Enjoy A Badass Lakeview With Jesse Denaro & Luke Healy

Lakeview’s blend of country and rock is a hit with both fanbases. And they don’t care what you call it, just call it a good time.

“Bro-country” has become the Nickelback of the country music world—the commercially popular, catchy stuff that self-proclaimed “purists” love to hate. “Merle Haggard would roll over in his grave,” they say while looking down their noses at the insanely wealthy likes of Florida-Georgia Line and Luke Bryan. “Patsy Cline would never do a song with Nelly.”

Lakeview thinks that’s a bunch of bull.

“It’s basically like tailgate beer music,” says Luke Healy, one half of the Pittsburgh-based duo whose brand of bro-inspired country rock has made them one of the industry’s fastest-rising stars. “And I don’t know who doesn’t like that. Maybe you don’t like beer for some reason, but we do, and that’s why we write about it.”

Lakeview’s unabashed love of light beer and catchy hooks is what makes them so relatable, capturing the hearts of their many blue-collar fans. This is also why Ben Burnley of Breaking Benjamin invited Lakeview to join his band and Staind on a summer-long amphitheater tour in 2024, a gig that propelled Healy and bandmate Jesse Denaro into the limelight. While their music may not delve deeply, Lakeview’s rocking-good sound is earning them international recognition. 

Lakeview didn’t start out as a country duo—Healy and Denaro met while playing in hardcore metal bands, with Denaro’s band opening for Healy’s at a Florida church in 2010. A few years later, they ran into each other at a party in Pittsburgh and ultimately became roommates. At that time, they spent their days building in-ground swimming pools and their nights bouncing at clubs and music venues. They wrote songs during the brief hours they had in between, and sleep wasn’t much of a priority. 

“We were getting burned out from years of doing it,” Denaro says. “So, one day we were just like, ‘We should move to Nashville and just write songs for a living and see if we can make something happen.’”

“And we wanted to write songs that we wanted to hear on the radio,” Healy adds. “Which kind of turned into that mixture of rock and metal and country that is Lakeview today.”

You’ll discover what Lakeview is today with over 18 tracks on their self-titled debut album, which Denaro and Healy were co-writers on. It starts with a rousing, rock-inspired anthem dedicated to their fans called “Home Team,” recognizing hard-working individuals like double-shift waitresses and dive bar regulars with their boss’s number on the back of their shirts. 

It continues through songs featuring the familiar country themes of heartbreak, betrayal, and hard times, with some clever wordplay added in. “Wrong Side of the Track” is about a song ruined by lost love. “Here Lies a Girl” isn’t a eulogy but a ballad about a deceitful girlfriend. 

Musically, you’ll hear twanged echoes of Staind, Breaking Benjamin, and P.O.D., with hints of Nickelback and Disturbed. It isn’t George Strait, but that’s precisely the point.

“I think the big (influence) for us was Nickelback; that’s a huge one for us as far as the melodies and catchiness of it,” Healy says. “We want our songs to hit in a similar way to how Nickelback songs do. Then a lot of our production is going to be influenced by traditional country stuff.”

They both point to Randy Travis and Don Williams as influences from the country side because both grew up unable to listen to much else.

“We grew up not being allowed to listen to a lot of music when we were kids,” Healy says. “We listen to ‘How Great is our God’ and you were lucky if you got to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd or something in the house.”

That traditional, God-fearing upbringing significantly contributes to the relatability of Lakeview’s music among country music audiences. Coupled with years of hard work in concrete pits and smoky nightclubs, this creates the ideal formula for connecting with both metal and country fans. 

“The DNA of a Lakeview fan is less about what (kind of music) they enjoy, it’s more about what kind of person they are,” Denaro says. “They’re blue-collar, hard-working people. They live the music first. You’ll have girls who’re nurses. You’ll have the concrete-working dudes, and you’ll have the typical hardcore kids. It’s a whole mixture, but they all kind of intersect with the same point.”

Lakeview’s lyrics don’t necessarily call out hunting and fishing, but like many in the industry, they share a great love of the outdoors. Even though opportunities don’t always abound in Nashville, they try to find time to throw a line in the Cumberland River whenever they get a chance.

Healy is also an avid gun builder. He grew up not far from the Pennsylvania Gunsmith School in Avalon and says in his hometown pretty much everyone either owned or built their own guns.  As an adult, it’s become a hobby he speaks of with great pride.

“I just recently built an AR pistol, and we built a couple of AK-47s, which were pretty tough actually. I wouldn’t suggest building one of those from scratch,” he says. “But I recently built a .300 Blackout, and it would be great to go out there with Aaron in Texas and shoot some pigs with it.”

Aaron is Staind frontman Aaron Lewis, who the duo became close with while touring together last summer. They say the experience was awe-inspiring.

“These are bands that we’ve either listened to for 20 years or we’ve worked for as stagehands,” Denaro says. “So, it was a surreal, kind of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us.” 

Although Lakeview was uncertain about how they would be received, they found that their music was already familiar to the metal-rock crowd. 

“A bunch of our songs are on SiriusXM Octane. They’re on The Highway, they’re on some of the local rock stations in those areas,” Denaro says. “When we would play those songs, there’s thousands of people in the crowd that are like, ‘Oh, I know this song!’ They’re singing along—it was pretty wild.”

In 2025, Lakeview will hit the road again with Staind and Breaking Benjamin for a spring arena tour. They will also perform some small club dates during their own headlining tour in February and March. Over the summer, the country-rock act is set to play at the world’s largest metal festival, Wacken Open Air, in Wacken, Germany. 

“They don’t really have a country station in Germany or the Netherlands, but surprisingly it’s growing quite a bit,” Healy said. “And our one song is in the Top 20 over there, and out of all the shows (on 2024’s European tour) only three didn’t sell out.”

If nothing else, Lakeview’s popularity in a place that doesn’t really embrace country music shows that genres are often just labels. Whether you call it rock, country, metal, or bro-country, the music resonates with blue-collar folks all over the world.

For more information about upcoming tours, albums, merch, and more, please visit lakeviewofficial.com.