U2’s Opening Act The Lumineers on ‘The Joshua Tree’: ‘This Album Just Feels Eternal’

When Denver alt-folk group the Lumineers released their eponymous debut in April 2012, they were determined to find their own crowd — even though, once their single “Ho Hey” became a massive hit, they had plenty of opportunities to tour with big bands. “We said no to all of them, because we just wanted to play our own shows to smaller crowds. I think we were pretty intent on we’d rather play to our own audiences,” lead singer Wesley Schultz explains.

However, when the almighty U2 invited the Lumineers to open for two months of dates on Bono and company’s upcoming tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of the landmark album The Joshua Tree, Schultz and his bandmates were delighted to accept the offer.

“Our manager told us this was on the table and I felt like it was a second chance at something — because we’d gotten these offers from bands I grew up idolizing, early on back in 2012,” Schultz says. “I realized I missed out… So when we got this opportunity, I think it felt like a second chance at that, at being around a band and these kind of musical heroes and these icons you have a relationship with.”

Schultz was born in 1982, five years before The Joshua Tree was released, so the album has always been part of his life. “It’s an album that doesn’t really feel like it has a starting point; it just feels eternal,” he says. “That’s kind of how I feel about U2 and about particularly The Joshua Tree and the fact that this is that tour. Those songs seem like they were around always… ‘With or Without You,’ ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ — there’s such a presence to those songs.”

As Schultz points out, the invitation to open for U2 didn’t exactly arrive via a casual phone call, so with the Joshua Tree tour not starting until May, he hasn’t yet met Bono and the Edge. However, he did meet another one of his heroes recently, when the Lumineers were invited to perform a Tom Petty song at the MusiCares Person of the Year dinner honoring Petty during Grammy week — a night even more special for Schultz because of his personal connection with Petty’s music.

“My wife walked down the aisle to that song [“Walls (Circus)”], so I’ve been a fan of his since I was a little kid. I still have a ticket stub from when I saw him in New Jersey,” he says. “For me it was the height of surreal, and when we were figuring out how to try to present the song I thought, ‘We just want to not offend him.’ It’s intimidating. And after the show ended, we come back to the green room and we’re about to leave, and Tom Petty comes into our green room and he wants to talk. He says that he really enjoyed particularly our song and the version we did of it. So it was one of my top five nights in music, just being able to interact with the guy and know that he’s pleased with what we did with his song.”

The Lumineers likely won’t be covering any U2 songs during their upcoming tour together, but they’re approaching the Joshua Tree shows with the same amount of respect and reverence. “I think you’ve got to remember it’s their crowd and you’re trying to set the table for them. So what we try and do is be respectful of that,” Schultz says. “You just try to hopefully get everybody ready for U2; that’s the reality. I feel like it’s such a massive place; it is maybe similar to a festival. We’ve done a few of those and it’s a massive amount of people. But in a way, it’s less pressure. We kind of enjoy that. We haven’t opened for a band in a while. I’ll see what happens.”