“Arena-ready” isn’t a vibe that most two-person projects strive for. But during an October 2020 songwriting session, a digital guitar preset called “Arena Ready” worked magic for Stuart McLamb and Charles Crossingham.
McLamb, the longtime frontman of Triangle indie favorite The Love Language, first met Crossingham, a Raleigh-based guitar aficionado, gear collector, and producer, in 2011. But they didn’t grow close until late 2019, when Crossingham reconnected with McLamb and offered to help produce the next Love Language album.
Within a few months, they were going for broke, developing a new musical kinship, and building Fancy Gap—an entirely new band—from the ground up.
“The ‘Arena Ready’ preset was ballsier than we typically would have gone,” Crossingham tells INDY Week on the front porch of his mountain cabin in Fancy Gap, Virginia, where much of their self-titled debut album was written and recorded. The property overlooks the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains as they extend back toward North Carolina’s Piedmont, where both men live full-time. “But as a performer, Stu is built for it,” Crossingham adds. “So ‘arena-ready’ became our mindset—and our belief.”
Out July 26 on Ghost Choir Records, the band’s own label, Fancy Gap explores universal themes—death, aging, life, love, and triumph—while channeling the joys of a back-road drive, windows down, hair blowing in the Blue Ridge breeze.
Crossingham first encountered the Fancy Gap area more than 15 years ago on a Christmas morning drive with his brother-in-law.
“It’s like going into a different world,” Crossingham says. “Everybody told me I was crazy to buy this cabin, but it’s brought a lot of joy to my life.”
McLamb, who returned to his native Raleigh in March 2020 after living for a few years in Los Angeles, heard plenty about the cabin: “I was intrigued but also a little skeptical,” he laughs. But with pandemic lockdowns in force, the serenity proved inspiring.
“It’s always hard to streamline creativity and tap into the weird, mysterious place that songs come from,” McLamb says. “But Charles had a good inclination this place would work. There’s good energy here.”
The two friends bonded over ’90s radio rock and 98.1 WBRF, a classic country station out of Galax, Virginia. The rafter-reaching choruses and crowd-pleasing guitar licks inspired them to chase their own bombastic sound—recorded on Crossingham’s Quad-Eight rack unit, a high-end 1960s console rescued from the ashes of a famous Seattle studio and lovingly rebuilt by Jonathan Whitley, a Carrboro-based friend of both men.
Since the Quad-Eights were portable, they could transport them up to Fancy Gap and capture their mountain magic, rather than just playing in what McLamb calls “a sterile live room.” Over the next two years, the duo dedicated themselves to crafting songs and jamming at the cabin, Crossingham on guitar and McLamb on drums and vocals. The former would toss out “cheeseburgers”—simple melodic ideas, song titles, or opening lines—to the latter, who says he often found himself nailing lead vocals on the first or second take.
“It reminded me of being a kid again—like playing in the garage with my brother just for fun,” McLamb says. “It’s a luxury you have when you’re younger, without as many responsibilities.” That freed the duo to dream big: McLamb envisioned a Neil Young–inspired rock record, while Crossingham embraced the challenge of taming his friend’s “wild mustang” energy.
“It was a leap of faith figuring out how to make a big-ass record by ourselves,” Crossingham says. McLamb concurs: “Charles would say ‘Go big!’ and let me go wild, then we’d rein it in and drive it home together.”
Fully stacked song list
The final results on Fancy Gap are polished and propulsive, with McLamb’s soaring vocals and timeless pop timbre laid atop Crossingham’s sonic expertise. The band channels disparate influences—Counting Crows and The Lemonheads, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash, Tom Petty and Travis Tritt—while staying true to their own ambitions.
Lead singles “How to Dance” and “Little Heart Racer” are unabashed bangers. The latter features McLamb, singing in the deepest Southern drawl of his career, paying homage to the “back roads down in Carroll County,” where “the summers are as slow as they should be.” It’s pure country radio catnip—which, just five years ago, might have felt disorienting.
“That song came out of nowhere,” McLamb laughs. “It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s sit down and write a big country ballad!’ But I’m a funny chameleon. I love pop music.”
