Lonely Mammals Warm Up for their New EP

Indie rock group Lonely Mammals was born in a hotel room on a spring break trip to Lynchburg, Virginia. Consisting of Logan Lehnert on guitar and Myles Thorton-Sherman on vocals, the pair’s vastly different musical backgrounds were brought together when the two pole-vaulters were recruited to Colby College’s track and field team. Lonely Mammals migrated to Colby College, a private liberal arts school in Waterville, Maine, from polar reaches of the country. Myles is a double major in biochemistry/astrophysics from Waterford, Vermont. His background in acapella influences his bright, soulful vocals. Logan, a Neurobiology student on a pre-dental track, came to the northernmost state all the way from San Francisco, California. West Coast influences – punk, grunge – are present in his guitar playing. For Logan and Myles, music is not only a passion, but a welcomed “escape” from their extensive responsibilities as student-athletes at Colby. 

After having formerly collaborated in a punk cover band called Nocturnal Omissions, the two “noodled around” writing songs with just vocals and guitar during their team’s trip to Virginia in the spring of 2024. Coming up with a name for their project was simple: throw out a noun and an adjective starting with their initials. And thus, Lonely Mammals came to life. Last fall, they pulled in drummer Dante D’Alessandro for live performances and recording sessions. Their old-fashioned, live-recorded demos will soon be produced in Colby’s new Gordon Center professional recording studio, which became available to students this spring. 

Before Myles’s graduation in May, the group will release their completed EP as a capstone for their musical endeavors. I had the opportunity to speak with Myles and Logan about Lonely Mammals and their lives as college musicians. And… muppets?

Share the who, what, when, where, and why of how Lonely Mammals came to be. 

Logan: So, [Myles and I] are on the same track team at Colby College. We are going on a spring break trip to Lynchburg, Virginia. He brought his guitar, and we decided, hey, what the hell? We’ll write a song. And so we wrote a song.. that was actually Shut Me Out. That is like, our original song. We wrote three other songs too, and they’re probably pretty crap, but…

Myles: In all fairness, they all came about over the course of less than a week. But that was definitely the birth of Lonely Mammals.

Logan: Yeah, a lot of it would be like, I’d write the chords and I’d be like, okay, what do we think? And then [Myles] would start singing over it. I’d add some noodles in between. That’s kind of how our style came to be. 

Myles: Yeah. And we wanted to make it into, like, a full-fledged project. But it was a long process of figuring out what we wanted to do with only two people. That’s why we pulled in Dante as a drummer, starting this fall semester. And after that, it actually took off pretty well. He meshed with the sound we were going for. And it’s been going well since then. 

So are either of you a part of any other music groups? Do you have any solo projects? 

Logan: We were actually a part of a rock group who just did covers. 

Myles: Nocturnal Omissions. 

Logan: I came up with the name because I thought it was funny. I said it as a joke, and people were like, yeah, that’s good. 

Myles: That’s actually why me and Logan became closer friends, because at the time we were just teammates, but we didn’t really interact very much outside of track. And after he came up to me with, like, four other guys and was like, Hey, do you sing? Do you want to sing punk covers? And I was like, Yeah, absolutely. I love that stuff. And then Nocturnal Omissions was born and I fell in love with performing. We moved on from there. But I’m in the jazz band playing tenor there, and I sing for the Colby Eight [acapella group]. And Logan is also the bassist in Right on Red.

What about solo projects?

Myles: I perform a lot at Mary Low [Coffee House] for the Saturday Night Lives. More so just to try to work on performing without being terrified in front of crowds. 

Logan: I’ve written a lot of songs just for myself. By myself. 

Myles: He’s written some bass solos that are pretty good. (To Logan:) What do you call those? 

Logan: Okay, I’m a pretty big fan of Star Wars. Especially when I was a part of Nocturnal Omissions. We were actually thinking of doing an album. We ended up not because it would have been mostly covers. So I had a jazz piece called Jizz Jazz. 

Myles: It all comes together.

Did you guys know that you wanted to do music in college? 

Logan: Nope.

Myles: I mean, we’re both STEM majors and athletes. I knew I wanted to do acapella, but Nocturnal Omissions is how I got connected with the CMI. I was not associated at all. 

Logan: For, like, the first half year, I forgot to give him access to all the rooms. 

Myles: I would be texting the group, Guys I’m outside, can you let me in? I actually don’t think I got key access until, like, last year. 

Let’s go into detail about the process of your writing and producing. 

Myles: I think the thing I like the most about working in this group is that we both have enough music theory knowledge to work through how to write a song. The areas where each of us is weak are the areas where the other one is strong. So like, I’m not as good as a guitarist. When I write songs, they’re pretty simplistic in terms of melody on the guitar or even in terms of chord progressions. I focus more on lyrics and vocals and structure of the actual song, whereas Logan is really good at writing complicated and pretty compelling chord structures. The melodies he writes are very good. So it makes it easy to then work off of what he has written for song structure and melody, to write lyrics and vocal melodies. Then once that’s built Dante’s kind of- 

Logan: Yeah, he is the rhythm man. 

Myles: He pulls it to completion at that point. 

Logan: I love Dante’s drumming style. It’s very cathartic. You imagine… uh, who’s the Muppet? 

Myles: I can’t remember the Muppet, but I know you’re talking about! The guy with the crazy hair. 

