Gainesville band Big Shoals to perform Saturday in TV debut

Lance Howell might write the songs, play guitar, sing and handle the business ventures of his band, but he considers his bass player, Jacob Riley, the “secret weapon.”

Together, they are the two full-time members of the Gainesville native band Big Shoals.

They will be making their TV debut on Cypress Sessions, a TV show featuring musicians across Florida.

Big Shoals will be performing their signature Americana sound at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The show will be recorded and presented to WUFT after editing.

Howell had been routinely performing at Loosey’s open mic night in downtown Gainesville in 2012 when he met Riley. It wasn’t until the two became friends on Facebook that Howell realized Riley played bass. The next logical step to Howell was to see if Riley was interested in starting a band. The two have been performing together ever since.

Although the band usually plays as a duo, Michael Claytor, a musician and friend of the band, has an open invitation to rock with the band as a drummer and banjo player whenever he is available.

“It’s been tough to find people that could tour as much as we have in the past couple of years,” Howell said.

For this performance, they’ve added a few members, along with Claytor, to mirror the album sound as much as possible. Chris Hilman will be playing guitar, and Ryan Baker will be playing keys and organ. Howell said each member brings his own unique style to the table.

“It’s exciting for us because it’s really going to be the first time live that we are going to hear these songs as full as they are on the album for the most part,” he said.

Big Shoals will be playing songs from their two albums: “Still Go On,” which came out in 2014, and “Hard Lessons,” which debuted in 2016.

They also plan to showcase a new song with a mid-‘70s rocker vibe called “Don’t Look Back.”

“It’s just a good, fun rock-and-roll song that we’re just having fun with so I’m like, ‘We got to do it,’” Howell said.

Bill Bryson, the show’s producer, said he chose Big Shoals for their unique genre. He classifies them in the rock category, but he says they infuse Americana and alternative country to produce a noteworthy sound.

“They’re a good example of a really great rock band performing in Florida right now,” he said.

Aside from just Saturday’s show, the band will travel to its favorite spot in Florida, Big Shoals State Park in White Springs, to collect footage for the episode, as well as go to Loosey’s, which the band considers its home base. The producers will also collect interviews from other people to talk about the artists.

“We just try to develop a richer context of who the artist is in the episode on the TV show so that it’s not just a concert performance,” Bryson said.

Big Shoals has played at venues ranging from back porches to locations that hold up to 1,500 people. They look forward to stepping out of their typical bar venue for this show to perform in a theater setting.

“It’s a bit of a new world for us all the way around, being able to play the songs this way live for the first time, and it being recorded and videotaped,” Howell said.