Landon Laney: New Music and Old Friends
- Shelby Mathews
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Interview takes place on February 18, 2026 at Raven Tower in Houston, TX.
“It feels pretty unreal,” Landon Laney says, as he gets ready to go on stage at White Oak Music Hall. “I mean, I grew up going to shows at White Oak, and now I'm playing in it.”
Landon Laney is a musician born and raised in The Woodlands, TX, and he currently happens to be on tour with his longtime friend, Peter McPoland. “I play the bass on this tour, primarily,” he tells me. That being said, “It's not like a grounded thing. If we want to switch instruments, we switch instruments; if we want to do a cover where I want to play guitar, then we'll do that.”
Laney sure did have a center-stage moment during the show that night, switching with McPoland to play guitar and highlighting the band’s flexibility. “We can play off of each other really well,” he says, “because we’ve been friends for so long.”
“I met Peter going into eighth grade,” he says. “We were both kind of learning how to play guitar at the same time, and we would upload covers on Instagram and on YouTube here and there.”
He remembers their first gig together. “[Peter] was asked to put together a band for a park show in town,” he explains. “So me and him were kind of tasked with finding people for this. He had two guys in his music theory class: Joe, who plays the drums, and Peter VanBenthuysen, who doesn't play with us anymore. And then our other friend, Josh, who plays the keys.”
The group was formed, and then the rest was history.
From park shows and battle-of-the-band competitions, to DIY sprinter van tours—the boys have had periods apart, but have once again reunited with McPoland for this year’s Big Lucky Tour. “It's the same group that we started with that's playing tonight,” Laney says. “It’s crazy.”
There’s no doubt that this band has played a huge part in Laney’s story and success as a musician. It was during one of their periods apart, though—when Laney was off at college and McPoland in New York—that Laney discovered another group that he couldn’t have done it without.
This group was called The News.
“Nicholas Devia, who is a really close friend of mine, [he and I] went to Sam Houston together. And he was in the jazz band, so through him, I met all of these jazz musicians,” he says.
Naturally, this lent itself towards starting a band, and a funk band at that. “We started The News, which was like a supergroup. There was a core group of people,” he says, “and we would kind of just have whoever wanted to play with us play. It was a lot of covers, and then towards the end, we would start writing our own music.”
Little did he know, The News would end up pushing him to grow in ways he hadn’t anticipated, developing both his playing chops and his passion for funk music.
“Me and Nick, we are very much into funk music,” he discovered. “And funk music doesn't sound good [unless] you're absolutely tight, everything is choreographed down to a T, and everyone is in the pocket.”
Not to mention, “All of these jazz musicians that I was playing with in The News…they knew their stuff. So I was kind of forced to step up and just get better,” he says. “The News is so important to me because…that's how I learned to be an actual good musician. It kind of had to happen to evolve, you know?”
And evolve he has!
Having already released a few singles back in 2024, it was only a matter of time before Laney felt ready to release a larger collection of songs. And that collection of songs, taking the form of a five-track EP called Huffing, is finally seeing the light of day on March 3, 2026.
“I had the framework of all of these songs,” he remembers, “but whenever I came back from [McPoland’s 2024 Buddy Tour], it was time to finish them.”
Laney says that he’s ended up with quite the variety of songs on Huffing, having used the project as an opportunity to play around with different sounds. “I am experimenting a lot, and I'm learning how to produce alongside,” he says. “So I just feel like each [song on the EP] is completely different.”
He realizes, though, that there may be a through-line in his music that he is simply too close to see. “Whenever you sit there and you have all of the tracks in front of you, you know every piece of it. You can isolate every single track. And you listen over and over again,” he laughs.
“But I will say that, you know, your taste in music shines through what you're writing, whether or not you even realize it.” He knows it’s not worth it to fight your musical instincts anyway, as the only sustainable way to make music is by making what you want to make. “[You] kind of have to stay true to yourself.”
“Being a musician, you're always struggling in a way trying to stay relevant. But as long as you're enjoying what you're doing, and you have people coming to see you, that's success to me.”
Trusting yourself is key, he’s learning. And it doesn’t hurt to have a circle of friends, family, and bandmates to have your back when you’re in doubt.
Story and Photos by Shelby Mathews
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