Formed in the bitter Chicago cold of winter 2015, Whitney is the self-described “country soul” project of songwriters Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek (both formerly of Smith Westerns), who are joined by rhythm guitarist Print Chouteau, keyboardist Malcolm Brown, trumpeter Will Miller, bassist Josiah Marshall, and sound guy Charles Glanders in the studio and on the road. Ehrlich and Kakacek have explained that the band’s name was inspired by their desire to place themselves at some remove from the songs they were writing. For a while, “Whitney” was imagined as a melancholy, nostalgic old man, whose imaginary perspective the two of them considered when writing. After a while, though, the concept seems to have faded while the name stuck.
In the year following the release of 2016’s Light Upon the Lake, the band toured non-stop, playing over 150 shows and steadily broadening their reach. Whitney continued to tour through 2017 and 2018, releasing an album of demos from LUTL in late 2017 that included a cover of Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights”. In early June of 2019, the band shared a new song called “Giving Up” and announced that their sophomore effort, titled Forever Turned Around, would be out August 30, 2019. Forever Turned Around received critical praise including a positive review from Consequence of Sound writer David Sackllah.
