Lord Huron’s ‘Strange Trails’ Lead To Arenas, Kristen Stewart & Far More (Cover)

“What if you could choose your fate like choosing a song on a jukebox? What if your finger slipped and you got the B-side instead? What if you misunderstood the meaning of the dang song to begin with?”

The quote is a tease from the official announcement of Lord Huron’s next album, The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, which drops July 18 via Mercury Records. The dreamy prompt is in line with the vibe of Lord Huron, the musical project led by the enigmatic Ben Schneider, which evokes images of the woods, a spooky take on the West and a sometimes-psychedelic journey into both the comfortable yet unknown. 

“It was a challenge in the beginning to describe them, because I wouldn’t call it straight-up rock and it’s not Americana,” said Trey Many, the band’s longtime agent at Wasserman Music. “The best description I’ve come up with is that if you were at a bar in a David Lynch movie and there was a band playing, and then you left the bar and turned around and the bar wasn’t there, like a ghost bar — Lord Huron would be that house band.”

The band’s music and lore, often involving a web of interlocked characters and storylines, have cultivated more than just a cult following. Their mega-smash hit, “The Night We Met,” in 2017 was featured in a pivotal scene in the Netflix drama “13 Reasons Why” and has since racked up 2.8 billion streams and counting. That’s one of the most streamed songs of the Spotify era, sandwiched between songs by Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran.  

“The craziest part about it is it’s out-streaming every song in front of it right now,” says longtime manager Richard Cohen of LoyalT Management. Cohen notes that, although that particular TV series ended in 2020, the song has had its largest streaming activity only in the last couple of years. “I mean, we have a long way to go to catch up to (The Weeknd’s) ‘Blinding Lights,’ but if we keep on this pace for another 10 years, who knows? It’s like the little engine that could.”

That said, Lord Huron is far away from a one-hit wonder with multiple songs well into the hundreds of millions of streams, and even deep cuts such as the 14-minute, ambient, instrumental closer to the 2021 LP Long Lost, “Time’s Blur,” still racking up 3.1 million plays on Spotify.

While the well-placed “The Night We Met” sync put the band in front of a large, young audience in a major way, buying tickets requires a lot more commitment than watching a TV show or clicking a song on a playlist. 

Grinding on the road since 2010, Lord Huron had already developed a strong fanbase and live-band reputation well before the Netflix sync. Unafraid to tackle tertiary markets, the group’s always invested in its production to take fans on memorable live musical journey, one with surprises and worthy of repeat visits. 

“We’re kind of always on the road, and I think that’s how we’ve maintained it,” says Schneider, Lord Huron’s chief singer/songwriter/guitarist from his home in Los Angeles, days before the band’s headlining set at High Water festival in North Charleston, South Carolina. 

“We’ve just been willing to go out and grind,” Schneider, 41, says. “We were lucky we could get shows in those early days. You’ve got to pile into the van and drive state to state, where, especially out west, that means 10-hour drives where you’ve got to sell your own merch and find a hotel. We did that for years. I definitely don’t mind the way touring has evolved for us now that we’re on a bus and everything. It’s a real different experience. It’s still not anything particularly glamorous.” 

Lord Huron’s 2025 schedule includes a run celebrating the 10-year anniversary of its second LP, Strange Trails, leading into a full summer tour that sees multiple North American legs and European dates. Following support dates on Kacey Musgraves’ arena tour this winter, Lord Huron will play its largest headline dates so far, with arenas including Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, Portland’s Moda Center, Austin’s Moody Center, New York’s Madison Square Garden and Inglewood’s Kia Forum, as well as two-night stands at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado, the new Pinnacle in Nashville and others. 

“It’s kind of daunting to think about that,” Schneider says, admitting he was still transitioning from recording mode to live performance mode. “I think playing with Kacey was the first arena show I’ve ever been to, so that was a new thing for me.” He quickly corrects himself after remembering a run of Canadian dates supporting hometown heroes Arkells, largely taking place in hockey arenas, but the point stands. 

“I think it’s a challenge everybody faces when they go into one of those rooms, making sure to find a way to have that connection with fans the way we do in a small theater or club and how to find a way to do that in a room that’s as big as we want.”

However, Schneider is comforted by support from a longstanding team that includes not only management and agent but creative personnel like front of house engineer Justin Chechile and production handled by Cour Design in Nashville.

That’s not to mention the actual band themselves, whose history goes back decades, with Schneider meeting drummer Mark Barry in kindergarten, guitarist Tom Renaud in middle school and bassist Miguel Briseño in high school. Growing up in Michigan, and inspired by the majesty of Lake Huron, Schneider initially formed Lord Huron as a solo project in 2010 after moving to Los Angeles. 

“Everybody likes the challenge, but it is kind of scary, to be perfectly honest,” Schneider says of the weight of the arena gigs. “Down to every level. The musicians,  we’re all trying to up our game and find ways to get better tones and perform better. Everybody puts in their part to make that happen. There’s just so many moving pieces in a tour like this. It used to just be three of us, now there’s 20 people on tour with us. Honestly, as I mentioned, transitioning from recording to the live thing, this is all stuff that is keeping me up at night.”

The jump to arenas was gradual and intentional, like everything the band does, and just happened to be what made the most sense in those particular markets.

“We took a swing at some arenas this time around, and we didn’t want to go all-arenas because it’s not a one-size-fits-all thing for them,” says Many. “We’re just trying to play the right room in the right market every time, so we felt like it was time to take a swing — MSG and the Forum, Moody Center in Austin, we sold out places there before and were ready to make the next step.” 

The band’s previous largest gigs are no slouch, either, with multiple doubles at Red Rocks (18,182 tickets, $1.2 million in 2024), and headliners at major outdoor venues like Merriweather Post Pavilion near D.C. Forest Hills Stadium in Queens and Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley, all well above 5,000 tickets.  

