As a classically schooled cellist, Calvin Langman knows he brings an unusual dimension to The Happy Fits. But it's not like he was consciously plotting a future where he would revolutionize his instrument within the rock idiom.
"When we really started writing, if I knew how to play bass, I probably would have played bass," Langman said, looking back on the early days of The Happy Fits. "But the cello was all I knew, and I could play the low notes. So I decided I'd play them. And Spotify took off, so we decided to take what we had and run with it, not change it up and make me play bass."
The "we" includes the other main songwriter in The Happy Fits, guitarist/singer Ross Monteith, and drummer Luke Davis.
Langman and Monteith were high school classmates in Clinton, New Jersey, but they were hardly longtime friends.
"We weren't really in the same friend group," Langman said. "I found out that he liked music because when he was learning guitar he would sometimes post some videos to Facebook and they'd always sound really good. Eventually he reached out and said he wanted to get some cello on, I think it was 'Three White Horses' by Andrew Bird. He thought it would be cool to do a version of that together.
"So we did and it wasn't very good, but it was a fun first experience, especially since I had just been in classical music and I did want to get into the rock 'n' roll world, but I didn't really have any outlets to do that. Ross kind of became my outlet. Then we started showing each other some songs, and that's basically how it all took off."
As Langman and Monteith were set to head off to college in August 2016, they self-released an EP, "Awfully Appealing." The story goes that a writer for Up in the Pines magazine in Arizona stumbled upon the group's EP when he had a typo in his search for "happy hits."
The writer listened to the song "While You Fade Away," and came away impressed. He shared the song with a friend at Spotify, who added it to the site's Fresh Finds playlist. Off at college, Langman saw the streams for the song jump from 1,000 to 39,000 almost overnight. From there, the song went viral, and streams grew to more than 100,000.
Langman and Monteith soon put college on hold, and along with Davis, decided to give The Happy Fits their full attention.
Last June, The Happy Fits released a full-length album, "Concentrate." It shows considerable development since "Awfully Appealing." The creativity and quality of "Concentrate" is especially impressive given the brief history of The Happy Fits. (In fact, the band was still booking its own shows until last fall, when the group hired a booking agent.)
Langman, Monteith and Davis have been working on a second album, and fans might hear a new song or two in the band's Aug. 23 Nightfall show. But Langman didn't want to get too specific about the group's set list because the band will try to adapt the show to suit its audience on any given night.
"We like throwing in a new song here and there," he said. "Our managers don't like it when we play new songs and stuff because they think the fans just come to hear stuff they know. But we know that fans, deep down, want to hear some new stuff sometimes. So we'll be playing mostly things off 'Concentrate.' There are some songs off of our first EP that are still doing well. But yeah, sometimes if we feel the crowd's not into it, we'll change it up, play a little bit heavier or we'll play more acoustic songs, depending on what everyone's vibe is at the time."