In recent years, Michigan Rattlers have earned a following with a rootsy, folk-rock style. But for its latest full-length album, the Petoskey-based band of longtime friends — singer and guitarist Graham Young, Adam Reed on upright bass, Christian Wilder on keys, and drummer Tony Audia — decided to mix things up a bit.
“I think we just really wanted to make a record that kind of pushed our limits and expanded on ideas of how we sounded,” Young tells Metro Times. “There’s still some upright bass on it, there’s plenty of acoustic guitars. It’s not like we said certain things are off-limits, but our big focus was just to expand.”
The result was last year’s Waving From a Sea, whose shimmering heartland synth-rock calls to mind acts like the War on Drugs or Bruce Springsteen, the latter of which Young counts himself a superfan.
“I heard his hits on classic rock radio, but I think just one day I kind of sat down and finally listened to Born to Run all the way through, and by the time I got to the end [“Jungleland”] … I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. It completely exploded my mind, this kind of nine-minute epic journey. I think that kind of just reset the bar for me of what a rock song could be.”
He adds, “It was all over from there.”
To produce the project, the band enlisted Detroit’s Dominic John Davis, the touring bassist for Jack White — a childhood friend and fellow Cass Tech alum. The Rattlers and Davis were already on each others’ radars: Davis produced recent albums by Kalamazoo’s Greensky Bluegrass, who the Michigan Rattlers toured with.
Much of Waving From a Sea was recorded over the course of three sessions in Nashville, where White and Davis eventually relocated, mostly at the home studio of White’s long-time engineer Josh Smith.
Young says Davis and Smith provided a comfortable space where the band could experiment.
“We just tried to use the studio as a place to actually make a record, rather than just set up some mics in a room and all play the song like we would play it live,” Young says. “In the past, I think we were a little gun-shy and a little afraid of the studio. It was always, you know, we’ve got ten days to make a record, and if you don’t get whatever you want done, you’re shit out of luck. So this time we set out to create an environment that was the polar opposite of that and really just take our time.”
He adds, “I think the biggest thing that [Davis] provided us with was a sense of freedom and confidence to just kind of go for things that we wanted to try.”
Reached by phone on the road with White, Davis says he was encouraged to get into production work by White’s former keyboard player, the late Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, who noted Davis’s talent as a problem-solver in the studio. Davis says he took the Michigan Rattlers project on in part because he was already a fan of the band.
“They sent me a demo that sounded like a finished record,” he says. “And I told them, ‘This sounds great, a couple of these tunes could just be put out the way I hear them right now.’”
As producer, Davis encouraged the band to occasionally make do with what they already had, and parts of the demos wound up on the final record. “We tried to recreate them, and they just didn’t have the same vibe,” Young says. “So why should we spend six hours trying to redo them?” Instead of bringing in a session player, Graham busted out his old saxophone from his school days and played all the parts himself. (“It was sitting in the closet,” he says.)
Davis describes the record as “a lot thicker and a lot deeper,” than what the band’s previous work. “They’re referencing the War on Drugs and the 1975, along with Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Hornsby, these sort of giant, lush arrangements,” he says. “And it was really cool. They were great. There were a couple songs that we had to totally, like, re-E Street Band them and try to get them in this other box.”
Davis says he was able to catch the Michigan Rattlers’ Nashville show last month and was blown away.
“I was kind of wondering, how are they gonna put this off?” he says. “And they did. Christian the keyboard player is just working overtime.”
He adds, “They got a cool thing going on. Graham writes songs that mean a lot to different people. …he always kind of reminded me of a sort of Son Volt or Springsteen, really imaginative lyrics and characters.”
The band still considers itself to be based out of Michigan, though Young has moved to Los Angeles.
“Michigan’s got a great music scene, but not a whole lot of folks that leave Michigan,” Davis says. “It seems like we have all these people that sort of just burn circles around the state, but those guys have always been really particular about being a national touring artist. They only play one show in Michigan a year. You take notice of the folks that are touring and kind of building a following.”
In the studio, Davis says he and the band bonded over growing up in the Great Lakes State.
“It does sometimes feel like they’re not a local band,” he says. “But they’re die-hards. We were in the studio two Lions seasons ago, and it was really interesting. We had the Lions versus the Packers on, and I’m trying to get stuff done … they’re Michiganders for sure.”
Joe Hertler opens. Starts at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 16 at Saint Andrew’s Hall; 431 E Congress St, Detroit; livenation.com. Tickets are $27.50.
