After a quiet year focusing on new music, recording and writing, the four-piece Laramie pop-punk band Not My Weekend have signed to We Are Triumphant Records. The band recently debuted a new single titled When You’re Around to go with the news.

The band, comprised of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Gilchrist, guitarist Nicholas Hudson, bassist Ed Ma and drummer Noah Hammontree, are gearing up for its latest release, its EP, “Yellow,” out Aug. 17.

The time off the radar has been nothing but busy for Not My Weekend. Gilchrist and Hudson mentioned they cut “Yellow” August of 2017, where Gilchrist then sent the EP to “over 4,000 people” for feedback.

“I can show you my outgoing box in my email, last I counted was in June, so it’s more by now, but I sent the entirety of this EP to over 4,000 people,” Gilchrist said. “And not just labels- it wasn’t about just getting signed- to other bands, to booking agents, to promoters, just to somebody because I wanted that help.”

The help paid off, as Gilchrist heard from We Are Triumphant just this past spring, nearly eight months after the EP was made. After the initial interaction, Gilchrist said they talked with the label for two months before signing. The band had three other labels they were talking to, but Gilchrist said We Are Triumphant understood the band the best. Not My Weekend announced its signing officially on June 29.

“It’s important, they [We Are Triumphant] made it clear that our interests were aligned, which is really cool,” Hudson said.

The band’s latest single, When You’re Around, was the debut on We Are Triumphant and dropped July 13. The song is a “creative turn” for Not My Weekend, according to Hudson, taking the band to the sound it was going for.

“I remember our producer pretty much only produced it [the EP] because of that song existing,” Gilchrist said.

Gilchrist and Hudson agreed that though When You’re Around was a good song to debut, it isn’t entirely representative of the overall sound on “Yellow.”

“I think there’s one sibling song on ‘Yellow’ and all the other songs are pretty radically different,” Hudson said.

Gilchrist agreed, saying the EP is “eclectic.”

“Yellow” is more of a creative push for Not My Weekend. Gilchrist mentioned enjoying pop-punk bands as a listener but realized more pop tracks came naturally to him.

“The songs we ended up picking for the record were the ones where I just wasn’t trying at all,” Gilchrist said. “We ended up making a record that just sounded like what I am naturally the best at instead of trying to be the bands that I enjoy.”

The video for “When You’re Around” was created by the band and shot in Denver before its signing to We Are Triumphant. The video is what Hudson thinks “put them over the edge” in terms of getting the contract from the label. The video released the same day as the single and hit 100,000 views in just one week. The views are climbing to almost 200,000 already and though the band is excited, Gilchrist stressed there are more important things.

“To me, it’s really just about making that connection,” Gilchrist said. “So what I’m most excited about, way more than seeing 100,000 on a video is every single one of my best friends in the world that have come up to me and said how much they like it, regardless of the viewer number. Those interpersonal relationships are so much more gratifying to me.”

Not My Weekend will release its second single off “Yellow” called Crawl Aug. 3 and the EP will drop Aug. 17. The band will have another video out in the meantime and though there are no tour plans in the works just yet, that is on the list. For now, the band is taking in the excitement surrounding its signing.

“In a word, [I feel] grateful because it’s one of those moments of serendipity where you realize all the support you’ve had and all the things that have happened so that things can be the way they are now,” Hudson said. “It’s beautiful. It’s cool it happened this way. I hope that more good things are coming.”



