Prinze George Holds Court

Crammed in among drum sets, speakers, yards of cables and a cheap yet trusty microphone, three band mates sighed in relief as their beat-up 2004 van sputtered to the Brillobox club in Pittsburgh. It was the trio’s first tour as opening act for the Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr., and their minivan, with its missing hubcap and more than 300,000 miles on the odometer, sat in stark contrast next to the headliner’s spacious bus and neatly packed equipment.

That was in September. Today, local indie-pop band Prinze George, featuring two Terps, has netted nearly 4 million listens on music-streaming site Spotify and is set for the Aug. 5 release of its debut album, “Illiterate Synth Pop,” and a 13-city headlining tour—in an upgraded 15-seat van.

“Patience is learned, and we’ve had to learn how to pay our dues and be okay with not having everything all at once,” says vocalist Naomi Almquist (top, right).

Before the group started performing at music festivals and venues across the country, Prinze George was merely a “happy accident.” The band’s founding members, Almquist and production guru and instrumentalist Kenny Grimm MBA ’13, grew up in Prince George’s County, Md., (hence the band’s name) and met as teenagers through Grimm’s younger brother. The two casually played together and wrote songs for their former punk-rock band, Kin Heads, in 2012 while Almquist attended North Park University in Chicago.

They moved to New York and experimented with a new sound. Kin Heads soon became Prinze George, and it released two singles. “Victor” quickly rose to No. 1 on Hype Machine, a web engine for industry leaders and production studios to discover up- and-coming artists, and was chosen for the soundtrack of a Warner Bros. German movie, “Honig Im Kopf.”

Living up to its moniker, the band returned to Prince George’s County in 2014 and auditioned drummers for months to no avail, in a quest that hit a low point when Grimm found himself taping a flier to a sappy tree.

Meanwhile, then-UMD senior and Montgomery County, Md., native Isabelle De Leon ’13 (top, left) grabbed a flier in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center—and ignored it for a month—after her family band, Ivy Rose, which opened at UMD’s Art Attack in 2010, had fizzled out. At the drummer’s audition, the three clicked musically and socially.

The local connection, as well as their respective former bands, gave the trio a leg up when booking their first few gigs, De Leon says.

“Venues would see we could bring a crowd, and then they’d be the ones calling us for a show,” she says.

They soon won attention from fans, music bloggers and record labels. Despite needing cash to fight their apartment’s second bedbug infestation, the trio turned down a deal from Sony because they felt pressured into signing away musical control and 80 percent of their profits for 15 years.

“You have to treat it like a tech startup and throw all your money and passion into it,” says Grimm, who besides majoring in supply chain management at UMD has a degree in music business from Berklee College of Music. “Do you want to sell your company so early on or build it up around your vision first?”

Prinze George has stuck to the independent route, including debuting its first five-song EP at national festivals like Firefly, South by Southwest and Sweetlife. The upcoming tour will take the band to Boston, Chicago, New York and more, including a show at D.C.’s Rock & Roll Hotel on Aug. 20. In October, it will play at the 15th annual Austin City Limits Music Festival, which attracted more than 75,000 concertgoers last year.

“Success can change a lot of people—that’s for certain—but their down-to-earth personalities and ability to roll with the punches makes me feel great about the hurdles we’ll face as they continue to grow,” says Nate Vernon, band manager at Sounds Expensive Studio.

The three band mates, inspired by the White Stripes’ connections between color and sound, wear white during their performances and are happiest writing music on their home turf.

“At our last couple shows people have said, ‘You guys look like you’re having fun up there.’ Well, we are! We like each other and we like what we’re doing,” Almquist says.

Photos Courtesy of Joilyn Jackson, Emily Dublin, and Prinze George