Smallpools Jumps in With Both Feet

On Monday, Nov. 17 at 10 p.m. PT/1 a.m. ET, Yahoo Live will live stream Smallpools' concert from the House of Blues in Anaheim, CA. Tune in HERE to watch!

It's pretty rare that a band with only five completed songs embark on its own headlining tour of North America. But Smallpools is proving that you don't need a huge repertoire in order to pack houses and thrill fans.

Things happened fast for the Los Angeles-based synth-rockers. After throwing their belongings in a van and driving cross-country from New Jersey to the West Coast in 2011, vocalist Sean Scanlon and guitarist Mike Kamerman had no concrete plans other than making music and "not starving to death," as they put it. They soon met bassist Joe Intile and drummer Beau Kuther, both of whom came to L.A. from Portland to try their hand at being professional musicians in the City of Angels.

"I was substitute teaching and I had met Mike," Scanlon explains. "We lived close to each other on the East Coast. We knew we had to move [our music career] to the next level. My best friend had already moved out to L.A. to work at a label. We used him as an inspiration…he could be our intel of how to make it musically. There were some darker times, but now I feel like we have purpose there."

Initially Scanlon nabbed a job as a valet, parking cars at an upscale building in Westwood. As luck would have it, there was an unoccupied, fully furnished suite with a grand piano in the building, where Scanlon could hole up after work to write songs.

"They had a model unit, a multimillion-dollar vacant apartment," explains Scanlon. "There was a grand piano there. After I'd get off work at 11 p.m. I could hop up there and spend full nights up there just hacking away. I kind of felt like I lived there. So the first few songs were [written] just with me and my [note] pad and the grand piano."

One of those songs was "Dreaming," the ebullient lead single and title track from Smallpools' debut EP. It has received nearly 4 million views on YouTube to date, and it led to the band being offered a deal with RCA. Now that the band has been successful enough that the guys have been able to give up their day jobs, and they're hard at work on their first full-length album.

"We did a lot of full-day lockouts in Bedrock Studios in L.A.," says Scanlon. "We'd hash out the song structures and the melodies and then I'd go off in a room somewhere [and write lyrics]. The idea will start from one person and a lot of the best stuff comes from those happy accidents when we play a wrong lick or something and then we're like, 'Oh, what did we do there?'" Luckily, the band records all its sessions, so they can retrace their steps and figure out how to recreate those happy accidents.

Scanlon says that the new material has a "similar vibe" to the EP, and they're hoping to release it in early 2015. "I'm almost sure that it's done now," he says of the album. "It's the classic story of delivering the album and our camp thinking it wasn't done and we'd go back and do one or two more [songs]. I think we have all the right pieces now. I'm glad we took the time. I'm proud of a lot of the stuff on there that isn't even out in the world yet."

If the past year is any indication, Smallpools will continue to grow their fanbase and evolve as a band, proving that they weren't just "Dreaming."