Susie Evans is taking you Beyond the Bachelor and hearing stories from the people closest to your favorite Bachelor Nation members! Back in Nick Viall’s season, he and future Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay were serenaded by a singer named LOLO, and Susie is ready to hear all the stories straight from LOLO!
Hear how her performance came together while she was in the middle of a big tour. LOLO spills all the details on what you DIDN’T see on the show, and she shares her honest reaction to Nick and Rachel’s date.
Plus, find out the effect her appearance on The Bachelor had on her music career!
This is all most famous Beyond the Bachelor with Susie Evans.
Hey, guys, welcome back to be on The Bachelor. This is your host, Susie Evans. Today I'm going to be chatting with Lolo. She performed on Nick File's season of The Bachelor. They were in New Orleans downtown. It was on Rachel Lindsay's one on one. So we're really excited to jump right in and ask her all the details.
Hi, Hi, how's it going good? How are you good?
Thank you for hopping on and joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Okay, So you performed your song Shine on Nick Kael's The Bachelor. What was that experience like for you and how did it feel to share your music in a very different way than what you're probably used to.
Well, it was it was an interesting experience all the way around because the process of what led to me even being on the episode, it snowballed really quickly on tour at the time, and we were up in the in the northwest, the West Coast, which was far from New Orleans, which is where we filmed. And I have been an avid Bachelor watcher forever. Me and my mom, it's like been our thing. All the years that I lived away from her, it was our thing, where like we would watch it each week and talk to each other about it and that kind of thing.
So, and I had just put.
Out a record at the time, which Seane was on, and I had had my management.
I'd said I would love to be.
Able to take my mom to one of those finale tapings one day, and like, can you basically just send my album and spend a note saying, hey, we have this client who loves The Bachelor and connect show their mom whatever.
And so a couple of days go by and.
They called and said, we loved this album and we want to fly her next week to film for nick viol season.
That's literally what happened, no way.
So I just genuinely, as a fan of the series, wanted to.
Take my mom to Opinality.
And it snowballed very quickly into this thing. And when my manager called me, we were in Seattle and he was.
Like, are you sitting down? And I was like, I'm not sitting down. Should I be sitting down? Like you might want to sit down?
I was like okay, and he was like, they want you to fly to New Orleans and film for The Bachelor next week, and I was like, so and so that was what happened. We flew to New Orleans from the Northwest and in the middle of tour, which was crazy, and it was an awesome.
Experience because everybody.
Behind the scenes in Bachelor World, the production team and everybody like they everybody was so incredibly nice. And I've got to imagine, I've never been the contestant, but even just observing what we observed over the course of that day filming, things can change so quickly. You know, you're obviously dealing with real people in real circumstances, real time, real emotions, real feelings. At the drop of the hat, somebody can completely change their minds. Somebody can you know, go through something emotional, you know, whatever is. And so, as a person who's always watched the show, I loved being able to see a glimpse behind the scenes in that way, and everybody production wized was so incredibly nice, and it was really lovely to be able to share this song that I've written, which is just genuinely about finding your own inspiration, being okay with being who you are, and being willing and comfortable to share that with the world.
It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to share a.
Message like that through songs in that kind of a space.
That's so cool.
So okay, that makes me think I love that you were a fan beforehand. I'm like, oh, my wheels are turning now. And so I'm like, Okay, it sounds like what you saw, because I I don't know if you still watch it, but I was on the show a few years ago, and the number one question people ask me is is it real?
Like is it scripted?
Did they tell you what to say? And so you being a fan getting to see behind the scenes and then hearing your perception of it is so it's actually really cool to hear that you felt like it was very.
I think it's real.
It really is real people in real emotions. So I'm guessing I was. My one of my questions was going to be do you feel like you believe more in reality TV now or less versus after what you see?
What you saw, I guess, yeah, it sounds like you.
Believe in it or it just seemed real to you.
You know.
I think the thing about reality TV is that whether it's you know, something like The Bachelor or something like a TV show where you're literally watching people's lives, like keeping up with the Kardashian.
Whatever it is.
