Tag: Detroit

Quick Changeover – Three Spoke Wheel Adapts to New Situations on ‘Metamorphosis’ EP

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Three Spoke Wheel’s Jeff Whitmore, Justin Gumina and Ryan Thomas confront daily stagnation and acquiescence on “Metamorphosis.” Courtesy photo

Three Spoke Wheel quickly transforms with each anticipated change.

The Detroit psych-progressive alt rock trio of Justin Gumina (guitar, bass, keys, backing vocals), Ryan Thomas (bass, guitar, lead vocals) and Jeff Whitmore (drums, percussion) seamlessly shifts and evolves amidst life’s ongoing challenges on their latest mind-altering EP, Metamorphosis.

“You can point to the pandemic as an obvious, big change for our society in general and how we’re gonna take control of that change and kind of own it and move forward from it. A lot of the lyrics are from people in my life who don’t really know how to change or need to find a way to take control of their own lives,” Thomas said.

“I hope people who listen to the lyrics get something out of it. It’s just a way to reflect on how change happens and how we don’t just have to let change happen. We can take control of it and guide it in the right direction.”

With Metamorphosis, Three Spoke Wheel boldly confronts daily stagnation and acquiescence across six fluid, purposeful tracks. Immersed in psychedelic, proggy and grungy sensibilities, the band fuels their thematic transformation with shapeshifting instrumentation and adaptive production.

“I think it captures a little bit more of a mature recording compared to our first album because we’ve all been growing together. We’re getting tighter as a group, and I came from a point of not singing at all to singing on a lot of stuff and trying to learn harmonies,” said Gumina, who recorded, mixed and mastered the band’s sophomore studio release.

“As far as the writing process, it’s been interesting because the ideas are coming from other places. Jeff wrote a lot of the original, acoustic versions of some of these songs, and we took and twisted them and made them into full songs.”

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Deep Headspace – Inside the Mind of Johnny Gets Vulnerable and Spiritual on ‘Hope’ EP

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Inside the Mind of Johnny’s “Hope” EP provides an immersive soundscape experience within a beat-filled, musical world.

Inside the Mind of Johnny openly shares the most vulnerable parts of his headspace.

The Detroit deep house and lo-fi hip-hop DJ and producer unearths past pandemic-filled experiences of heartbreak, depression, loss and other personal struggles on his latest revelatory EP, Hope.

“Hope is about me finding faith and rebuilding my relationship with God as I understand it through music and self-expression and being as honest as humanly possible with how I was feeling while battling overwhelming sadness and depression,” said Johnny Malek, aka Inside the Mind of Johnny.

At the time, Inside the Mind of Johnny struggled with a breakup, the loss of close friends and show cancellations as the pandemic hit. To cope with his growing depression and self-isolation, he spent time rediscovering his faith and spirituality.

“Writing this project was something that truly helped me change my life forever and opened my eyes back to what my purpose on this earth is. It’s to use my expression and creativity to hopefully help and heal people who have been through similar situations like me through my music and art,” Malek said.

Inside the Mind of Johnny’s Hope EP provides an immersive soundscape experience within a beat-filled, musical world. Entrenched in catharsis and enlightenment, the EP’s four “groovacious” tracks instantly soothe and energize the mind, body and soul with each step on the dance floor.

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Snapshot in Time – Pia Revisits Past Friendships on ‘Old Days’

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Pia gets nostalgic on her new single, “Old Days.” Photo – AC Backus Photo

Pia thoughtfully shares a personal snapshot in time.

The Detroit indie rock singer-songwriter reminisces about a past friendship and recalls vivid moments of connection on her nostalgic new single, “Old Days.”

“It’s the singular event of a friendship not really ending, but dissipating and changing the way that it used to look. It’s a shorter realization of like, ‘Oh wow, this person that I used to either talk to every day or had this certain relationship with, it’s now different,’” she said.

Throughout “Old Days,” Pia wonders what her friend drinks for breakfast and whether they remember summertime highway jaunts or stolen firewood adventures.

Alongside those inquiries, an emotive swell of wistful electric guitar, quavering bass, thumping drums, shiny cymbals and jingly tambourine seamlessly transport Pia to the past.

She sings, “It makes me sad something changed in your eyes/Ask how you’re doing seems like a big disguise/December’s long and we both know/That the sun is coming and it’s melting the snow.”

“When I reached the end of writing ‘Old Days,’ it helped that I similarly was realizing, ‘Oh friendships and relationships end, but not always for the worst, and that time is still special,’” Pia said.

Pia penned her sentimental track in May and recorded it with a talented team of collaborators, including producer John Katona of JK (Not Kidding Studios), Minihorse’s Ben Collins (lead guitar), Tom Mihalis (lead guitar), Stoop Lee’s Ade Olaniran (drums) and Matt Jones (bass).

“I recorded the demo and basis of the whole song with Ben Collins and myself on guitar and vocals and Ade of Stoop Lee on drums. Then, I sat on the song for a little because I got busy with residency, and then ended up finishing it up at John Katona’s,” said Pia, who’s also a pharmacist.