“Our philosophy has always been we’re willing to take a cut on our personal profits in order to make the show what it needs to be,” says Schneider. “We always have kind of punched above our weight in terms of making sure we bring that show. It’s amazing how fast that stuff evaporates, how many places the money needs to go. I remember seeing some of the numbers on offers, what headliners at festivals get paid back then, and I was like, ‘We could retire on that!’ You know? But I didn’t really understand the true workings of how expensive it is to put on a show at that scale and support 20 people.”

It also doesn’t hurt when a band can command an audience’s attention in any setting, from outdoor daytime festival slots to intimate theater settings, bars and now headlining arenas.

“It really helps the longevity of any artist if they’re able to develop a fan base not just in the top 10 biggest cities,” said Wasserman’s Many, who represents a number of acts with strong and sustained touring careers,  including Death Cab for Cutie,  Iron & Wine and Fleet Foxes. “For example, those ‘Strange Trails’ shows sold out in Reno, two nights in Missoula, sold out Salt Lake on that leg and then we added another Salt Lake show on the album tour leg. They’re just able to connect with people outside of just the top major metropolitan areas.”

Three new singles were released leading up to album drop, which will help promote the tour, and the team says the response is already very strong.

“It’s pretty fantastic the amount of tickets we’ve sold without announcing a new album, to be honest,” Cohen said. Noting the band has so far elected not to take a full tour deal from any one promoter, Cohen credits an array of longtime promoters from different camps, including Josh Moore and Johnny Beach at Bowery Presents, Scott Campbell at AEG Presents in Denver and Brian Smith at Live Nation in Los Angeles, as well as AC Entertainment, Another Planet and other partners who have “gone above and beyond for this band.” 

The success of previous releases has led to confidence and creative freedom for Schneider, thanks to the following the band has built over the years. 

“You can’t discount luck, and a few good placements on TV shows and whatever. These days that goes a long way,” Schneider says. “That’s kind of the new radio, from my perspective. It’s thrown us up in a way that has allowed us to creatively do whatever we want. We’ve built up enough of a following to work out a deal with a major label where they really don’t touch what we do creatively.  If i dont have another hit in my life, that’s OK, that’s not necessarily what I’m after. I just want to keep connecting with people as much as possible.”

That seems just fine with the band’s label home at Mercury Records, where the band has been for the last seven years. 

“Lord Huron represents many of our core values at Mercury in terms of embracing creativity, building long term growth, and developing a direct and meaningful relationship with fans,” says Mercury President and COO Ben Adelson, adding that the label recently began distributing Lord Huron’s first two albums, Lonesome Dreams and Strange Trails. “For us, Lord Huron is a cornerstone of the label and we couldn’t be more thrilled to be part of their journey. The band is endlessly creative with the worlds they build and the stories they tell. Each album is a new sonic adventure and this upcoming album is some of their best work to date.  It’s been truly inspiring for our team to work alongside them on this album.”            

For the Strange Trails anniversary shows, Huron’s Schneider admits he didn’t see himself partaking in a tribute tour of sorts, but in this case it makes sense.

“To be perfectly frank, I used to see those kinds of shows and be like, ‘Don’t they want to just keep moving forward? Why do they have to be looking back into the past?’” he said. “But over the years, our fans have said, ‘This album helped me get through a time in my life that was really difficult or really beautiful, or really magical or, or transitional’ or whatever it might be. It is for us too, because this album was during some of the most formative times of our career, when things were starting to pick up, we were gaining momentum, we’re playing bigger rooms, we’re hitting our stride musically as a group. So for us to be able to relive that simultaneously while giving our fans this kind of transcendental experience feels pretty cool.”

Support on the 2025 dates include strong draws in their own right, with a range of acclaimed artists including Feist, Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee, SG Goodman, Lee Fields, Molly Lewis and Indigo De Souza. 

“I’m excited about the way it came together,” Schneider says. “It took a while to piece it all together, but I just really wanted to try to find people that I love for this one. I mean, I always do that, honestly, but sometimes it’s harder than others to actually make that happen. This time it all came together and it’s a really great range of people, different styles. They’re all stuff that I am hugely a fan of.”

Which brings us to Kristen Stewart, the Hollywood actress and music nerd whose spoken-word collaboration with the band and music video appearance for the single, “Who Laughs Last” seems completely out-of-the-box.  Although the “Twilight” star has participated in music videos for artists including Jenny Lewis, The Rolling Stones, Interpol and Rita Ora, this was Stewart’s first time credited as a featured vocalist. 

“I like movies as much as the next guy, but I’m not running in those circles or anything,” Schneider says with a laugh. “I tried this song at first with my own voice doing the spoken-word thing, and I really decided that it needed to be a woman. I had my wife demo at first and she did a great job, but we were both kind of like, ‘You hear somebody else.’”

Somebody else indeed.  

“I just kept hearing Kristen Stewart’s voice. I don’t know why,” Schneider adds. “So I found a way to reach out to her and she happened to be a fan of the band and we met up and got along. Just the fact that we were able to get in touch with her was a surprise. The fact that she was interested was a surprise, the fact that we got along so well was a surprise, and to some degree, the fact that she was so easy to work with while recording it and throwing ideas around, that she was willing to be in the video – just every stage had a surprise.” 

It’s just another “Strange Trail” for a band with one of the most-listened to songs of its time that also happens to evoke a Lynchian ghost bar house band and play multiple nights in Montana while on tour. 

“I really like that people are taken aback by it,” Schneider says. “People were kind of surprised and, you know, I think it’s nice I can still surprise people in this world.”