In from the viewer's perspective, I think what can get hard is that I think, especially like one of the things I feel as a consumer of the Bachelor franchise, you hear a lot from especially girls who just go through difficult things that then air at long after the fact and they've been edited and all that kind of stuff, and they have to compress hours and hours and hours of footage and content into one hour each week. Like that's a challenge in and of itself, and so of course all of these little moments I think that can or would help the viewer understand the realness of it a lot more. That gets edited out a lot of the time because they have to make choices of Okay, well we can only keep this amount for this episode because we've got to get from this plot line to this plot line.
Whatever that is. And so all of those like the blooper.
Moment it happens yeah at the women tell all or the men tell or.
Whatever that is. They those kinds of moments. I think if.
That was included more often throughout the whole each each season.
I think I would in theory help the consumer, yeah, just to.
Kind of be like, okay, yeah this, these are here of these real moments. But again, it's like it's hard for production I think probably to have to make those decisions otherwise it would turn into.
A totally different show. Probably.
I am with you completely on that and obviously on this podcast, so often we're like singing the praise of the show because we're like it, you know, it did this for my career. It was the most fun experience, or my wife was a fan, or like people say that most cool things and.
It's such a positive thing.
But this is one thing where I'm like, Bachelor producers, if you're listening, like take this. This is a consumer of the show who was on the show witness thing and like has really good feedback. Because that's always been one of my things too where I'm like, I feel like there's sometimes an agenda and I totally get it. It's a produced show, so there has to be storylines, there have to be things that move the storylines along, and so things get cut. But it was so wild watching back the season I was on and being like wait a second, Like there's so many personalities amongst the women that were just not highlighted, but they were such a big part of my experience in the house, and it gives you like empathy for them because when I was seeing things happen in real time and then you knew the whole context context, and you have like, you know, empathy for that person. And then as a viewer, you see a villain and you're like, oh, they're the worst person in the world. But really, you know, everyone's a bit of a villain, you know, like everyone's got like has their moments of weakness or whatever. That's really interesting that I think if the producers ever listen to this, then that's a really good tidbit of just like, you know, let more stuff stay in, like the real real stuff.
Well, I also wonder, you know, I also just wonder. I can't even imagine what your experience for anyone who's got to really put themselves out there to be on the show, what the experience is like, just even from what I observed in my short time filming, the.
Feeling like for me, I knew exactly what they were going.
To show, because you know, we knew, we knew what we were playing, We knew going into it that they were going to use three songs total. They were going to use a performance of my song Shine, and then you know, because that was you know, we had to.
Agree upon all these things beforehand. Also, there's like music licenses and clearances and all these kinds of things that have to go into place, so there can't be any surprises there. So we knew.
This was the song they were going to use for the majority of the time that we were going to film, that we were also going to do one other song for extra pickup things that they needed, and then one other selection to be played in backgrounds moments throughout the episode. We knew that going in. So because I had parameters, I knew exactly what to expect. I didn't maybe know exactly what the camera angle was going to be, but I knew, you know, what was going to go on.
Versus being.
On the show for you know, the length of time that you all are there and you are not in the editing room you are and also there's all these you know, behind the scenes moments where people are having their sort of confessional things, all of these moments where you are really.
Not involved in a good and also not in control of what others are doing.
You're there having to exist as peacefully.
As you can with all a similar objective.
It's got to be a pretty surreal experience in that way, knowing you can't control you know, your aspects of being on the show.
Yeah, definitely a wild ride.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And to your point of how things can change so quickly, did you feel like when you were there, did you think the chemistry between Nick and Rachel, like, did you think she was going to go all the way? Or and also did you get to see other women, Like did you see him interact with any other women or was it just the two of them on that date?
I just saw the two of them on that date, and it was really funny because.
I remember thinking.
That the main the main because also the like I there was a period of time where because we have brought in you know, earlier in the day, even before they were there, we had to set up all of our gear, we had to sound check, we had to do you know, various things before anybody else showed up. And then they started bringing in all of the extra sort of bar patron kind of people that they were bringing in for filming.
Yeah, and then when they when.
Nick arrived independently first, and he was there with us for a little while, and then Rachel arrived, And what I remember thinking about their interaction was that they seemed very comfortable with each other. They didn't seem like you know how sometimes you can see new people who are newer in a relationship and their.