To accompany the release of “Old Days,” Pia dropped a thoughtful new lyric video, which features her roaming around Belle Isle.

“I asked my 16-year-old sister to videotape me doing random stuff on my friend Matt’s camcorder. She was like, ‘Oh, I get to use a camcorder?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, try it out.’ She followed me around, and I used that footage in the video,” she said.

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One Love Symposium – This Week’s Events Aim to Unite Washtenaw County Communities and Public Service Providers

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This week’s One Love Symposium includes a series of public conversations, music events and expert panels focused on eliminating discriminatory behavior and racial inequities in the community.

A Washtenaw County symposium aims to forge stronger connections between local communities and public service providers this week.

Known as the One Love Symposium, the three-day event is geared to educate local residents and public service providers who make high-impact decisions for the community, including doctors, teachers and police officers.

Taking place Thursday through Saturday, it includes a series of public conversations, music events and expert panels dedicated to developing solutions for eliminating discriminatory behavior and racial inequities in the community.

Events will occur online and in-person in Ypsilanti and Detroit. They feature police administrators, public school officials, jazz musicians, local business owners, public policy experts and other participants.

Eastern Michigan University researcher Anna Gersh launched a survey and symposium in response to increasing racial, social and political tensions between public service providers and the public after George Floyd’s death in May 2020. She’s enlisted a team of youth data collectors and critical adult thought partners to assist with the survey and symposium.

The symposium also focuses on developing anti-bias training and creating a work certificate for public service providers, or “Human Services Professionals.” The ultimate goal is to create a “Human Services Professional Conference” for “the development of a common scholarship toward improved practices.”

The Stratton Setlist recently chatted with Gersh about the symposium, the work that’s been accomplished, this week’s events and what’s up next.

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Rise Above – Theandric Examines the Challenges of Mortality on ‘Flight Among The Tombs’

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Theandric’s Bill Bogue, Paul Tiseo and Aaron Wienczak provide an insightful route to self-awareness and personal enlightenment on “Flight Among the Tombs.” Photo – Robert Bruce Photograohy

Theandric majestically soars above the shadow of death.

The Detroit heavy metal trio of Paul Tiseo (vocals, bass, keys, guitars), Bill Bogue (guitars) and Aaron Wienczak (guitars) powerfully glides toward the beacon of life on their new supercharged EP, Flight Among the Tombs.

“Literature and poetry were a big inspiration for me. That was connected to the same time of when we all had to go home in March 2020. Life suddenly breaks, we’re all at home … it was a scary time. One silver lining for me was having that time and space to start reading again,” said Tiseo, who’s also inspired by Iron Maiden.

“I found this poet named Anthony Hecht, and I came across one of his poems that really struck me as powerful. He wrote this book of poems called ‘Flight Among the Tombs,’ and that’s where the title comes from. He wrote a series of poems that were different reflections on the person of death.”

Throughout Flight Among the Tombs, Theandric thoughtfully examines mortality amidst the challenging forces of choice, conflict, condemnation and pride. All four tracks provide an insightful route to self-awareness and personal enlightenment.

“To me, it also meant we’re flying among the tombs … we’re not dead yet, we’re alive. With the pandemic and what was happening, it was like every day we were confronted with death and sickness,” said Tiseo, who wrote the EP’s four tracks. “I wanted to think about how we’re gonna rise above this difficult time. We won’t deny that death is real, but it’s important to live.”

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Moving Forward – Allye Gaietto Searches for Closure on ‘I Guess I Don’t’

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Allye Gaietto processes a familial relationship on “I Guess I Don’t.” Photo – Rolando Ybarra

While mining past voice memos from her phone, Allye Gaietto discovered a future sense of closure.

The Detroit indie folk singer-songwriter’s surprise finding included the first verse of her latest cathartic single, “I Guess I Don’t.”

“I thought, ‘What is this?’ And then it made me cry listening back to it, and I was like, ‘Oh no, I have to finish it. I have to write the rest of this,’” said Gaietto, who started writing “I Guess I Don’t” in 2017.

“It’s about my relationship with my dad … I was processing this relationship in therapy and in life, and I was able to bring this song into it to push forward that conversation and express some things that were hard for me to bring up verbally. It’s like being able to open up your journal, and say, ‘Here, read it.’ You feel a little weird, but you also hope maybe someone will understand.”

Throughout “I Guess I Don’t,” Gaietto’s raw vulnerability and tender revelation instantly strike a chord with people experiencing family estrangement. Crashing cymbals, thunderous drums, tearful pedal steel, forlorn piano, hopeful electric guitar and melancholic bass unlock tightly bound emotional floodgates.

A spectrum of emotions quickly flow as Gaietto sings, “I’ve been writing the same song for years/And I’m not sick of it yet /I’ve been crying the same kind of tears/Don’t think I could forget.”

“A lot of parent-child relationships are estranged now. And it looks like for a lot of those people, there’s an active connection that they’re severing, like a lot of children are saying, ‘Do not contact me,’” Gaietto said.

