The City Lines are starting a new chapter.

The Ann Arbor-based alt-rock band recently added two new members, lead guitarist Johnny Scott and bassist Victoria Horne, to their lineup. They join vocalist-guitarist Pat Deneau and drummer Bob Zammit.

“There is a total synergy on the stage now,” Deneau said. “It’s really fun playing these songs closer to the way that we recorded them, with the lead guitar parts and some basslines that are moving a little bit. Victoria and Johnny are bringing energy to the stage that I really feed off.”

The band also recently announced three shows for this summer, including May 30 with Joe Jordan at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, June 25 with Cracked & Hooked and Pillow Princess at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti, and August 6 with A Thousand Horses at Lager House in Detroit.

The City Lines will perform songs from their growing catalog, which includes last year’s Prescribed Fires album and two prior releases.

“We’re a new band to a lot of people who are maybe going to wonder how we got three records out under their nose and why there are as many listenable songs,” Zammit said. “It’s because we’ve been working really hard on that end of it, and now, through the support of the community, we can support folks and be helpful.”

To learn more, I spoke with the band about their new members and live shows.

Q: How does the current lineup reflect a new chapter for the band?

Bob Zammit (BZ): I think it took us some trial and error. We have been lucky enough in the past few years to play with a rotating cast—all good players, all good people. When we picked up Johnny, he showed us something just by who he is, and we said, “Oh, wait a minute, this is it.” And then we went on the doubly difficult search of a new bass player to give Megan [Marcoux] her creative space, and we didn’t just want any bass player.

There’s something very special about what Victoria and Johnny have, and this is not a coincidence. They are already big creative forces in their own projects, [Toadally and Good Man’s Brother], which means they come to us as our neighbors and peers in the scene. They’re into it really deeply for what it is. We give them all the freedom in the world to express themselves the way they want. These are people we admire from the scene, and so for them to come and spend their time helping us make our music real is the greatest gift.

Q: Johnny and Victoria, how did you become part of the band?

Johnny Scott (JS): Pat reached out to me about playing some live stuff for the [Prescribed Fires] album release show [last October at Ziggy’s]. I started listening to the songs, and I was really excited. I like playing lead guitar, and I fell in love with songs because they felt bigger than myself in a cool way.

I like the structures of the songs and everything that they have. I’m there to give them some razzle-dazzle. Corktown Music Festival was my first time playing with Victoria, and we had a happy back-and-forth on stage.

Victoria Horne (VH): I picked up bass over the summer, and I’m a multi-instrumentalist. I was messing around with the bass, and I posted a couple of reels of me playing it on Instagram. I thought, “I love playing the bass, and I want to be a bassist in a band someday.”

In December, Bob reached out to me about helping them out on stage, and I said, “Whoa, I didn’t know you guys knew that I played [bass].” Then I said, “Hell, yeah,” and it’s been so fun. These guys are the nicest and so supportive, too. The show for the Corktown Music Festival [in April] came up, so I focused on learning the songs. It’s been really fun to learn the music.

Q: How have you integrated the band into the Metro Detroit music community?

Pat Deneau (PD): We have been woodshedding for years and would go out and play a couple of gigs here and there, but never quite found our footing in the community. And now it seems like there are these organic connections that pop up, and we can just hop on a show. The Kickstand Productions thing is big because that feels like we’re getting called up from Toledo.

It’s like they need somebody from the Mud Hens to come and pitch for the Tigers all of a sudden. I feel like Charlie Sheen in Major League, making my way to the mound, but that’s the kind of energy that I feel when we get the call-up from some touring acts. It’s exciting to meet the people who are out there doing it.

Q: How have your live performances evolved on stage?

BZ: One of the things that I think was grinding us a little bit was the pursuit of perfection. Live shows were becoming more about what didn’t work than what did, and that’s on us. And largely, it’s on me as someone who does like to chase that. I’m from that drum corps sort of background.

I think I was adding a lot of friction to the process, and Pat is a much more spontaneous artist who reads the room and does what needs to be done. And before we go to any show, Pat and I often have a little quick moment aside, and the mantra we’ve been saying is: have fun, we’ve earned it. This doesn’t have to be a recital; this could be a moment.

