Greg Jones wants to spring into action.

The Metro Detroit vocalist-guitarist is ditching the winter blues after being indoors all season.

“I find, for whatever reason, it feels like it gets worse every year,” said Jones, who performs in The 3148s. “When I was younger, I’d look at snowbirds and think, “That seems like a lot of travel and a lot of hassle.”

While he’s not headed south this time, Jones channels that pent-up frustration, misery, and restlessness on “Cabin Fever,” the energetic, hardcore-inspired single from The 3148s.

Along with bandmates Ian Coote (guitar, keys, mandocello, vocals), Jason Seifert (bass), and brother Tom Jones (drums), he sings: “Sunlight deprived and locked inside / All alone in a crowded house / Grinding my teeth, grinning in agony / Self-loathing in sheep’s clothing / As all the walls keep closing / In on me and my sweet sanity.”

“And now I say, ‘Let’s get these kids to graduate so that I can buy a house in Florida and live there for six months out of the year,’” Jones said. “You feel trapped, and it’s like the walls are closing in by the time you get to this time of year. I just wanna be outside, and I wanna be warm and comfortable. I haven’t seen the sun, and yeah, it drags.”

The adrenalized alt-rock-meets-punk instrumentation on “Cabin Fever” does anything but drag. The band’s fearless electric guitar, thumping bass, and charging drums pulsate alongside Jones’ angry vocals.

To learn more, I spoke with The 3148s about its latest releases and background ahead of an April 5 show at New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Q: The 3148s has been a band for 10 years. How did you meet and form the band a decade ago?

Greg Jones (GJ): Ian, Jay, and I are attorneys. We all had our day jobs and we talked about getting together to jam. Tom’s my brother, so I said, “I know a drummer.” We started off playing covers initially in a little back room that Ian’s got and my basement for a little bit. I don’t [think] we ever had any real intention of doing originals or anything for a little while. And then somebody asked us, “Hey, do you want to open a show for us?” and we thought, “Yeah, that sounds cool, but we need a name. I guess we’re a band.” And it’s evolved [from] there.

Ian Coote (IC): We started out as a five-piece, and I was keys for a while. The very first introduction I [had] to Greg was I got a text from [then] fifth member, Jeff, and he said, “Hey, we’re in a band now.” And I said, “All right, cool. What do you play?” and he said, “Guitar,” and so did [Greg]. Then I said, “Three guitars ain’t a band,” and Greg said, “My brother plays drums.” And [finally] I said, “I know Jason, I work with him, he plays the bass, and I’ve always wanted to play the keyboard, so maybe I’ll play the keys. And we got two guitars, a bass, and drums—now we got a band.”

Q: The band’s name wasn’t initially derived from a mashup of the Metro Detroit area codes 313 and 248. Given that, what inspired the band’s name, and how did it evolve to later include the area code association?

GJ: It started with that first gig [when] we couldn’t come up with a name. We definitely [weren’t] taking ourselves seriously, and we played more than one show sitting around and talking about what we could be and couldn’t narrow something down.

We all said: “Well, we all practice auto no-fault [law], and MCL – Section 500.3148 provides for the imposition of attorney’s fees for claims that are so excessive as to have no reasonable foundation.” And we thought, “That kinda describes us,” and everybody said, “Yeah, that’ll be good.” That was mostly a joke, but [we said] OK, and then we printed it on T-shirts, and now we’re kinda hot committed.

Jason Seifert (JS): When we were in Austin, somebody came up to us who was from Detroit and said, “That’s so cool, you merged those two area codes, [313 and 248].” And that’s [when] the lightbulb went off, and we said, “Yes, that’s it—that’s totally our name!”

Q: How does the band’s name represent your music and creative vision?

GJ: We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re not overly pretentious about anything; we dress up in our silly, shiny suit jackets and rap about the French Revolution.

Q: You released your debut EP, Domestic Bliss, in December 2019. What did you learn while working on that first release?

GJ: We had the rough outlines of those tracks. A lot of it was stumbling into stuff, and we said, “You know what would be fun? Let’s do a weekend away.” We went to a place up north, lugged all our gear up there, and ended up doing some writing while we were up there. We did some rough recordings off of our little board. Jay [then] got connected with the folks over at Rust Belt [Studios], and it started off as a lark.

