On some records, it’s difficult to hear beyond the polish.

On others, you can hear the space, the room, and the air in between.

The best ones, however, let you hear the people inside them—the jokes, the nerves, the chemistry, the unfinished thoughts that somehow become the truest of lines.

On the cusp of releasing their first EP, Read Between the Lines, indie band Fieldtrip’s music seems to come from that kind of place.

Band members Davis Glass, Eli Norris, Nolan Leezer, and Wyatt Johnson are all students at Hendersonville High School.

They’re young enough to still be living inside the days they’ll one day call formative—but old enough to feel those days slipping past in real time. That tension lives in their songs.

So does friendship.

So does the ache of growing up…of relationships changing shape…of time gathering momentum, whether you’re ready or not.

Spend a little time with them, and it becomes clear that Fieldtrip is more than a high school band learning how to make an EP.

They are four friends teaching one another how to become who they were always meant to be.

Their conversation moves the way their music does—loose, funny, reflective, full of overlapping voices and sudden moments of clarity. They talk like kids who know exactly how lucky they are, even if they’re still figuring out what paths to take with that luck.

What follows is less a formal interview than a chronicle of a moment:

Four musicians on the edge of graduation. Making memories. And whatever comes next.

Like so many young bands, Fieldtrip didn’t arrive fully formed. It came together through the kind of trial-and-error evolution that only makes sense in hindsight.

Davis: “We’d all been very, very close friends for a long time. Nolan and I met in middle school…we just kind of hung out a lot and got really close. I knew he played guitar and that Eli played guitar, so we started getting together. In the beginning, I was the drummer, and we initially had a different bass player, Foster Dalquist, who has since gone to college.”

Eli: “So we’ve been playing together forever…four, probably five years. But the current group has been together for a little over a year.”

Nolan: “I'd been playing guitar for a couple of years, but when Foster left, I made the switch to bass and Davis switched to guitar.”

And then there was the name.

Davis: “We were touring a studio, and one of the producers said, ‘What are you guys on, a little field trip?’ And we all kind of looked at each other and said, ‘That’s it. That’s our name.’”

Sometimes the right name doesn’t sound like a branding decision. Sometimes it sounds like a joke that happens to fit perfectly. A field trip is, after all, a temporary departure from ordinary life. A chance to learn something outside the classroom. A small adventure with no guarantees—except that you won’t come back quite the same.

That feels about right.

While some bands never turn the corner from jamming to songwriting, others embrace the evolution into making something that can outlast the moment.

For Fieldtrip, that turning point was a song called “Letter.”

Eli: “One night we jammed. It was a school night, and we all had to be home in probably ten minutes. Davis had these chords, and we just started spitballing, and it worked.”

Davis: “We started playing Mad Libs, going around the room trying lines out.”

Eli: “We were like, ‘Voice memo that now.’ We went home, and it never changed.”

There is something beautifully unpretentious about that origin story. Just four young musicians finding, almost by accident, the moment where the song begins talking back.

Davis: “When we get together, and somebody brings an idea to the table and we all just kind of jam on it and figure it out, that’s the best. That’s so much fun.”

Wyatt: It’s just a matter of figuring it out as we go and then adding on to it. Making it more layered and being able to hear what everybody thinks about it is a process.”

On first listen, Fieldtrip’s songs seem to be about relationships.

But it becomes clear quickly—they allude to far more than romance.

They’re about change.

Impermanence.

The way time rearranges who you are and what you can hold onto.

All with the strange gravity of being on the cusp of adulthood.

Davis: “It’s about growing up…we’re all at a tipping point.”

Nolan: “We wrote a lot of this at seventeen…everything becomes real.”

It’s the kind of insight young writers are often denied credit for. These aren’t just songs about heartbreak. They’re songs about transition. About memory forming in real time.

That tension shows up most vividly in the lyrics.

Eli: “‘Reminiscing the times, I read between the lines.’ I wrote that one day…never thought anything of it, but I’m really proud of it.”

That line eventually became the title of the EP. A private thought became the banner for the entire project.

Another lyric the band lingers on is “stained glass simplicity.”

Each member hears something different inside it. Beauty. Complexity. Innocence.

And that, in a nutshell, is this band.

If the songs captured one kind of growth, the recording process sparked another.

The EP wasn’t just about documenting who they were—it changed how they saw themselves.

Nolan: “I found something in myself.”

Davis: “This has been a defining moment.”

That transformation was shaped in part by producer Jesse Benfield, who worked with the band through Stay Gold Records.

What began as a local connection became something more meaningful. He didn’t just record them—he helped them hear what they could become.

Eli: “I didn’t realize how involved the producer was…he coached us, pushed us.”

Nolan: “He gave me confidence.”

Wyatt: “That was my favorite part—building the songs together.”

When asked how being in a band has shaped their high school experience, the answer comes quickly: Brotherhood.

Eli: “We’ve reached a point of brotherhood because of how much time we’ve spent together.”

The Open Question of Leaving

Two members are graduating.

Two are not.

No one dramatizes it—but no one ignores it either.

There’s a quiet understanding in the room:

Things are about to change.

Nolan: “We want to leave it open-ended.”

Davis: “I wouldn’t want to close the door.”

Nolan: “We just want to maximize the time we have left.”

That may be the most poignant line of all.

Maximize the time we have left.

The Lines They Carry With Them

Near the end, each member shares a lyric that means something to them.

Together, they read like an accidental poem:

Reminiscing.

Simplicity.

Turning back time.

Flowers drying in a vase.

Even when they write about relationships, they are really writing about impermanence.

About trying to hold something still long enough to understand it.

The Good Old Days

There’s a temptation to treat young bands like this as a beginning—as a prelude to something bigger.

But that misses the point.

Fieldtrip doesn’t need to become famous for this moment to matter.

The songs matter.

The friendship matters.

The late nights, the inside jokes, the studio sessions…all of it matters because it’s happening now.

In five years, they may still be making music together.

Or they may be scattered across different lives.

But if you listen closely, you can already hear what this band has given them:

Not just songs—

But a way of remembering.

They are still in the good old days…

Even if they’re just beginning to realize it.

And maybe that’s what the best young bands do.

They read between the lines—

While they’re still living them.

Fieldtrip's EP Releases Friday, May 1st.

Cover Photo Art by Sophie Benfield