The pop/rock outfit My Favorite Highway traces its roots to northern Virginia, where cousins Dave and Will Cook assembled the project in January 2006. Over the following years, players moved through the ranks, among them guitarists Andrew Goldstein—who exited later that year to front his own band, Friday Night Boys—and Brian Morgenthaler, whose brother Bobby serves as the group’s drummer. With Pat Jenkins established as the permanent guitarist, the musicians began writing material shaped by an array of influences, spanning the punk-driven drive of All-American Rejects to the sleek pop/rock approach of the Fray. Proceeds from the band’s 2006 EP, Anywhere But Here, supported the creation of a follow-up that appeared independently in July 2008. How to Call a Bluff propelled their progress by drawing the notice of Virgin Records, which signed the act in November and reissued the album in early 2009.