Logan: Yeah, he hits the drums hard, which I really appreciate, because there are other drummers who are just so afraid to. They’re meant to be hit crazy style, you know? Dante is not afraid of that. 

Myles: Something that we found to be the most effective way to get the song done is just to bang it out in the room. To have all of us there and say, Okay, this is our idea, this is what we want to do. And then me and Logan will go. And then from there, Dante will get an idea of what would make sense from a percussion standpoint, because, again, neither of us are percussionists. That’s why we pulled him in. 

Logan: Yeah, I know drums as well as I know the harmonica. I’m self-taught.

Do you start with a melody or do you start with the lyrics? 

Myles: It depends on the song chord. 

Logan: The melody, then lyrics is how I usually have done it. 

Myles: I’ve been doing it more like a [general] idea and then an idea for each verse, chorus. And then what I want to talk about from a song perspective, and then the chords follow from there. 

Logan: There are songs on the album that will be written by me and some that are written by Myles.

Myles. Yeah, you’ll probably be able to tell. Stylistically we have different approaches, but they come together pretty well. 

Logan: I don’t know if the final name is going to be Old World Ape, but that’s like pretty clearly…. Yeah, I wrote that. There’s a lot that we haven’t actually posted. 

Myles: Yeah, I would say our two favorites right now are Old World Ape and Money Rolls In, the most recent one we did. 

Logan: It’s got some Mario references. 

Myles: Mario. Luigi. I’m excited to get that one recorded. 

Logan: It’s a fun one. 

How do you balance being full-time athletes and full time college students AND musicians?

 Myles: I mean, we don’t. 

Logan: That’s the real answer. 

Myles: But if you want the the fake answer… Music is more of an outlet as opposed to a role or a job that we have here on campus. You know, track is something that we signed up for. That’s an innate part of why we’re at Colby. Academics is the core reason we’re at Colby. But music is an important method of expression and an outlet that that we have that for healthily existing in a very stressful environment. I think everyone needs that.

 Logan: I mean, we also don’t really have social lives. We both don’t drink. We don’t smoke. We write music. That’s our that’s our social thing. 

Myles: That is our escape.

How have other Colby musicians supported you, Dante included? And how has the general Colby community supported you in your your musical endeavors? 

Myles: The ability to work with a producer in Gordon will be game changing. We probably wouldn’t have elected to work on actually recording a professionally-produced album without the ability to access that. So, you know, it’s big ups and big downs at Colby. Talking about the community, I think it really depends on the year.

Logan: Last year it was cut throat. A lot of butting heads. 

Myles: Battle of the bands was… any jibes there were real. But looking back, some of my favorite times on campus have definitely been performing live at Colby. My favorite moment was with Nocturnal Omissions, our first big show. It was really packed. And we were playing a version of Rainbow Connection by Kermit. And I decided that it would be a good idea to have everyone sit down. And there was just something about having this room of, like, 75 people just sitting, listening to Rainbow Connection played with a banjo in the background. It was just idealistic. It was perfect. The kind of people that go out to shows at Colby are pretty great.

Logan: There are people who are like free agents who are just there for the concert. But I do have to say, most of the people at CMI concerts are really just there because they’re drunk and they want to see their friends perform. Those people are great.

I want to hear about your biggest inspirations for the upcoming EP, and how they influence the overall sound of the project.

Myles: So, that’s an interesting question for a couple reasons. Me and Logan listen to a lot of very similar music, but we also listen to very different music. 

Logan: I’m big into The Garden, at least right now. And Myles likes everything about the band except [that] the lead singer has a dark voice. The opposite of bright.

Myles: I think Dante leans a little bit more into that style, if not a bit more like early 90’s.

Logan: No, no, he’s post-punk.

Myles: But yeah, so those two have that alignment. I’m really into Midwest emo right now and I’ve been listening to a ridiculous amount of it. That influences a lot of the musc I’m writing, especially lyrically. Less like Title Fight, more like Modern Baseball. I wish we had a trumpet sometimes.

Logan: By definition, we’re indie. Similar to The Strokes, even. Alt rock. An older style of recording and sound.

Who are some of your favorite local musicians, either from Colby or from the wider Waterville area. Why?

Logan: We were going through Bandcamp searching by Waterville, and there was a French band that was really good. I couldn’t tell you their name. I clicked on them because their album cover was super neat.

Myles: It’s Genticorum. They have a lot of songs that they released pretty professionally. And I would say the best band to come out of Colby is Taco Alley. I’ve been to professional concerts that were worse than [they were].

Logan: They had a charisma. 

What are your goals for Lonely Mammals? How have these goals evolved over time?

Logan: I can speak for myself and Dante. We want to record the album. Eight tracks, ten total. If you include quote-unquote skits. 

Myles: [They’re] terrible. But it’s gonna add so much. I want it to be the kind of album you listen to all the way through.

Logan: A concept album. 

Myles: I want to make a project that was worked through to completion and released to the public. I love to perform. I love music. But this has been the first project where I’ve actively worked on writing music and employing the skills that I’ve obtained from being in a ton of different music things.

Logan: It’s a culmination. Your senior thesis.

You can listen to their released demos on bandcamp: https://lonelymammals.bandcamp.com/track/old-world-ape-1-30-25-demo; https://lonelymammals.bandcamp.com/track/shut-me-out-live-demo. Watch out for the upcoming release of their EP!