Tommy Leas, also known as PLS&TY caught up with Respect My Region the other night before playing on his birthday at the ShowBox Market. A guest opener for Elephante’s Diamond Day’s Tour, the Palm Beach, Florida native took the time to speak with us. With a busy and successful 2019 so far, PLS&TY looks to expand off what he’s already accomplished this year and has plans to continue to capitalize on new opportunities moving forward into 2020.
With a new EP coming out in April of next year, PLS&TY looks to hold fans over then by dropping new music, which will be arriving on January 10th. Be sure to stay tuned for what’s to come from Tommy and in the meantime, check out our interview!
Exclusive PLS&TY Interview
*This interview was edited for clarity*
I looked into interviews online and no one touched on it, but how did you come up with your name?
My name is a silly derivative of my first and last name, which is Tommy Leas. Please rhymes with Leas and then I took the T and the Y from my first name Tommy to create the T and the Y in thank you. PLS was short for please and then T Y became thank you.
How has the tour been so far?
It’s been such a blast. We’ve been playing some pretty legendary venues all along the west coast like the Fonda Theatre in LA and The Warfield in San Francisco. They’re amazing spots.
Has it been what you would expect or is it been better?
Going into this I really didn’t know what to expect. I’ve played in LA and San Francisco before, but I haven’t been to any of these venues so it’s kind of like jumping in and seeing what happens.
After releasing Run Wild / Feeling Forever earlier this year – What sort of feedback did you get from that?
Run Wild was originally released in 2017 on Soundcloud as a free download, but after seeing the amazing response from fans and the stream count hit 11 million streams on YouTube, we were like this is insane. We really need to officially put this out and put it on Spotify and iTunes and everywhere else and not just leave it on Soundcloud. So we packaged it with a new song that I actually wrote as the sequel to Run Wild which was Feeling Forever and put that out officially as a two-track EP and I think the response has been nothing short of amazing.
Is there anything that you learned through that entire process? Would you do anything differently for the next project?
Every project is another stepping stone. There’s always challenges and you’re always taking something new away from it, but each kind of release and each project is just another stepping stone to grow and elevate and never look back.
How are things going since the release of your new single, Summer’s Young?
Summer’s Young came out November 8th and there’s been some amazing feedback so far. It features a vocalist named Dia Frampton who’s also featured on tracks with Illenium and Kaskade. I’m a huge fan of Dia and I really love her voice and I’m so glad we made the record together and hopefully the fans enjoy it just as much.
You’ve remixed tons of songs in your time at this point – how does it feel when people remix YOUR tracks?
My songs are my personal creation and seeing someone else rework it and expand on it, it just feels like Christmas. You never know what’s going to come back so I’m always stoked to hear it for the first time and hear what they do.
Could you talk about and elaborate on what your creative process looks like – how do you start and how does the song typically evolve?
I really love working around vocals so a lot of the times it’ll start with just a really strong top-line from a vocalist and I’ll create entirely new instrumentation from scratch around that and that’s really how I love to work is all around vocals.
PLS&TY – Run Wild & Feeling Forever [Music Video]
I know that you’ve got SnowGlobe in Tahoe which is just around the corner, but what has been a festival that has been a highlight and that’s stood out for you that you could tell us about?
All the festivals this summer have been so much fun like Electric Forest. That’s probably my favorite festival of all time. I always say my set at Backwoods Festival was such a blast as well.
Who are some artists that you look up to?
The first person that comes to mind is Flume. He’s been a huge inspiration in shaping my sound and I’d say also Wave Racer. I’m huge fan of Lido as well. Any of the future bass kind of pioneers if you will. Those are the three big names that come to mind and they’ve all been big inspirations in what I wanted to sound like as an artist myself.
You’ve obviously done a ton of remixes to Elephante’s work – how did you two initially get in touch and how did it get to the point where he asked you to join him on tour?
I did a remix of Elephante’s song “Catching On” a year or two ago so we kind of had a relationship with them already and I’ve been a fan of Elephante for a while. Our sounds are similar and mesh really well so when we saw he was announcing the tour dates we had the prior connection and went for it.
What’s one piece of advice that you would give to a stranger?
I always tell people to be yourself and never be afraid to be unique. There’s only one of you and if you just keep doing you, people will love you for who you are and will respect you for never changing for anyone.
If you aren’t doing anything music-related what can PLS&TY be found doing?
I’m definitely at the beach in my hometown of Palm Beach, Florida and I live a block away so I’m usually just chilling or out on the boat.
Is there anything that you would like to share with music listeners in the Northwest?
Be on the lookout for my new EP! It’s coming out in April of next year, but the first single is out on January 10th. It’s an amazing project and features Sean Kingston and WifisFuneral and a ton of other amazing artists so I’m super pumped.
Summer’s Young – PLS&TY
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Photos courtesy of Jeffrey Zoss
