The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Founders of Lit heading into new country
As brothers Jeremy and Ajay Popoff, who are, respectively, the guitarist and vocalist of Fullerton-based rock band Lit, sat with fellow songwriters Kenton Bryant and Johnathan Singleton in Nashville, Tennessee, to work on a batch of songs, they kept conjuring up vignettes of summer.
Playing baseball in the street, cracking open a cold Coca-Cola on a hot day, watching the sunset, counting the stars and squishing sand between your toes at the beach. These were all the moments captured in the song “Sons and Daughters of Summer.”
There was just one catch: It wasn’t a Lit song.
In 2017, Lit released its sixth studio album, “These Are the Days,” and its fan base, which knew the band for more rockin’ hits like “My Own Worst Enemy,”
“Zip-Lock” and “Lipstick and Bruises,” were perplexed by the more country-sounding collection of songs.
The band was definitely having a bit of an identity crisis. The Popoffs, who have developed a deep love and appreciation for country music through the years, had spent a decade in Nashville writing songs with a variety of musicians and other songwriters between Lit albums and tours.
That work began to seep into the Lit songwriting and it was becoming as confusing for the players as it was the fans. This year, the Popoffs decided to clear things up and separate the two projects by starting The Popoff Brothers, which ultimately led to a plethora of fresh creativity for both musical projects.
“It allows Ajay and I the freedom to put songs like this out without fans stressing over ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Where are we going here?’ ‘What about Lit?’ “Jeremy said during a recent Zoom chat from his now permanent residence in Nashville. “We got tired of explaining it, but by doing this, we can still do what we want. We are working on new Lit music, too, and the new stuff sounds more like old Lit.”
For Ajay, it was nice to be able to mentally separate the two projects, and he’s writing new content for Lit with a revived passion.
“The country stuff automatically trickled in because that’s where we were at,” he said during a Zoom interview from his home in Orange County (he is also relocating to Nashville in the coming months).
“It was hard to find inspiration to write a classic-style Lit song, but now I’m going back and listening to our old stuff and alternative stations on satellite radio and I’m feeling more inspired now to write in that style of music. It really took actually separating these two projects in my own mind and to give each thing its own space to trigger that.”
The Popoff Brothers have a handful of songs in the can that they plan to release sporadically. “Sons and Daughters of Summers” felt like an appropriate first taste to drop May 8, since it’s about summer pastimes, and while we’re all living through stay-athome orders due to the global spread of the novel coronavirus, both brothers have noticed more kids playing in sprinklers in their front yards and riding bikes, and neighbors having socially distanced barbecues.
“It feels like the summer of 1984 to me, in a way,” Ajay said.