By Ryan Gueningsman
Herald Journal

Mike Gossin of Gloriana is looking forward to getting new music out to the fans and writing the next chapter of Gloriana’s story.

The band, which scored the hit “Wild At Heart,” has been putting the final touches on its sophomore album, set for release later this summer.

“It’s been three years since we put out the first one,” Gossin said.

Since that time, the band has toured across the US, Canada, and even Australia with Taylor Swift, and has played in front of huge audiences.

“It was amazing just traveling the world and living out our dream as tour musicians,” Gossin said. “Last year, we took the year to tour ourselves – the fairs and festivals like the one in Minnesota we’re coming to do. It’s been a great road for us.”

Gossin said he feels the band has grown a lot and gone through a lot of experiences together, and said this has helped them grow musically, as well.

“Basically, the second record, we kinda summed up everything that we had gone through the past three years – all these life experiences, and just kinda where we were at each, individually, in our lives. It stays true to that Gloriana sound with the four-part harmonies and energy but, this time, we feel it’s a little bit more mature because we’ve grown a little bit.”

The four band members, Gossin, his brother Tom Gossin, Cheyenne Kimball, and Rachel Reinert, wrote or co-wrote every song on the second album.

“There’s a great community of songwriters in Nashville that write pretty much for every country music artist,” Gossin said. “You find the ones that you really click with well and kinda hone in on that.”

Gossin said the band is proud of the new music, and said the reaction it has received after playing it live has been “phenomenal.”
Several new cuts in particular are receiving favorable reactions, including one called “Soldier Song.”

“We were overseas playing for the military in Europe and the Middle East, and it was quite an eye-opening experience for us,” Gossin said. “We wrote this song as kind of a tribute to all the service men and women of the country. That’s one of my favorite ones.”

Another, called “Saturday Night,” is another that Gossin is excited about playing live.

“It’s a real, real fun song,” he said. “We close the end of the night with it, and it’s kind of got this line dancing thing to it. It’s just one of those party, feel-good songs.”

A song on the second record called “Sunset Lovin’” is one Gossin said could be “Wild At Heart,” part-two.

“Wild At Heart has been the band’s highest-charting single to date, coming in at number 13 several years back.

“It just went gold this past year, which means we sold over 500,000 copies of it,” Gossin said. “It’s amazing. We’ve always dreamt of being professional musicians and then here we are, coming up on our fourth year, and to have a gold single is just an honor. We couldn’t have done it without all of our fans who love the song and went out and downloaded it.”

Gossin said, a lot of people may not understand that downloading a band’s music really helps keep the band going strong.

“It makes our lives and our dream possible, and it makes us able to keep on giving you guys good music,” Gossin said. “That’s the reason why that song had a lot of success. We have a blast playing it, man, it’s always crazy doing that one live. You know, everyone sings along and dances, and it’s just got that feel-good vibe, and I think that’s kind of the sound that carried over onto this new record.

Gossin said the band found what works and “just kinda ran with it, but in a little more mature way on this next record.”

He said the band has not decided on a title for the second record, but said there are a couple ideas that are being tossed around.
Tossing ideas around is also how the band came up with its name.

“There’s no crazy story really behind it, but we were using the word Glory for a while,” Gossin explained. “We wanted something that reflected the four-part harmonies really well – we were ‘Glory this’ and ‘Glory that.’ I tossed out Gloriana one day in the studio when we were just about done with the first record. Everybody agreed upon it and we decided that was going to be it. We love the name.”

Sort of like naming a child, the band grew into the name. Gossin said he’s had people come up to the band at shows and tell them they’ve named babies Gloriana.

The band’s beginnings

Gossin said he and his two brothers were living in North Carolina when they were younger and had formed a band.

“Tom and I decided to move to Nashville, and our older brother stayed in Wilmington, NC,” Gossin said. “Tom and I moved to Nashville to start a band, and we found Rachel on Myspace.”

The brothers, who were looking for a female voice for their band, sent Reinert a message and asked if she’d be interested in meeting.

“We started off as a three-piece,” Gossin said. “We were playing around Nashville – clubs, bars, pretty much any place that would have us, and we started writing music.

