WHY NOT is the Minneapolis trio’s self-titled mission statement. Fueled by the tension and uncertainty of the time and the changes in the band’s personal lives and colored by the joy of creating with each other and feeling inspiration in dark times.
Henry Breen, Isaac Dell, and Joshua MacGregor met playing in a middle school music class at Great River School in St. Paul, MN. The trio formed WHY NOT in early 2016 as Breen and MacGregor enrolled in high school at nearby St Paul Conservatory of Performing Artists while Dell continued at Great River. Before any band member could drive, they had released their first album and booked their first tour—relying on Isaac’s dad, Irve, for transportation to their shows.
WHY NOT was born on retreats to Dell’s family farm in Viroqua, WI in early 2020. Holed up with no cell service, the band spent most of their days set up in the living room, demoing songs, reading books, and taking walks around the property. When an idea would hit, they would chase the initial feeling, sometimes going through dozens of evolutions, building the original core demos into the album in its final form over time.
The band enlisted Minneapolis producer and brother of MacGregor, Caleb Hinz (Hippo Campus, Samia, Miloe) to produce and finished the tracking in a couple weeks interspersed through eight months. The result is a virtuosic, genre-fluid statement from a young band just beginning to harness the heights of their craft. .