We thought, “Hey, wouldn’t that be cool? We could record a couple of these tracks at a place that’s got a couple of Grammys and some platinum records on the walls. That would be neat.” And then … we published the roughs coming out of there, and it kept moving forward from there. It evolved as we figured it out, and then we thought, “This should probably be mixed and mastered at some point if [we’re] gonna put it out on the internet.” I think that was the process leading up to that one.

Q: How did you evolve as a band after that and become a quartet?

JS: You’re going to notice a trend with the trajectory of our band, and a lot of the things we do are hubris. Nobody said we couldn’t do it, so we just did it. Then we had the first Lawlapalooza, [which] was our record-release party at Sanctuary [Detroit] in Hamtramck. [It’s] an amazing venue to play when you don’t deserve to play there at all at that point in your career, let alone headlining to release your record. Luckily, I know the owner of the place, and so he got us in.

It was a great night in late January [2020], and then we thought we had a bunch of momentum. But in reality, it focused us inward. We grew as artists, musicians, and a band in [the sense] that the four of us decided we weren’t going to quit doing this. And that’s what led to our socially distant covers section that we did, which was a thing at the time. We’d pick a song, and Ian would record the scratch track so we could all have a timing issue.

We’d all do our parts and film the videos, send them to Ian, and he worked some magic mixing it, and through there, we actually did our first song. Greg did his first song that he sang on, which was “Arkless in the Storm,” and that came about during the COVID sessions. Unfortunately, during that time, … Jeff decided he had other obligations and family things to do, so we became a quartet, and Ian reluctantly moved to guitar.

Q: Since 2020, you’ve hosted an annual charity fundraiser, Lawlapalooza, to benefit different nonprofits, including the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, the Autism Alliance of Michigan, and other organizations. How did that event first start for you and lead to having it at The Magic Bag in Ferndale?

JS: The first one was in 2020 at the Sanctuary [Detroit], and then the second one was in a backyard during COVID because venues weren’t open. And then we were trying to figure out a place to have one because we wanted to put it back into a club, and we could always go back to the Sanctuary. Once again, hubris took over, and I started emailing some of the bigger venues.

I emailed Andy, the top talent buyer for The Magic Bag, and he got back to me quickly. He said, “You guys are the ones that do that song, “Beck and Call,” right?” And I said, “Yeah,” because I had shared it [with] a bunch of the musician Facebook groups. He said, “It’s so weird I was gonna call you to see if you guys were open to doing the opening spots for touring acts coming in.” And I said, “Yeah, 100 percent we are,” and so we ended up opening for The Pack A.D., which is a Canadian band that came through here and that went well.

Then we booked our first Lawlapalooza at The Magic Bag and that was a huge success. We put on a good enough [show] and drew a crowd that they kept wanting us back. We love that venue, and it’s a great venue. It’s a great place to be and a great place to put on a big event like that.

Q: How does each member contribute to the band’s songwriting process?

JS: We have a super collaborative way of writing music. Ian is an accomplished folk musician and has released several albums and EPs on his own. We would take [Ian’s] songs, and Greg and I would double the tempo and add a ton of fuzz, and then Tom would add a wicked drumbeat to it. And then suddenly, it’s not an Americana folk song anymore—it’s The 3148s.

GJ: We get together at practice every week, and somebody will have an idea. It will start with just two notes that go together interestingly or a very basic riff, and then suddenly at the end of the session, we’ll [realize], “We actually just sat and wrote a song in a room.” That’s kinda cool once it takes shape.

IC: I’ll bring a half-baked song together with lyrics—usually an A section and a B section—and a lot of times it will need a bridge. I’ll get stuck to where I keep playing it around and around and around, and I’ll think, “I gotta give it to these guys so they can do something with it—change it—so I can break myself out of the rut.” That’s a big help for the songs that I bring.