That love is evident on “Strawberry Moon,” which features gentle, cascading pianos and guest vocals from indie rock hero Sharon Van Etten, whom McLamb has known for years. His original idea was a synth-pop version, but after workshopping it with Crossingham and tracking Van Etten’s vocals during her most recent North Carolina tour, they excavated a witchier, more Fleetwood Mac–meets–War on Drugs vibe.
Other wistful moments abound: the misty mornings that inspired “Whispering Winds” and the mountain sunsets that Crossingham and McLamb chase all over the record; one even appears on the cover of Fancy Gap.
“This place changes all day,” Crossingham says. “You can do nothing and feel productive, because, well, you watched the sky change.”
Melancholic reflection informs “Magnolias” as well. Written about the passing of Crossingham’s friend, McLamb handles it with the care of his tender falsetto. Meanwhile, the moody, minor-key “Sweet Time” scans as dark California noir, an epic song McLamb half-jokingly considered pitching to Adele.
Again, those ambitions make perfect sense—especially on “40,000 Miles,” which features two scorching guitar solos (recorded with that “Arena Ready” preset) that McLamb and Crossingham consider a rock ’n’ roll call-and-response.
Meanwhile, “Diamond Cutter” is sonically complex—a slinky slice of cowboy goth that layers guitar riffs and gentle castanets over heart-wrenching lyrics. It’s the strongest contender to make best-of playlists and endure as an all-time favorite a la early The Love Language classics “Lalita” and “Heart to Tell.”
To flesh out the song, they dialed up an all-star cast: keyboardist Rami Jaffee (Foo Fighters, The Wallflowers), session guitarist Will McFarlane (Bonnie Raitt, Etta James), and pedal steel player Jon Graboff (Willie Nelson, Norah Jones).
All added licks so strong that they “twinkle in the sky of each song,” Crossingham marvels. Grammy-winning engineer Craig Alvin (Kacey Musgraves, Little Big Town) cemented the sonic excellence, mixing the record at his famed Muscle Shoals studio, while Jeff Lipton (Arcade Fire, Bon Iver) mastered it in Boston.
Fancy Gap’s current live band—Robert Sledge (Ben Folds Five), Nick Baglio (The Foreign Exchange), Steve Howell (The Backsliders), and Mark Simonsen (The Old Ceremony)—has also rounded into form.
“These guys believe in the record, which has introduced a new responsibility for us,” Crossingham says. “Their dreams are fusing into our dreams. That collective feeling is a special part of Fancy Gap.”
For McLamb, it’s a huge step forward. Yes, he’s still wringing emotion out of every lyric, writing hook-laden songs that tackle heartbreak, loss, and the enduring weight of existence. But now he’s doing it from a fresh, collaborative perspective.
“When Charles and I met in 2011, I was in a weirder place,” McLamb says. “Real protective—maybe too much.”
Fast-forward to 2020, when he realized how invested Crossingham was in his success. “Charles has this thing where he doesn’t care about who’s invited to the party. He sees a lot of light in different kinds of people.”
Fancy Gap’s light is shining bright. The album’s first three singles have accumulated nearly 100,000 streams on Spotify, with listeners in 140 countries. A May show at the Pour House in Raleigh sold about 40 tickets; another one on June 23 packed the house with approximately 270. Next up is a July 27 album release show at Local 506 in Chapel Hill, followed by further tour dates and sustained growth.
“We didn’t just spend four years making the record,” Crossingham says. “We learned how to be a team.” McLamb believes Fancy Gap can “be huge” while focusing on enjoying the ride. “Our intention is rooted in this not becoming a chore,” he says. “If you take care of the music and create something good, it rewards you in its own way. You can have peace.”
With that peace has come a deeper reflection on life, art, and creativity. “Stu’s a great leader who also never leads, you know?” Crossingham muses. “You’re dancing with Stu—he’s not saying, ‘C’mon, this way.’ It’s ‘Where are we going together?’ He makes everyone feel like family. The brotherhood of the experience started mattering more than previous stories of our lives. That’s my favorite part of this record.”
Crossingham remembers McLamb despairing in 2020 when the pandemic upended so much. “Stu kept bringing up the scene: ‘The scene’s dead, man.’ And I was like, ‘What scene? Whatever was before is no longer. We’re gonna create the next scene together.’”
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