King Ink is ready for a new start.

The Grand Rapids, Michigan band celebrates meeting the right person and planning for the future on its latest Heartland-rock single, “Good News.”

“Lyrically, it’s a mix of finding the right person and feeling secure in that,” said JD Waldvogel, the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist.

“The big thing I want people to take away from listening to us or seeing us live is joy and happiness. We played a show recently where they asked for our bio, and it said, ‘We play bright alternative rock.’ And then on the pamphlet, they said, ‘King Ink—bright rock,’ as our descriptor. I said, ‘I’ve never heard of that genre, but I think we’re starting a new one.’”

Waldvogel captures that positive attitude and upbeat sound with bandmates Becca Coberly (guitar, bass), Evan Coberly (guitar, bass, saxophone), and Sean DeWard (drums) on “Good News.”

He sings, “Cut to you, cut to me / Living in harmony / Not gonna waste my chance / Let’s rewrite history / Hope you’re fine with hyperbole / And maybe in your eyes / Maybe you can see through my disguise / The whole damn world is our stage / Let’s start a new page.”

“I really wanted to feel that from a song, which is just like a sense of joy and a sense of things are good, and that is OK,” Waldvogel said. “I also wanted there to be a sing-along part in there. That song has been a benchmark, or a signpost, saying, ‘Where do we want to go from here?’”

To learn more, I spoke with Waldvogel, Becca Coberly, and Evan Coberly about the band’s background and latest single.

Q: What are you most excited about this fall?

JD Waldvogel [JDW]: It’s the first time with songwriting that it hasn’t been just me and then the studio. I feel so energized, and I feel like everybody else in the band has had so many ideas that they want to bring to the table.

We just played a show [last month] in Grand Rapids, and we don’t have anything else [until November]. This fall, we’re really diving back into songwriting. Our main focus for the next few months is writing, recording a little bit, and having new stuff to bring to shows.

Becca Coberly [BC]: It’s cool to have shows and things on the horizon—on the other side that we can build setlists to. It’s cool to write songs with the idea that we’re going to be recording more frequently. I think there’s a really good momentum that we all have collectively as a group right now.

Evan Coberly [EC]: It’s been exciting for me, too. I’ve enjoyed having King Ink as a good outlet to channel all of our creative energies together. We’ve been lucky to have a pretty undeniable musical chemistry. I think it goes back a long way, especially with Becca and JD. King Ink is a family band.

Q: How did the three of you meet?

JDW: I think we met at church, technically. I think when we graduated, of the four of us in the band, [Becca] moved to Florida, one of them moved to France, and another moved to Germany. We started writing stuff, just Becca and me, to keep busy. We had the name King Ink when it was just the two of us for a minute.

BC: Evan is my brother, and I think we crossed paths [with JD] of existing in that sphere [of church] for a while. I was itching for a band back in high school, and I had been trying with a couple of different musicians at the time. I struck up a conversation with [JD] at church and said, “Do you play any instruments?” And then we found a bunch of other people similarly, and that became the band we had in high school. Then I moved to Florida for seven years.

Q: How did that lead to forming the band?

JDW: The members of Low Phase had done a lot of the studio work with me when I recorded the first couple of EPs. And then I had some other friends in different bands and with solo stuff who would play a couple of shows here or there. It was last year when I felt like, especially with a second EP, [Mythical Holy Good Guy], it was intentional, and I did what I wanted with that. I thought, “If I’m gonna hang it up—it was like Robert Frost—which way am I gonna go? Am I done, or am I really gonna commit to this?”

And I thought I was done, and that was right around the time [Becca] had moved back to Michigan. I said, “Well, we have to be doing something together. Evan was an easy piece [for the band], and Sean was someone they both knew through a bunch of other stuff. At the first rehearsal, we noticed the chemistry, and it just worked. It was rough, but it felt like a good group of people, and I think that was almost a year ago at this point.

Q: What inspired the band’s name?

BC: For the name of the band, JD had texted me and said, “Hey, I’m trying to think of a name for the songwriting project.” He would throw ideas my way, and this was back when I was already in Florida. He said he wanted to have the word “Ink” in it. I am really into noise rock and weird shit like that, so I was into The Birthday Party, and I love “King Ink” the song. “King Ink” is a really cool, crazy song, and it sounds nothing like what we write. And [JD] said, “That’s cool.” I think [JD] had forgotten the origin point [of the band name].

JDW: We had stopped songwriting, and about five years ago, I started to pick it back up and recorded the first EP, [Lost Machines]. I thought, “I don’t want to record under my name, and I don’t want to come up with a new name.” So I asked [Becca] if it was OK if I used that [name], and Becca said, “Yeah.” But I was at a show and somebody asked me,” Is your band name from Nick Cave?” And it felt like a memory being triggered, and I said, “I think so.”

