Full name – The Band Loula comprised of Malachi Mills and Logan Simmons
Hometown – Gainesville, Georgia
Current city – Nashville, Tennessee

Label – Warner Music Nashville

Current Project – Sweet Southern Summer EP (as of date of article: 8/25/2025)

On the heels of releasing their debut EP, Sweet Southern Summer, we chatted with Malachi Mills and Logan Simmons of The Band Loula in this week’s spotlight feature. The Band Loula joined us to talk about their record, their origin story, and everything in between. Keep reading to learn more!

Growing up in Georgia, Both Malachi and Logan found themselves immersed in music from an early age. “My upbringing was very much musical, I would say, but, I didn’t really get into any professional sides of music until Malachi was involved. But I always was singing [and grew up going to Tent Revivals],” began Logan. So I grew up listening to gospel music, singing gospel music, a lot of bluegrass music and I was around music all the time, but really didn’t start singing. publicly or like performing until probably middle school or high school, started singing at church some.”

For Malachi, church was also an important part of his upbringing and his early musical tastes.“I always knew I liked to sing. It was just kind of a natural. I just knew that I had this desire inside of me, and I first got to express that in church,” he shared, adding, “I listened to a lot of gospel music growing up. […] I somehow really developed a love for, Motown. […] Then whenever I was I was 16 and could drive, I got all of my brother’s old country CDs, and so I started listening to country music, and, you know, the radio, and whenever you’re in Georgia, you just always around country music.”

Despite both loving music, Logan’s stage-fright inhibited her from being on stage, until Malachi helped her through it, when they finally met at just fourteen years old.

The Turning Point:

“Malachi and I met when we were 14. and we started singing in church together,” shared Logan. “About the same time me and Logan met was the first time I’d ever really sang in front of anybody,” added Malachi. The twosome knew of each other for quite a while before Malachi approached Logan with an idea to sing together professionally. “We didn’t really start singing just for us two, somewhere outside of church until we were a little bit older. So, the band was not really conceptualized till probably 2020, 2021.”

Despite working on music for several years, Malachi didn’t feel all in until Logan joined the band, officially forming The Band Loula.“Whenever we started singing together and making YouTube videos, it was just one of those things that kind of naturally came together, and like Logan mentioned, there was some magic there, some chemistry that you can’t really fake,” they shared. “We decided to be a band, and we still never rushed anything. We tried to make sure, and put our best foot forward and work hard with it, but also, build it naturally, and we we just started writing songs and booking shows and doing the thing.”

When The Band Loula officially formed, Malachi had already made connections in Nashville, writing and networking with fellow artists and industry people, who later would help them sign their record deal with Warner Music Nashville and release their debut EP.

Today:

Flash forward to today, The Band Loula officially released their major-label debut EP, Sweet Southern Summer featuring six songs.

“We not too long after getting to Nashville ended up developing a relationship with John Osborne, who is the producer on this record with additional production from a good friend of ours named Greg Bieck,” shared the Band Loula. “We kind of we kind of pieced it together, with intentionality, of course, but we pieced it together because we’re in the stage of releasing singles, and, we wanted to really just see what people were resonating with as we were releasing it, and, I think we figured it out, you know, like, it was all this common threads of these, like, Southern experiences that we have culturally, maybe spiritually, or socially, and it’s just this, you see a common thread of Southern experiences in there.”

Sweet Southern Summer fuses the singer-songwriters southern rock, country, and folk influences together effortlessly. With lyrics that push the envelop, melodies that stick in your head, and purposeful instrumentals, the record as a whole is exactly what The Band Loula had hoped it would be.

“Having a first body of work from a small band is it’s a very big deal to us, and it’s, I think I said this the other day as well, and I want to hold on to it that little milestones to a little band are huge milestones,” shared the singers. “Together in our combined experiences creates this really cool atmosphere in the writing room where you, able to write songs that are maybe a little bit on the line or over the line, but they’re true. They’re just true and honest to us, and that’s what we always want to keep at the center.”

This is just the beginning for The Band Loula. Expect the band to get even bigger, release even more music, and hopefully tour their record sooner rather than later. Stay tuned!

Connect:

To keep up with The Band Loula, follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

The Band Loula’s music is available everywhere you buy or stream music. Take a listen below and check out more new recently released tunes on our ‘New Country Music’ playlist. Be sure to give the playlist a follow for your weekly new country music fix.