It’s OK to lean into it and perform. Pat’s greatest talent is presence, and he does understand what the room and the moment need. And you can’t plan that, and if you can’t plan it, then it’s a mistake on paper. We would say, “Hey, why aren’t we doing the plan?” And the answer was: because the plan was good until it wasn’t, and the room didn’t need the plan. The room needed something else.

The success of Corktown showed … that we let go. We shared the songs with the room, and we had already shared them with Johnny and Victoria. I feel like we cracked into another level of what live performance means for us, and not a moment too soon. We do care, so we practice on our own and together. We want to bring you a great show, but perfection isn’t [always] the best show.

Q: Two shows—May 30 at The Blind Pig and August 6 at Lager House—feature you opening for touring acts. How do you plan to approach playing those events?

BZ: We’re happy to help touring acts have a great time and want them to come back soon, but then obviously selfishly, it puts a lot of bodies in the room. As Johnny said, it’s a great opportunity to try your stuff in front of a wider audience who owes you less. Your friends see you in a certain way, and so do longstanding followers and supporters, but this is a great moment for any band lucky enough to get to play for a wider audience.

Kickstand Productions seem to know who we are, and we love to play with them and always let them know that we’re interested. Both of these touring shows are Kickstand shows, and they came rather quickly after a long time. They make a ton of sense, and Joe Jordan’s stuff is really beautiful.

A Thousand Horses is the raucous country rock indie side of things, but that is also part of who we are. It just feels like our people are going to love their stuff, and their people will enjoy what we do. We give credit to a production company that cares about a good bill in both cases because they’re an excellent fit.

Q: Johnny and Victoria, what are your goals for these shows?

JS: I’m excited to play with some touring acts, and it’s really exciting to see people who are doing it from town to town and showing up in our city. That’s the goal: to link up and be a part of the bigger wheel that’s turning around in this music community and making our web bigger and bigger. I love playing different venues, but there are different vibes with each set. Honestly, I just want to play live music with my buds all of the time.

VH: I’m really stoked and definitely mirroring what Johnny said about how fun it is to play at different venues and with different types of musicians at different stages of their popularity. I love that kind of variety, being a multi-instrumentalist and somebody who can never just pick one thing. I get excited thinking about all the shows I’m playing in the future with Toadally but also with The City Lines.

Q: What can people expect for the May 30 show?

PD: What I’d like to do is lean a little more into my acoustic guitar playing for The Blind Pig show with Joe Jordan and capture some of that folksier flavor for that show. We have a couple of songs that we have been playing, and we’re not sure if they’ll make it into this [show]. We’re talking about “Out Loud” and “Blue Water Bridge” as possible add-ins. They’re a little more country-twinged and a little twangy.

BZ: Victoria just learned the half hour of power that we brought to the Corktown Music Festival, and the good news is, we’ve got a show. We also have way more that we can borrow from. We consider it a responsibility and an opportunity to be the local support, so it’s gotta kill.

It means, what are we really comfortable with? What can we sell? What can we emote? What story can we tell really well? I think it’s the very beginning of that arc, and this is our moment to show who we are.

Q: What plans do you have for the June 25 show?

BZ: Pillow Princess is amazing. I haven’t seen them lately, but we saw them a year or two ago. They were playing Ziggy’s often. I also ran into an old flyer from a couple of years ago that [listed] us at Ziggy’s with Toadally and Cracked & Hooked’s David Freund playing acoustically.

It starts with sharpening the half hour we have, and there’s so much material. At the speed that we can add it, we know we’re angling towards the nice problem to have. Everyone’s favorite problem is: there are more songs you want to play than there are minutes for people to hear them. I think we’re headed that way.

Q: What’s up next for you?

PD: I think we’re in full-on show mode for the foreseeable future—I just want to gig. I would love to play as many gigs as we can up through the new year until everything freezes over and we hibernate for a couple of months.

The City Lines perform May 30 with Joe Jordan at The Blind Pig, 208 South First Street, Ann Arbor. Doors are at 5:30 pm, and the show is at 6 pm. For tickets, visit The Blind Pig’s website.