Energy still feels like they're still trying to figure out what their dynamic is. All they like each other, but they're still trying to figure out.
You know, they were not They weren't all over each other, but they were two people that, you know, you could tell they really just very much clicked.
And I don't know whether I was struck with the fact that I thought she was gonna go all the way or not.
Yeah, but I do remember somehow she had I don't know honestly because it's been a while.
But.
She had somehow found out from the producers who was going to be playing.
She know it was gonna be me, basically.
And so she had found my album and she had been listening to it, and there were a couple other songs on the album, and so when I had talked with her, she was like talking to me about my music, and for a good chunk of time after the episodes air, especially after Day aired on TV and everything, and you know, she would reach out to me.
From time to time being like, I'm listening to this song. It's making me so happy, you know, Like she had a we had.
A genuine interaction about my own music, which I was really surprised by. That was one of those things that I was It was very flattering and very very cool of her to go out of her way to like do her research in that sense.
She was like, I wanted to know.
She was like, I didn't want to just be I didn't want to be caught off guard.
I wanted to know.
What I was going to be listening to, because I guess that they had she had found out or they told them that live music was going to be some kind of part of the date, and so she was like, well, who's coming.
I want to know.
I want to know what the music is. And so they had cheered it with her, and I thought that was really cool.
That's really Nick was Nick.
I remember Nick and my guitarist Josh having a really funny conversation where.
Josh is.
He's just he's hilariously funny anyway, and He loves to just make light of every situation, and I think especially like in a.
Situation where you're just now getting to know.
Literally meeting someone in an environment where like, Okay, here we are with all these cameras on us, and now we're gonna play.
There's a song, and wish you the best on your relationship.
You know.
It's kind of a really funny dynamic of how to meet somebody.
And so he was like, you know, asking him a typical question of like, do you ever get tired.
Of all those girls throwing themselves at you? That's funny.
I don't really remember what nixed response was, but I remember Josh asking him that question and Nick kind of like looking at him, like, I can't really answer this right now.
That is so funny.
I feel like those are two really good, like behind the scenes examples of I mean, I've always known Nick to be quite funny and like like cheeky and charming and just like has that kind of like lightness about him. And I don't know Rachel that well. I don't know either of them that well, but I don't know Rachel as well, but I've met her and I've heard things about her, and I feel like what you just describe sounds a lot like who she is, you know what I mean, like really cares and like takes a particular interest and wants to do her due diligence, and obviously with her career has been so successful and so amazing. So it's like it's just it feels very on brand for her to have like cared enough to want to listen beforehand, and then even like following up and like making you know, texting you at a later time and being like, oh, I'm listening to this song. Like that just feels so genuine and sweet.
I love that it was. It was it was very genuine.
I mean, obviously I spent a day with her filming, but you know it was interesting especially once everything aired and we saw what the what the rollout of events were in that season, and then all also just watching Rachel's trajectory from kind of jump point start and then everything she's you know, been through since.
She's I think she's I remember.
Thinking, even in that day I spent with her, she seemed like a very grounded person. She seemed very just that you know, she just seems to know what her purpose is and she that's what she follows, and.
Wow, that's very cool.
So after the show aired and your music was shared, I don't know if it would be shared with a different audience or maybe like a I don't know if The Bachelor shared it with a larger audience. Did you have any kind of like pivotal things that came from or came into your career after being on the show, Like did it jumpstart anything or did it open you up to a broader demographic of people?
Yeah, I think that it definitely brought several opportunities, a couple of really interesting touring opportunities and other like feature opportunities, and then also interesting just kind of seeing the difference in the demographic because at that point I was like, you know, really playing to like an alt rock crowd, which is not that people who listen to alt rock do not listen, do not watch The Bachelor. I think that there are lots more people that watch The Bachelor that cross pollinate in too many different types of music.
But I was really surprised with.
The the out the level of the outreach in general, So like for the whole next ten days after The Bachelor, something as what seems maybe very insignificant to others that would.
Be very significant to artists, especially as you're kind of just putting a new record out and those kinds of things. It's like on iTunes, when you would pull up iTunes if you were searching something like my name.
