If you go
› What: Parachute, The Wide Awake Tour featuring Brynn Elliott and Paul McDonald.› When: 7 p.m. Saturday, July 16.› Where: Revelry Room, 41 E. 14th St.› Admission: $20 in advance, $22 day of show.› Phone: 423-521-2929.› Artist website: weareparachute.com.› Venue website: revelry room.co.
Discography
2009: “Losing Sleep”2011: “The Way It Was”2013: “Overnight”2016: “Wide Awake”
Whatever its name implies, the career arc of Parachute in the latter half of its first decade has been anything but gentle and drifting. A more fitting moniker might be Sky Rocket.
The pop rock trio - originally a quartet - was formed in 2006 in Charlottesville, Va., by lifelong friends Will Anderson, Johnny Stubblefield, Kit French and Alex Hargrave, who has since left the band.
In 2009, Parachute embarked on its first headlining tour alongside Nashville-based SafetySuit. That string of dates was exciting for the precedent it set, French says, but it wasn't exactly glamorous.
"I remember a lot of those first venues were tiny coffee shops where you're splitting the bill with another band," he laughs.
"We've come a long way."
Despite its relative lack of prestige, that first headlining outing represented an upward progression for the band, one that started with a New Year's Eve performance in 2008 alongside The Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift on the Nivea Countdown Stage in New York City.
That show in Times Square kick-started a six-year rise to national prominence that French describes as "a really special journey."
In the years since its headlining debut, Parachute has embarked on more national tours, both on its own and in support of artists such as the Goo Goo Dolls, Needtobreathe, The All-American Rejects and Kelly Clarkson.
"She Is Love," one of the songs the band performed during the New Year's Eve countdown, has been played more than 35 million times on Spotify, where the band has about 1 million monthly listeners. Four of Parachute's songs have made it onto the Billboard 200 chart: "Overnight" (No. 15), "The Way It Was" (No. 19), "Losing Sleep" (No. 40) and "Wide Awake" (No. 48).
Parachute is currently in the midst of the second half of a national tour in support of its fourth studio album, "Wide Awake," which digital music magazine Beyond the Stage praised for "[having] tracks that have single potential, but also tracks that are ready for fans to scream and dance along to."
On Saturday, July 16, the Wide Awake Tour will usher Parachute onto the stage at Revelry Room, just down the street from Track 29, where the band performed last October in support of Mat Kearney.
Looking back on the last decade, French says, it feels as if Parachute fully has come into its own and is realizing the ambitions its members entertained when they started out as untried college students.
"We've always had the mentality of 'Next step forward. How can we play more music to different people in new environments?'" he says. "With that mindset, I feel like we're exactly where we've always been trying to get - to be able to go out on tour and bring a big light show and a huge sound.
"To do that and be able to make it sustainable as a business and creatively satisfying has always been a dream of ours."
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.