Q: How do the band members help shape King Ink’s sound?

EC: Becca can play everything because Becca can play the drums. We’ll swap guitar and bass, and on our songs like “Good News” and on a cover like John Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” I play sax on those songs. We’re working on writing more [songs] that involve the saxophone.

The way that Sean got involved in the project … is that Sean and I are similar in age, and I knew him in high school. I had put together some one-off performances with people, and Sean has always been someone that I’ve gone to for bass or drums. He’s really embodied drums very heavily.

BC: I can play everything a little bit, and there’s only one song in the live rotation that I play drums on. We performed in high school—JD and me—and drums were my primary [instrument]. Typically, it’s Evan and me switching off on guitar and bass. Guitar is also Sean’s original instrument, but he’s really leaned into drums. 

JDW: [Sean] also has a huge audio production background. When we’re working on stuff, he has so many ideas for the entirety of the song, and he brings a lot of that to the table. When the four of us have written songs together, the three of them can all contribute to every aspect of the songwriting, and I cannot in the way that they can. Sean is not just a drummer. He knows songwriting really well, and he was in choir, so he’s written some harmony parts for songs.

Q: How did Lost Machines help lay the foundation for the band’s sound?

JDW: I look back on that, and there are things on there that I’m really proud of and things I would have absolutely done differently. “The Hangman” is the first song we recorded, and it’s my least favorite recording of any of our songs. I just wanted to have something to look back on because I’ve been a songwriter since I was in middle school. I wanted to have something 20 years from now to say, “Oh yeah, this is that thing I did.”

One of the goals was recording, and then the other [goal] was trying to figure out what I wanted the songs to sound like. My favorite band is The Mountain Goats, and they’re very acoustic rock. The lead singer is a huge heavy metal and death metal fan, and he said, “I can’t write that—that’s not what I can do, but it’s what I enjoy.”

I was trying to figure out: “What does my music sound like versus what I like listening to?” It ended up being pretty par for the course about what I expected.” The song, “Who Knows?,” is one of our bigger songs—relatively speaking—and I remember talking to [my brother] Caleb [Waldson]. I said, “I feel like this is either like an acoustic Jeff Tweedy song, or it’s a My Morning Jacket rock song.” And he just said, “It’s a rock song—do that,” and I said, “OK, great.”

There was [also] a lot of thinking, “What is this gonna sound like and where is this gonna go?” I think it was very helpful to establish an identity and to understand what it was like to record in the studio. We recorded it at Planet Sunday Studios with Joel Ferguson. We wanted to figure out how that went, so that when we recorded the second EP, I knew what I wanted to do. It’s a nice time capsule of what I was feeling at that time and what was important [to me].

Q: What was it like to write, record, and release Mythical Holy Good Guy in 2023?

JDW: It was right when I was going through a divorce, and a lot of relationships had been broken. I was trying to figure out how to repair those and wondering, “What does that mean for me?” The title comes from a Ben Folds song, [“Capable of Anything”], and he talks about himself or somebody calling him this “mythical holy good guy.”

As someone who’s had a Midwest Christian upbringing and has a goal in life to be a good person, I was reckoning with: “What does a good person mean? Can you do bad things and be good? Are there things you can do that break that completely, and there’s no coming back from that? How do you reckon with yourself and feel confident no matter [what]?”

It’s very easy to judge somebody based on their decisions and yourself based on your circumstances and say, “Well, when I did this thing, it was because of A, B, and C, but when they did it, it was evil.” I think I was trying to deal with a lot of that and coming to terms with [it], and I think that’s why I love “Permanent Residents” so much. That chorus talks about “My closet’s not empty / There’s a pile of bones.” We all have skeletons, but the idea for me was: “Well, the goal should not be to get them out because everything that happens is part of who you are.”

It should be: “How do you learn to live with those skeletons? And by reducing them to a pile, you’re victorious over that.” It was very intentional. It was the first one where I thought, “Oh no, there are songs that are not making it onto this because they don’t fit that theme.” I feel very proud of what I was trying to accomplish with that.

This EP was about becoming comfortable with my songwriting and not comparing it to somebody who is a very metaphorical songwriter or a very famous songwriter. I thought, “That’s just not what you do, that’s not good or bad, that’s just you. I know what comes out of me, I know what I can do, and that is what makes it unique.”

Q: How does “Good News” help set a new tone for the band thematically and sonically?

