THE WRECKS

Wrecks are an American pop rock band based in Los Angeles, California. The band is currently made up of Nick Anderson, Nick "Schmizz" Schmidt, Aaron Kelley, and Billy Nally. The group is best known for their single "Favorite Liar."

Nick Anderson met Aaron Kelley on Facebook around 2010 when he was fourteen-years-old. Remaining friends through 2014, Kelley introduced Anderson to recording industry executive Richard Reines, for whom Kelley had been interning at the time, and Anderson began writing and producing for the bands that Reines managed. In September 2014, Anderson and Kelley formed a pop-punk band, Coastbound, with three others. Coastbound continued performing at local music festivals in California throughout 2015; however, in September 2015, Aaron and Kelley announced their intentions to place the band on a hiatus to pursue a "new music endeavor with an indie rock project." Sometime in October 2015, Anderson's new project released a song, "Get 'Em Ready," which features in Episode 5 of CBS's Limitless. 

In late 2015, Anderson and Kelley invited Billy Nally and Harrison Nussbaum to join their new project. Nally then enlisted Nick Schmidt, the two having attended school together in New Jersey. The five had already been acquainted, their prior musical projects being managed by Reines and Anderson having written for the others' past projects. Additionally, Nally, Nussbaum, and Schmidt had performed in a band alongside musician Clay Borrell in the Official Stand Up Tour in mid-2015. Disregarding the spontaneity of the project, the three New Jersey natives drove to California to record music with Anderson and Kelley at the latter's request. All of the band members were in their early twenties and a majority hail from the east coast. Anderson is native to Upstate New York; Schmidt and Nally grew up by the Jersey Shore; founding member Nussbaum is also native to New Jersey; and Kelley is native to Wisconsin, having attended UW-Stout. None of the band members are originally from California. 

The Wrecks had formally begun in Thousand Oaks, California, in mid-November 2015. Through a friend's housekeeping engagement, Anderson gained access to a professional home studio, albeit without the owner's permission, and the group self-recorded three tracks for an extended play in just three days, with roommate, sound engineer, and Coastbound collaborator Andrew D'Angelo serving as co-producer. The band performed at a series of small venues before self-releasing their debut EP, We Are The Wrecks, to the internet in April 2016. That summer and fall, the Wrecks opened for Nothing But Thieves. On December 22, 2016, the line-up signed with Another Century Records. Soon after, their debut single "Favorite Liar" received significant airplay and charted in the top forty on alternative radio. The single obtained five million Spotify streams within a year of its release; as of December 2020, the track boasted over twenty-five million streams.

Harrison Nussbaum played guitar in the original line-up from late 2015 to late 2016 until leaving the band, briefly making the Wrecks a four-piece. He was subsequently replaced by Pittsburgh native Westen Weiss – who had also lived in Germany and China – in early 2017.

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