burns offers. “You meet cool people, but you don’t have time to get deep. The only real interaction you have is with each other.”

If that heightened their emotional isolation, then the new music finds the band expanding exponentially. “Goodbye Song” features a vocal breakdown that mimics a Beatles-y, psychedelic cascade, followed by a section with underlying funk. The song also sees the band stretching out with a long, “Down by the River”-style guitar solo, elaborated live by Burns.

On “Happy Again,” they boast a Motown-like bass part, forming a kind of audio in-joke: What could be happier than a Berry Gordy hit, after all? While producer Joyce came up with the idea for the part, King is responsible for the album’s distinct basslines. “So many bass players just play the root note, which is boring,” Young says. “Joel has a natural instinct for melody. Taylor’s guitar will go one way and Joel’s bass goes the other. If you listen to the bass that McCartney plays with The Beatles, he did that too.”

“It’s more like a fill than a walking bass,” King adds. “If there’s a gap in the song, where I can throw something in, I’ll do it.”

At the same time, the quartet made sure to leave room for the songs to breathe. “Nowadays, songs don’t have any space,” Burns reasons. “There has to be a word or sound for every fucking beat. You need a small space for the vibe. We want you to feel like you’re in the room when you listen.”

The group shook things up further by leaving in certain mistakes. “Perfect is boring,” Burns bursts out declaratively. “If people liked perfect singers, then Dylan and Lou Reed wouldn’t be so popular.”

“During ‘Into the Sun,’ we sing the wrong words at one point,” says King.

“That way, it feels like it’s happening live; it’s being documented,” Young adds.

“There’s a lot more discovery on this album than the last,” says King. “The first time, we had demoed that stuff a bunch of times, so we knew how every song would sound. This time it was like, ‘We don’t know how the hell this is going to turn out.’”

“We wanted to show our diversity and breadth—that we’re not just an alt-rock Americana band, or an alt-country band,” Burns explains.

Altogether, the album rocks harder than their first. “The last album was a bit more acoustic because that’s the way the songs were written,” King admits. “The first record was strum and swing. This is an attack.”

Despite the greater tension in the music, The Wild Feathers claim there’s shockingly little of it between them personally. They’re well aware that most of the ‘60s and ‘70s multi-songwriter bands dissolved into vicious turf wars and ego battles. They’re determined to circumvent that. “It’s a lot harder to get five guys to focus than it is with a solo artist or a DJ,” Burns reflects. “You’re always going to butt heads on certain things. And there are definitely times we don’t get along. But they’re few and far between, compared to other bands I’ve been around. There’s not one guy here who’s a diva or an asshole.”

For King, their setup mirrors something primal. “People like to sing together,” he sums up. “Subconsciously, I think all of us craved that, the feeling of ‘all-for-one’ on a project we can be proud of.”