And Greg is similar, … [he’ll] bring sketches of a song, he’ll get stuck, and we will bang them out and practice or work on them at home and come in with an idea. A lot of times, I’ll come in with an idea, and they’ll say, “That’s a bit of a clanger,” and I’ll say, “OK, back to the drawing board,” and I’ll come back with something better. I don’t think we get our feelings hurt when we say, “Hey, thanks for the effort, but … .”

Tom Jones (TJ): We tend to help each other get unstuck with things. A lot of times, especially as a drummer in a rock band, it’s a lot of backbeats. I’ll get stuck playing the same kind of thing, … and Ian has some background with drums, so sometimes he’ll bring in a scratch track with a drum part on a drum machine or on his electric kit that he’ll bang out to have a guideline to go with.

That’s helped a lot on certain songs to hear how he’s thinking of it differently than I might. One of the songs we’re working on now, [Ian] came in with a riff that we liked … but we didn’t know how to make it a song. We were goofing around with it during practice, and I stumbled on the right drumbeat for it, and that seemed to unlock how to continue writing it from there.

Q: “The General” is the first track of your upcoming Martian rock opera. It examines the challenges of fighting in a war and the uncertainty that comes with it. What inspired the Martian rock opera and the military themes conveyed throughout the track?

IC: I turned 40 in 2019 and thought, “What am I doing?” I was driving around one day, and I was listening to The Wall. I don’t know why, and I hadn’t listened to The Wall for 20 years, and I had it on. And I thought, “Oh, a rock opera! That would be fun, and it would give me something to do so I don’t think about my mortality.” I kicked it around and didn’t have any good ideas, and then grabbed onto a few things and started sticking them together. And I said, “Do these fit? No, they don’t fit. Ooh, these fit! Ooh, that fits,” and then there’s about 20 minutes of stuff I got recorded, and “The General” is one of them.

For the rock opera, there’s a guy who’s stationed on Mars to terraform [it] to make it habitable for humans, but there’s nothing going on. It’s a dead end, and he’s wasting his career out there. And then, all of a sudden, something magical happens, and it starts getting green and habitable.

Another astronaut that he used to have a relationship with, she comes in, and they meet there and set up a Garden of Eden-type thing. And then there’s a genie who’s granting them wishes, but they don’t turn out the way that they think they will. Anyway, disaster befalls them, and Earth is on the brink of war, and they see this genie on Mars thinking “Ooh, that will be a weapon for us that we can use against those nasty whatever people we’re fighting against.” That’s where “The General” came from, and he’s saying, “No, we need to use this for war and for protecting ourselves.”

Q: “Marching Clock” addresses dealing with the swift passage of time and accepting unexpected changes along the way. How does the track emphasize the importance of being present and living for today?

GJ: This is the rare song that I brought to the guys that wasn’t inspired by a podcast or whatever I happened to be reading at the time. A lot of it came from our mom, who had been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, so we were dealing with that. It inspired [the song] and a lot of those feelings of how we get stuck in that. But then, at the same time, there’s an optimism to it in the sense that it all comes back around, and it’s all part of the same thing. Some of that is self-therapy for that, too, telling yourself, “It will be all right; we’ll come back again.”

Q: The video for “Marching Clock” features studio footage mixed with live performance footage from South By Southwest. How did that video come together for you?

JS: I filmed all the stuff in the studio, and I just had this idea. The National has a video for the song “Eucalyptus,” and it was them in a cabin studio, and it transitioned to [them] live. I thought, “You know, I bet I could probably do something like that similar [for] us.” I knew we had South By Southwest coming up, so I said, “I’m going to film as much as I can in the studio and then mix in as much as I can of outtakes of us jamming at the house we rented and then on the streets during it and then ultimately us on stage during South By.” I [took] the idea from The National, but we put our own spin on it.

Q: How did the band contribute to the energetic, hardcore sound of “Cabin Fever?”

TJ: This is one of the songs that started with a riff and a musical phrase that we liked, but we had no idea what to do with it. We kicked it around for a year, and then I came into practice one day, and I said, “OK, I think I finally cracked it.” It’s about feeling locked up and cooped up, and maybe it’s a little flowery and metaphorical, but it felt like me cracking the code of actually playing it. It felt similar to that feeling of being able to cut loose during that cabin fever-y kind of feeling.

