Meet The Mailboxes: Music Meets The Outdoors

Local band The Mailboxes gives insight to their inspirations, hardships, lyrical themes, and dreams about their future.

The indie pop band from Cleveland, TN was first started by Jillian Ivey during her senior year of high school.

“My mom came from a very musical church family,” Jillian said. “I always made up my own songs growing up just for fun. My grandparents helped my parents pay for me to be in piano lessons growing up, so I am classically trained.”

Juggling school and music, Jillian found herself writing music after her church music practices and soon formed the very beginnings of her band.

“My older brother was in a band which I thought was so cool,” Jillian recalled. “I started playing shows as The Mailboxes my senior year of high school when a couple guy friends of mine who were talented musicians asked if I was interested in playing music together.”

As for the band’s unique name, Jillian said that it’s something she came up with after she vetoed the name “The Jillian Spears Band.”

After meeting at a Christmas show for a church, Jillian met Logan, a singer for various metal bands as well as her future bandmate and spouse.

Although Logan’s musical roots are much different than Jillian’s, the two combined their styles to make the dreamy atmospheric pop that is The Mailboxes.

Their start came from a lot of work and a little luck, as their first record caught the eye of one of Jillian’s favorite childhood bands, Reliant K.

“We ended up getting to open up for them at Track 29 in 2013,” Jillian said. “That year I graduated from college, got engaged to Logan, and we got married. We also did a competition online for bands and won $10,000 which we used to put a down payment on a car and fund our next EP ‘Post Script’.”

It had always been a dream of theirs to perform on a professional level.

“We both felt like we wanted to do music full time,” Jillian continued, “but we didn’t have the money or connections and lived in a small town. We also felt like we couldn’t find bandmates who were as committed as we were and wanted to do music full time.”

“I self-booked us a national tour and we were excited to make a new record when we got back,” she added. “That was in 2017 I think.”

Things didn’t quite go as planned, however. Shortly after their tour ended, Logan was involved in an accident that left one arm with a broken wrist and the other with a broken elbow. His injuries required surgery “which has limited his mobility a lot, especially in music.”

This is how The Mailboxes were able to combine their music with their love of the outdoors.

“Through that trauma, Logan started getting interested in running and hiking because he could still use his legs even though his arms were still healing,” Jillian explained. “That’s how we started combining hiking/touring/music which is what we have been pursuing the last couple years. We released our latest record ‘Inside Outside’ through a national tour and a hike on the Appalachian Trail in 2019.”

Through their adversities, they remained hopeful for the future, which Jillian stated is also a running theme to their lyrics.

You can follow The Mailboxes on Instagram and check out their website!