Whether you’re heading up north, cruising along the lakeshore, or just exploring forgotten corners of West Michigan, every great trip needs a great playlist. So we’ve got it covered. Featuring some longtime favorites and rising newcomers, consider this a sampler of the many tastes and flavors making up our extended local music scene. Jazz, pop, rock, country, folk, punk, rap, it’s all in here, so get ready to open your mind as you venture out on the open road.
With the scorching hot days of summer upon us, life on the road for a nonstop touring band like Florida indie-rockers flipturn can border on breakdown.
Songs that began in Joe P’s New Jersey basement have since traveled their way around the world–and to millions of listeners.
Devin Weber, frontman for Grand Rapids alt-country band The Local Commuters, admits it’s taken a long time to finally release the group’s debut EP.
Nearly a decade after their last album together, multi-platinum pop-rock band The Fray weren’t dead, but it’s safe to say they were on life support. Beloved for their 2005 debut album How To Save A Life, the Grammy-nominated Colorado band had announced that they had parted ways with lead singer Isaac Slade in 2022, after officially going on hiatus in 2019, and going into lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “We really had a couple years of soul searching."
For Seth Avett–one half of the folk-rock duo The Avett Brothers–there’s no such thing as an ordinary day. “Right now, I’m sitting at the kitchen table,” said Avett as he spoke to Revue. “The curtains are pulled back just a little, not all the way, but enough for the room to be completely filled with gray sunlight. It’s a little bit overcast, but it’s stunning. It’s very normal and very regular, but if I will allow myself, I can be newly inspired right now.”
After over 15 years and now six albums together as a band, Seattle indie-folk outfit The Head and the Heart needed a fresh start.
When Maynard James Keenan, legendary frontman for the rock band TOOL, announced last year that he would celebrate his 60th birthday by launching a one-of-a-kind triple header tour featuring his projects A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, along with his longtime friends in Primus, it felt like a once in a lifetime lineup decades in the making.
The music industry can hit like a head rush, but it’s only a matter of time before reality kicks in.
Right from the start, the skyrocketing success of indie-rock outfit Rainbow Kitten Surprise has come as a shock to drummer Jess Haney. While attending Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, Haney was only supposed to join the band for just one show way back at the beginning in 2014.
When Blake Bickel moved to Kalamazoo after living in Seattle for over a decade, he had no idea his new basement band, Bronson Arm, would break out and tour across the country.
Behind the astute songwriting of Iron & Wine is Sam Beam, a multi-disciplinary artist from South Carolina. As a five-time GRAMMY nominee, it’s no surprise that Beam’s imaginative demeanor first appeared in childhood. “I was the kid in the back of the class drawing, not paying attention in school,” Beam said.
The personal and prolific project of Canadian singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman, The Weather Station broke through in 2021 with the release of her sixth studio album, Ignorance. A critically-acclaimed masterwork confronting the grief and anguish of the climate crisis, the album landed on countless year-end lists, from The New Yorker to Pitchfork, Rolling Stone to The Guardian.
The sudden success of singer-songwriter Marc Scibilia might seem like an overnight sensation. But the Buffalo-bred, now Nashville-based musician worked for years, toiling away in the industry, before his song “More To This” became a viral hit late last year.