The trio was playing one night at a Nashville club when Kimball happened to be in attendance with her manager.

“Cheyenne came up to us at the end and exchanged numbers,” Gossin said. “We knew who she was because she had success and a career before that. She said she’d love to write or jam.”

The four got together the next week and, when they did, it was magical, Gossin said.

“We were singing three-part harmony before, then when Cheyenne came in, she added that extra voice that really just made the magic,” Gossin said. “Three part is great, but with four-part harmony, someone always doubles the octave. It just kind of filled it up and made it really come to life, so we knew that we had something special with the four of us. It’s like one of those moments when you get goosebumps on your arms.”

Since then, the band has performed from audiences of anywhere from 50 to 20,000 people.

“The one thing about our band is that we are a live band. That’s what we are,” Gossin said. “We tour 300-plus shows a year and that’s what we love to do. This is our dream. It’s a blast, man. We love to hit the road, and it doesn’t matter how many people are there, as long as we’re playing. If there’s two people there and they like the band then mission accomplished. It’s all the same to us.”

Gossin and his bandmates also had the unique opportunity to perform at the black House earlier this year.

“We got back out early this year while we’re finishing the record, to radio stations around the country that have supported us and shown us some love and said ‘thank you,’ and played some new music for them,” Gossin said. “We started doing shows about two-and-half weeks ago, so we kicked off the new tour. It’s been crazy. There’s been a couple things here and there that have been really cool that have come up. We’re having a blast. It’s going to be a great year for us.”

That’s the band’s focus right now – touring and getting out in front of the crowds, and finishing up the new record.

“If you like the new music, get out there and request ‘Wanna Take You Home’ on the radio,” Gossin said. “That really helps us out and keeps us going and being able to do what we love to do, which is play live.”

The song had broken into the top 40, but Gossin said he doesn’t watch the charts much.

“It’s a battle - it’s always a battle, but we’re loving the response that everybody’s giving to us and we’re loving country radio for playing our song and hopefully we can take this one right up the charts – that’d be great,” he said.

One thing Gossin said is that anytime a Gloriana song comes on, people know it’s Gloriana.

“I think we’ve kinda discovered and created our own sound,” he said. “There’s other four-part harmony bands, three-part harmony bands, but I think when you put on a Gloriana song, you definitely go, ‘that’s Gloriana.’ I think it’s pretty cool that we’ve developed this kind of signature sound of this more modern country sound, but also elements of this traditional country sound also. We take a lot of pride in that.”

The band cites a wide range of influences, from Little Big Town, Fleetwood Mac, Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Zac Brown Band, and Alan Jackson.

“There’s a lot of bands out there that we like,” Gossin said.

Another favorite of theirs is superstar Taylor Swift. The band had the opportunity to open for Swift for a number of shows.

“She heard ‘Wild At Heart’ and called us up personally and was like, ‘I want you on our tour,’” Gossin said, adding that the band was driving around from show-to-show in a van, playing at sports bars and “pretty much anywhere they’d let us play.”

“It was unreal,” he said of his experiences touring with Swift. “She’s such a nice girl, and she called us up on stage every night to sing a song with her in front of 20,000 people in these sold out arenas. I think it really helped us grow as a band. You play bars and clubs and stuff, but when you get in an arena and all eyes are on you, it really makes you hone in on the craft of playing well and singing well.”

When Gossin found out Swift is going to be in Minnesota several days after Winstock, he said he has her phone number and “might just text her” to see if she’d want to stop out at Winstock.

“We love Minnesota,” Gossin said. “We can’t wait to come and play. It’s going to be a great show. We can’t wait to show you guys some of the new music. We’re looking forward to partying with you guys. It’s going to be awesome.

Gossin said the band is trying to hit 100,000 Twitter followers, and encouraged people attending Winstock to follow the band on Twitter and also visit a website created by a friend of theirs at www.glorianafans.com.

Gossin called from the University of North Alabama for a phone interview in support of his appearance at Winstock.

For more information on Winstock, visit www.winstockfestival.com, or call 888-946-7865.

For more information on Gloriana visit www.gloriana.com.

Ryan Gueningsman is at ryan@heraldjournal.com.