Beautiful Lies
Ben & Ari’s, 13875 Trade Center Drive, Fishers, 317-770-5294
Saturday, Jan. 12, 6 p.m., $4, all-ages

It will be a homecoming of sorts for Beautiful Lies when they play at Fishers’ mini-golf course/all-ages venue Ben & Ari’s on Jan. 12. The Boston-based group’s founding members will play in their hometown for the first time since their high school days, when they performed regularly at Ben & Ari’s.

Back then, Beautiful Lies was only Nick and Zach McLean, two brothers who attended Carmel High School. Now, those two return with newfound bandmates Alex Rossiter and Dave Widaman during their winter tour.

“Ben & Ari’s was such a good place to play because we were friendly with the owner, John DeLuca,” says Nick, the younger McLean, “They didn’t have a lot of live music before we started playing there. It was new to them and new to us.”

Since then, Ben & Ari’s has begun to host a monthly “Student Night,” which is currently held every other Saturday night. NUVO called the venue the “most talked about new live music venue for teens” in its feature on high school musicians.

The McLeans carried their love of music with them to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where they met Rossiter and Widaman. Resurrecting an old project of Nick McLean’s, the band assumed the name Beautiful Lies and was officially formed in September 2006.

The Ben & Ari’s show, along with several other Indiana dates, marks the farthest west the band has traveled. Not that the band has limited their horizons to the States: They embark on a European tour in March, making a whirlwind circuit of the old country, with long stops in Switzerland and Germany.

But only Midwestern shows can bring out those closest to the brothers. “We had a really great show when we went out to Dayton,” Nick McLean says, referring to a visit to the town in August 2007. “Lots of family and friends were able to make it out. When scheduling our shows for this tour, [Ben & Ari’s] seemed like a really appropriate place.”

All members of the band besides Zach McLean are wrapping up studies at Berklee. After college, the group hopes to continue working together. “We’re all pretty passionate about this,” Nick McLean says, though he acknowledges that “it takes constant hard work to make it in the industry.”