Lolo was like at the top of the daily searches for ten whole days, and like that's.
Really that's a big moment where you get to see the immediate turnaround of just the power of the outreach and the I mean maybe in some ways also like the power of how a show can be put together so that a song, like if they're choosing to feature a live artist, it's like myself or anyone else they feature on the show, they capture it and they also place it within the course of the episode in a way where it leaves a really big impact on people enough so that then you want to turn around and immediately.
Like search for the thing that you've heard.
And that is really powerful, you know, because I think especially now in the way that artists in general are trying to figure out way always try to figure out new ways to reach their audience, and you know, social media has given us obviously huge ability to reach so many more people than we ever could in the past.
But there's something about.
You know, millions of people watching you on TV at the same time that you know it leaves an enormous impact.
And it was exciting to be able.
To see how my song being featured in a special moment in that show not only could reach so many people, but then there were other waves in which that song was able to receive attention and be featured in other spaces in other movies, TV opportunities like synk licensing, all the touring, all the things that happened.
I was. I ended up being on Rachel Ray as a part of that and doing.
A bunch of stuff with her down at south By Southwest on the back end of all of that, which was really really cool, and it happened like very organically out of the ship, out of the song being featured on the show, and then of course you know of action that happened after that, and then also the for that season they continued to use Shine and two of my other songs like throughout the rest of the scene in as soundscapes and thong scapes, and so I was and I think I'm assuming because the music was well received, but that's that's the best case scenario, you know what I mean. Obviously, I'm the kind of person where I go into everything I do and I hope for the best. I don't assume it's all going to be a giant nightmare. I assume, Okay, we're gonna do everything we can do and make it everything we can make it. But you never really know what's going to happen. So to see the response that we got and then to have the ripple effects that happened, it was really awesome.
Yeah, so awesome.
Yeah, Okay, before we wrap up, I want to ask when you have on the horizon currently where can you find you What are some cool projects you are working on or planning.
In the near future.
So the thing I'm always working on is raising my toddler.
At a three year old boy, and he is awesome.
And so in amongst everything I do, I have my silly little boy that goes with me and does everything with me, and that's been wonderful.
That's cool.
And so this year particularly has been a big year of creating things so that next year this is the like input year, so that next year can be the output year kind of thing. So, and I'm working on a couple of different things that are a little like all each in their own little corner. But I'm making a new album. I'm in the process of writing and recording all of that, and I'm hoping to be done.
With all of the recording by October.
And I am working on an independent musical film.
It's a it's also a Western.
It's basically like Oklahoma the Musical meets Killed Bill.
Sounds awesome.
It's a really incredible script and everything it's being created, including the music and getting the cast together, all those kinds of things so that next year we can go film the project next summer. And that project is called My Father's Daughter, And it's been really it's been a really interesting project to work on because you follow this girl who it's set in old Western time. You follow this girl who she loses her family due to you know, like a gang kind of trying to take over her family's farm, and then you follow her as she basically seeks revenge for her family. But the the way that the story is written, you stay so in her corner and you so want to see her succeed. But the way that the story weaves and there's all these surprises that happen, and it's been really it's been a really interesting and totally different like of all the songwriting I've ever done or any kind of projects I've ever worked on. It's been something completely different than I've ever done in the past. And so.
The story itself and the project itself is really fun to work on.
But it's been really fun to do something that's just completely different than anything I've tried in the past. And then I'm also developing a little kids show, so it'll be like a song and storytime kind of thing that I'm working on with one of my longtime friends and collaborators. And so that's the thing that we're developing. And again that's been a brand new situation because it's going to be an animated project. So I've never worked on something where we like work with an animator. That's been a really wild process, totally new. But all three things that have been amazing to work on this year, and and we'll all start to see the light of day starting kind of at the beginning of next year. But I'm gonna have a couple of little singles that'll be coming out in the fall.
Its music videos and some other stuff like that.
So everything for me can be found at lolo music dot com and then if you follow me on socials, it's all at Lolo Music amazing.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Yes, absolutely, it was a pleasure getting to get the scoop. I feel like I learned more about that season the Bachelor and I love that. Thank you guys for listening to be on the Bachelor. We'll see you next time.