The Detroit singer-songwriter and guitarist reconciles the past and embraces the future on The Time That Remains.
“I feel like I know these songs the best,” said Ward about his new folk album. “When I released The Darkness and The Light, most of those songs I knew as well as these. I feel like these songs are a lot closer to me than anything I’ve done.”
For his seventh release, Ward gets up close and personal about love, loss, and wisdom across the album’s dozen tracks. He spent considerable time fine-tuning the album’s evocative lyrics, heartfelt vocals, and earnest instrumentation before going into the studio last fall.
“This is unlike any album I’ve done because the songs have been performed out more than any of my other albums,” Ward said.
“When we recorded it, we produced 15 songs, but we trimmed it back because we felt these were the songs that hung together [the best]. At one point, we had a working title called Prayers, Parables, and Pet Peeves, and those are the buckets [the songs] fell into.”
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.
The Painted Friends frontman embraced his fragility and uncovered hidden truths while penning tracks for the Detroit duo’s latest indie-rock album.
“Without getting too deep into my personal life, I took time to think honestly about the decisions I have made in the last eight months or so while putting the album together. I thought about how deep I got into some struggles and what I needed to do to get out,” said McWhorter, the band’s vocalist-guitarist-bassist about The Devil in the Deep State.
“I started to become more aware of when the natural vulnerability I have from just being a human is leading me somewhere I don’t actually want to go. The key is understanding how to use vulnerability for good instead of evil.”
Alongside drummer Mitch Crosby, McWhorter explores that emotional and spiritual journey and its ramifications through perceptive lyrics and cathartic instrumentation.
“The personal struggles I have in life have always been a big part of what I write about. It helps me process it all. In doing this, I am learning how similar we all are in regard to having personal struggles,” he said.
“I listen to music I can relate to because it sometimes can be that extra push I need to keep going. If I can be that extra push for others, I don’t think there is anything better than that.”
To learn more, I spoke with McWhorter about the thematic and sonic elements behind The Devil in the Deep State.
From left: Randy Favot, George Jr., Anton Filyayev, Andrew Benjamin, and Danny VanZandt. Photo – Spencer Isberg
For Danny VanZandt, distinctive smells, tastes, and sounds trigger vivid memories.
The Detroit singer-songwriter explores those sensory experiences and the powerful recollections associated with them on his new album, Proust in the Kitchen With the Wooden Spoon!.
“It’s that concept of the Proustian memory that’s in one of his books where the character eats a cookie and has a flashback to a memory,” said VanZandt about his indie-rock release. “That—I think—is such a real thing and such a weird phenomenon that happens.”
As part of that phenomenon, he reflects on a gamut of emotions, ranging from gratitude to longing to anticipation, that arises when cooking and eating his late mother’s spaghetti and listening to music with friends.
“For me, my mom passing [away] was when I started thinking about that kind of stuff,” said VanZandt, who lost his mother in 2020.
“When she first passed away, the emotions wouldn’t come up on their own when just dealing with that, but then it would get reflected through a movie or a song. Then, I could process it and see the totality of it and that’s the way that I would deal with it.”
VanZandt processes everything through 11 emotive tracks on Proust in the Kitchen With the Wooden Spoon!. His sentimental lyrics and evocative instrumentation transport listeners to a special time, place, or feeling.
Each track feels like a magical short story soundtracked with elements of Americana, folk, rock ‘n’ roll, and alt-country.
“I remember listening to Spotify on shuffle and ‘Freak Scene’ by Dinosaur Jr. came on, and I had forgotten that song existed. I also had forgotten that Bug as an album existed and it reminded me of a CD a friend had burned for me in high school,” he said.
“It was such a faraway memory that I had not thought of in years, and I could see the color of the CD. When that stuff happens, that’s so crazy to me and so is the idea of how music can be a vessel that holds memories.”
I recently spoke with VanZandt about the album and the inspiration behind it.
Border Patrol’s new album, “The Worst Excuses,” poignantly and irreverently addresses a spectrum of inner hurdles and identifies novel ways to overcome them.
Border Patrol masterfully builds a lasting sonic bridge between Detroit and Windsor.
As musical architects, the American-Canadian “folk-everything” duo of Dave Toennies (guitar, vocals) and Cody Howard (banjo, vocals) creates a timeless infrastructure supported by candid lyrics, robust string instrumentation and impassioned vocals on The Worst Excuses.
Released last week, Border Patrol’s second, soul-stirring album spans eight raw tracks layered with shared stories of self-doubt and second guesses wrapped in daily struggles and victories of incremental growth, minor adjustments and hopeful moments. Each Worst Excuses track poignantly and irreverently addresses a spectrum of inner hurdles and identifies novel ways to overcome them.
“It started from my personal experience, and that’s the only way that I’ve managed to make real progress growing in recent years. I’m easily overwhelmed sometimes at the prospect of self-improvement and all the things that have to come with it,” said Toennies, who lives in Hamtramck.
“Because I tend to get real busy and involved in things and overwhelm myself, I try to focus on just the one little thing in front of me that I have to do, get that one done and then move on to the next. Once I started trying to scale that up and applying it to a much more broad growth thing, it’s been the only thing that’s really worked for me.”
Uncovering ‘The Worst Excuses’
With Toennies and Howard at the storytelling helm, Border Patrol invites listeners into a raw, recognizable head trip that crosses international waters and lands directly in the midst of relatable chaos. Their internal journey begins with “A Little Bit Better (Still Bad)” as a tight-knit fusion of folky acoustic guitar, banjo and drums quickly launches into an ongoing tale of feeling stuck personally and professionally.
Despite the track’s initial, dark mood, Toennies eloquently finds a small silver lining, “But there was nothing that could hurt me in that moment/And there was nothing for me in the life I knew/In that moment something unexpected happened/Out of nothing, something grew.” Occasionally, an optimistic, hopeful thought briefly wins over an anxious, weary mind on the toughest of days.
“I hope it’s a positive thing, and there are just a lot of running jokes that we perpetuate, too. It can be sort of depressing music, but I think that it’s depressing in the way that it’s trying to be frank and talk about things that we have a hard time talking about sometimes,” Toennies said.
“We’ve always tried to take these serious topics, and rather than having it sound super serious, maybe make it a little fun, bouncy and upbeat. I hope that it’s relatable and positive in spite of all the things that are wrong.”
The Stratton Setlist 