JDW: For me, there’s a desire to be really intentional, not just about the songs we do or don’t write, but what they end up sounding like. Now that there are four of us, I have the ability to do that lyrically, while also all of us forming the musical direction we want the songs to take.

We have a couple of completed new songs, but one of them started with Evan playing some chords at the end of a rehearsal. I said, “Record that, record that!” And then it just naturally and intentionally came together. The main thing I contributed to that was the lyrics, and I thought, “This is really cool to get to write to someone else’s music and feel confident about the songwriting.”

Q: How did Bruce Springsteen, The Replacements, and other artists inspire the sound of “Good News?”

BC: I was thinking of The Replacements’ song, “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which has that big brass part. That was one we were sketching out, and I said, “Here’s a really bright song.” JD also wanted something that felt big and anthemic, and we thought, “What if we try the saxophone a bit?” It was in the ether already before we had gotten to that point.

I remember [last] fall we were thinking of cover ideas, and I thought, “Oh, it would be really cool if we could do ‘The Whole of the Moon’ by The Waterboys specifically, which I love.” It has that upbeat, anthemic kind of sound. We were leaning in that direction and thought that could be a cool way of bridging a bunch of different sounds that we’re interested in.

EC: I got my grandparents’ record collection, and I was listening to Born to Run, which is one of the albums they had. It coincided with me bringing out the saxophone at a rehearsal, and I honestly don’t remember why or how I did that. I just brought the saxophone out as we were working on “Good News.”

JDW: I listened to a Springsteen [episode] from Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott’s podcast called U Talkin’ U2 to Me?. They did a series of episodes called “U Springin’ Springsteen on My Bean?”. I went through a huge Springsteen phase, and I still am, last year and into this year.

One thing I’ve learned to appreciate about Bruce [Springsteen] is that … he and [The E Street Band] have a good time when they play together. They write good songs, and they’re all super skilled, but the goal is to enjoy playing together and playing live.

Another one of my favorite bands is Bleachers, and the song “Modern Girl” is one of my favorite Bleachers songs. It’s always a balance of thinking, “I want a song that sounds like that, but how do we capture that feeling?”

I was going through a phase of wanting to capture that, and it ended up being what we started to do musically with the saxophone and with the covers. If you had told me a year ago that we would be capturing or chasing a Heartland rock [sound], it would have blown my mind. It’s really organic, it feels very natural and comfortable, and it’s been super fun.

Q: How did “Good News” come together with producer Joel Ferguson at Planet Sunday Studios?

JDW: It was recorded back in June. We had gone to Sean’s place and recorded a demo. And so when we went into the studio, we knew what we were doing and knew what we wanted. We were trying different things, but we weren’t writing in the studio. And then we had a whole brass section, and we got a sax.

Our friend Sam [Sundman] played trombone, and Cam [Ferguson] played trumpet. That was a really cool experience, but it was super smooth. Joel and I know how to work together really well because this was our third time with a collection. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s been very good to me, offering advice and feedback.

He has so many ideas that he brings into it, too, and his studio is amazing. It was such a weird experience to not feel stressed. When they were recording any of their parts, I thought, “This is great. I am not concerned about this at all.”

Q: How did Sam Sundman (trombone) and Cam Ferguson (trumpet) help elevate the sound of “Good News?”

EC: I did the arrangement, and it’s mostly just a union horn line. I wrote out the sheet music for them. I feel like I had an idea in my head of how I wanted it to sound in the song. We were able to get that pretty well with everything that they were able to put down.

Q: What live shows do you have coming up?

JDW: We have a show on November 21 at Tip Top Deluxe in Grand Rapids. It’s with North by North, which is a band from Chicago, and with Feeding Grizzlies, who are like our sibling band. They’re so awesome, and they’re such good people and friends. We both look out for each other, and if there’s ever a show that we get on the bill and they need another band, they’re always our immediate [go-to band].

We’re also playing January 17 with Feeding Grizzlies, Moravian, and Zudocks at The Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids. 

Q: What plans do you have for new material?

EC: The songwriting is the big focus for us at this moment. Our goal is to hopefully release an EP next summer.

JDW: Songwriting aside, it feels nice to get back to the creativity part of it. We’ll say, “Let’s meet tonight to talk about business and to talk about music and to write and rehearse without having to have this setlist done by next week.” It’s nice to have that relaxation time.

We’re also going to have at least a single ready for [our show in January], and it might be the beginning of that summer EP rollout.

King Ink performs November 21 with North by North and Feeding Grizzlies at Tip Top Deluxe, 760 Butterworth Street Southwest, Grand Rapids, Michigan. The show is at 8 pm. For tickets, visit TicketWeb.