“That was never my experience, which was more my parents got divorced, and after I moved away after college, we just stopped talking. Every once in a while one of us would call to check in on a holiday or birthday, and then it would just fall away.”

Gaietto continues to process those poignant experiences while singing, “Pretty sure you still have my number somewhere/Pretty sure you know how to dial/I’m not sure how much time I can bear/Not sure if you’ll still call me your child.”

“We just talked for the first time in a long time the other day,” she said. “The concept of closure … it’s never gonna be exactly what you think it is. I was getting to a point of just letting it go, and right as the song was gonna come out, I was like, ‘Oh no, we’re gonna kind of open this back up again.’”

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In Perspective – Tom Alter Channels Society’s Creative Voices on ‘Poetry and Protest’

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Tom Alter explores the complex nature of the human experience on “Poetry and Protest.” Courtesy photo

Tom Alter deeply examines art and life from different perspectives.

The Fraser indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist candidly depicts the thoughts, feelings and challenges of society’s creative voices on his latest insightful album, Poetry and Protest.

“I realized that so much of what I was writing about were things based on what I had read or had come from memories that had stayed with me for a long time and made me want to write about them. That’s the poetry side of it,” said Alter, who produced, mixed and mastered his own album.

“And the protest side blends in with that because a lot of the poetry is coming out and speaking to important matters. The last song I wrote for this was (the title track), and that was after thinking about this collection of songs. I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody who has a very different experience from me.”

Alter’s Poetry and Protest provides an enlightening narrative filled with bold tales about humanity, sacrifice, loss and compassion. It seamlessly ventures from the vast emptiness of space to the sparsely populated shores of Hudson Bay to the tightly packed streets of Hamtramck.

“The Poetry and Protest idea came from me being out on a walk and thinking about this collection of songs that I was putting together and realizing where the influences for them came from,” said Alter about his sixth album.

“There’s a song, ‘Four Blue Horses,’ that is directly from a Mary Oliver poem, and it comes from Franz Marc’s Blue Horses. She wrote a poem about that series of paintings, and she got so personally involved in the paintings. I just thought, ‘I want to write about this; it was as simple as that.’”

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Guitar-Driven Destination – MC Roads Brings Bluesy Alt-Rock to The Token Lounge Saturday 

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MC Roads combines blues and alt-rock for powerful guitar-driven sound.

MC Roads thoughtfully travels along a bluesy, alt-rock-fueled highway.

That highway unfolds a promising itinerary of guitar-driven destinations throughout the Motor City, including a Jan. 8 headlining set at The Token Lounge in Westland.

“To me, this is the magical part. I look for souls, and that’s what wisdom has taught me. I look for good people who want to work together like a family, and that’s when the magic starts,” said Mike Cross, MC Roads’ lead vocalist-guitarist and Sponge founding guitarist. “The songs are there, but the band comes in and embellishes it and makes it that bluesy alt-rock, guitar-driven sound.”

Along with Cross, MC Roads bandmates Bobby Guskovict (guitar, background vocals), KK Scofield (background vocals) and Dearl Poore (drums) will fuse that magical sound before a live audience Saturday. They’ll be sharing the stage with Stompbox and The Analog Dogs as part of a special show to benefit Detroit Dog Rescue.

“We’ve been working up the set, and there’s going to be some surprises. All of the tracks from No Nostalgia will show up in the set, and we have some new music that we’re excited to get out there in front of people,” Cross said.

“And we even have some covers. You never know, there might even be a song from my previous band in the set. It should be a good time with Stompbox and The Analog Dogs.”

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Organic Growth – Dirt Room Cultivates Experimental Sound through Live Shows and Releases

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Dirt Room will bring their burgeoning sound to Small’s in Hamtramck. Photo – Mykel Andre

With new blood, Dirt Room continually thrives on organic growth.

The Detroit experimental collective of Samuel “SJ” Sprague (vocals, bass), Patrick Norton (guitar, Octatrack), Nate Zonnevylle (synth) and Duncan MacKillop (drums) will cultivate their burgeoning sound through a series of upcoming Nice Place Presents live shows, including Feb. 4 at Small’s in Hamtramck.

“This is a completely new lineup for Dirt Room, but the synergy is there. Their musicianship and enthusiasm inspire me to keep going,” said Sprague, who co-founded the band in 2016.

“Pat has been an absolute rock for me over the past few years. Their ambition and work ethic astounds me, and the music we write together is truly a blessing in my life. Duncan and Nate are the young bloods in the group. They’ve been super enthusiastic about the new music we’re playing together and working really hard to make something special.”

For the Hamtramck show, Dirt Room will share the stage with emerging Detroit acts Who Boy, Rob Apollo and Mykel Andre.

“We’re very fortunate to be playing with such talented local artists, especially after being undercover for so long,” Sprague said. “I’ve known the Who Boy group as well as Mykel Andre for a few years now, so being able to put a show together with these guys is definitely special.”

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