IC: Typically, we’ll get done, and we’ll get bored playing a song, and then usually it’s Greg who will say, “All right, let’s play at double speed.” And on that one, we said, “It sounds pretty good,” and then it stuck at 200 beats a minute, which is our fastest song.

Q: The lyric video for “Cabin Fever” is reminiscent of a Jhonen Vasquez comic and a Tim Burton animated film. What inspired the fantasy-meets-horror feel of the video?

JS: It was [created by] a guy in Florida that we were put in contact with through Tinderbox [Music], our PR company. He said, “What are your feelings about it?” and I said, “Well, do you ever read the comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac? Jhonen Vasquez also did Invader Zim. It’s that mixed with Tim Burton. It has to be frantic.”

[We] went through several iterations of it, and my notes were that it had to become more frantic. But he took our thoughts and then fed the lyrics into the AI that he uses, and then the AI [went] a little bonkers, and I think we broke that computer. It was a unique enough song that I thought [it was worth] taking a chance on something slightly controversial.

Q: “The Enchantress” acknowledges meeting a genie and following her advice during an unpredictable journey. How does this track explore the next sonic chapter in your Martian rock opera?

IC: The opening riff and the other bits of it I wrote back in high school. The song was lying around not doing anything, and I thought, “Can I do anything with this?” and I said, “All right, that fits in there.” And then the breakdown in the middle of the song where it goes slow … that’s when I [brought] my idea to the guys in the band, and that’s the kind of thing they [would] come in with. They said, “Hey, what if we stop doing what we’re doing and do something else for a little while?” And I said, “All right, that will probably work,” and so I think “The Enchantress” did that.

Q: How did all four tracks come together at Rust Belt Studios in Royal Oak?

GJ: We recorded them over two different sessions. We’ve settled on going there for one day, and we do two tracks. We find that’s an efficient way of doing things. We worked with Steve Lehane on the most recent two and before that it was with Jake Halkey.

JS: Mat Leppanen is a mixer we got hooked up with through a label called The Animal Farm in England. We record in Royal Oak, they ship the session to England, and then they work their magic there. We somehow came out sounding way more professional than we deserve.

Q: You’re performing April 5 at Hamtramck’s New Dodge Lounge with Vultures of Culture, Sean Anthony Sullivan, and Past Dog Beach. What plans do you have for your set?

GJ: We have a few [new songs] cooking and we work well on a deadline. We have a couple that we’ve already debuted and performed and then a couple of others that are 40 percent written. If we say, “Hey, we’re playing these,” [then] they’ll be 90 percent written by the time we actually play them. There’ll be some newer tracks and some of the old standards.

Q: What it’s like to share the stage with the other acts on the bill?

GJ: We’re new to Past Dog Beach, but we’ve shared the bill with Vultures of Cultures three or four times. And we’ve played with Sean Anthony Sullivan a few times as well. We love their music, and they’re also just good people.

Q: What other live shows do you have lined up later this spring and summer?

JS: Our next show is May 2 at The Old Miami [in Detroit] with Vultures of Culture and Funderbird. And our next Lawlapalooza is August 1 at The Magic Bag in Ferndale.

GJ: For this year’s Lawlapalooza, we’re going to have a similar lineup as last year. We’re still in the planning stages, so once we start finalizing things that’s when all the stress dreams start. We haven’t picked who we’re raising money for yet.

Q: What’s up next for you regarding new material?

JS: We have four or five other songs that are at least sketches, if not close to being [taken] back into the studio. Right now, I keep [saying] that we need to press an album just to say we did it. It’s a rite of passage for a band to put [one] together, so I think our plan for the spring is to get those polished up a little bit more, maybe get into the studio in late spring or early summer. We’re focusing on that along with playing gigs.

The 3148s performs April 5 with Vultures of Culture, Sean Anthony Sullivan, and Past Dog Beach at New Dodge Lounge, 8850 Joseph Campau Avenue, Hamtramck, Michigan. Doors at 7:30 p.m. and show at 8 p.m.