The 19th annual GTG Fest will be Oct-18 at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing, MI!
Oct 16 – 8 PM, 21+, $5 Cover w/ A Rueful Noise, Ozenza, The Aliens, Feign, Braineaters (Hunky Newcomers members doing Misfits), Templetons (Ramones set), Pencil Marks!
Oct 17 – 8 PM, 21+, $5 Cover w/ At War With The Birds (Isaac from Hat Mdder!), Sad Leaves (The Plurals spin-off!), Narc Out The Reds, Candid Antics, Small Parks, Moon Pony, The Louderthans!
Oct 18 – 5 PM, All Ages, $5 Cover w/ Flatfoot, NEW, Overtone, Justice For Midge, GTG All Stars GTGreatest Hits set
Spring 2026 – we’ve got StoopFest in Lansing, Jeremy Porter tour and more!
Check out Stoopfest.org for full lineup, schedule, and tickets for the best dang springtime annual indie music festival!
Rounding up – Jeremy Porter & the Tucos is officially reconstituted and hitting the road for the first time since 2024. Midwest and upstate NY dates this month, check out thetucos.com and the Jeremy socials for full info. A Rueful Noise and No Skull continue to bring (yes) noise around Michigan, with both acts approaching new studio material soon. The Wild Honey Collective is in the midst of a creative writing revival, with shows and festivals a’plenty around Michigan, stay tuned to wildhoneycollective.com for all the show info. Dead Honey Collective is also still at Moriarty’s in Lansing every month, as well as Deadhead events in the Midwest and beyond. There’s plenty more GTG in the pipeline (The Plurals, Narc Out, et al), and your humble author is still putting on live music events at The Avenue Cafe (< there’s a monthly calendar thing at that very website to keep yas informed) every Sunday and periodic Fridays and Saturdays, so come say hi! Hey!
The Wild Honey Collective issued its debut album on January 1st, 2021, and now 5 years later the band’s Live double album arrives on streaming!
Live video edited by Dan Jaquint
Live was recorded (by Isaac Vander Schuur of The Hat Madder et al) primarily at a February 2025 concert at The Robin Theatre in Lansing, Michigan. This was a memorable evening in front of a sold-out, energetic and attentive crowd and the band rose to the occasion, delivering a show featuring highlights from the band’s recorded catalog as well as favorite covers by Buck Owens, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, and more. The album is supplemented by a four song acoustic performance that was recorded in front of an invited audience at The Avenue Cafe in June 2025. Since Wild Honey started as a loose quarantine-era recording project, many of the band’s songs have taken on a different shape as they’ve entered the live arena and expanded as a full band. Live serves as a sort of “best of” the first 5 years of the band and is also an attempt to document new “definitive” versions of several of the songs. The result is a 20 song double album featuring a range of bouncy country rock, haunting folk ballads, psychedelic excursions, and harmony singing a’ plenty. It’s been a prolific and exciting run for this band so far (3 LPs, 4 EPs, a double live album, a handful of compilation appearances, and over 250 shows), here’s to the future!
Also Wild Honey made a video for The Band’s “Christmas Must Be Tonight” using clips from the beautiful and classic Lotte Reiniger “Star Of Bethlehem” silhouette animation from 1956. Neat!
GTG Records announces The Wild Honey Collective + Jeremy Porter Together + Separate Southeast USA 2025 Tour! Lansing, Michigan’s award winning cosmic-folk-country-rock band The Wild Honey Collective team up with Detroit’s alt-country-powerpop-rock songwriter Jeremy Porter for a run through the Midwest and Southeastern states. The shows will feature the two entities both separately and together in various incarnations, collaborating on each other’s music in a classic-country revue-style setting.
For information about times, local support, and other details, please visit our websites and the venues’ websites or reach out directly.
Another “mini-album” collection, blooming as summer ends much like the vibrant Solidago (Goldenrod) lining the roadsides and horizons of Michigan. Just as the plant symbolizes healing and prosperity (“to make whole,” per one folklore phrase), this collection of tunes rounds up the scattered byproducts of the “Volume 3” sessions with a handful of spontaneous new recordings that point the way to the next phase of Wild Honey Collective. This time we’ve got 3 band originals (including one originally done by The Plurals and another – in an alternate mix – featuring Dead Honey Collective), the first studio sessions to feature Jack as a band member, another Carter Family traditional favorite, songs originally recorded by Lemonheads and Gene Clark, plus contributions from a range of friends including the ubiquitous Jerry Wenger, the future of music Liam, Medium Build low-end anchor Steve Hartmann, and the finely tuned ears of Rick Johnson.
Mixed and Mastered by Rick Johnson. Recorded Winter 2023 – Summer 2025, mostly by Tommy at McGorgers/GTG House South with sessions at Patty’s Lake House, Holiday Drive, and GTG House. “The Outdoor Type” primarily recorded by Rick at Cold War Studios. Additional recording by Timmy, Adam, Jerry, and Liam.
Tommy McCord – vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin, electric 6 and 12 string guitar, bass Danielle Gyger – vocals, fiddle Adam Aymor – pedal steel guitar, dobro, electric guitar Timmy Rodriguez – vocals, bass Dan O’Brien – vocals, acoustic guitar, upright bass, harmonica, baritone guitar Joel Kuiper – drums, percussion Jack Schueler – vocals, acoustic guitar (“Wild Honey,” “Through Munising,” “Wildwood Flower”) Jerry Wenger – upright bass (“Wildwood Flower) Nicholas Merz – vocals, bass (“Through Munising”) Steve Hartmann – bass (“The Outdoor Type”) Liam VanDerHeide – electric guitar (“Train Leaves Here”)
Out now – 3 original songs by Dead Honey Collective, recorded in spring of 2025. 2 original songs by Jack Schueler, plus the summer 2025 Joel Kuiper-penned single “Through Munising” (featuring the whole Wild Honey Collective). YouTube / Spotify / Apple
Tommy says: The lines between these projects is intentionally blurry, reflecting the improvisational spirit at its core. Wild Honey Collective has always been a dynamic musical project, and along the way we organically started including country and folk songs with Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia project associations (“I Know You Rider,” “Shady Grove,” “Dreadful Wind and Rain,” “Sing Me Back Home,” “Mama Tried” etc). At a very early Wild Honey performance we were lucky to have Jack Schueler in the audience, who immediately identified the formative influences of the band, beginning a friendship and gradual series of collaborations and sit-ins. When we (Adam, Joel, and myself) started exploring the improv-heavy Wilderhoney spinoff, it was a natural entry point for Jack to play more, and since Nicholas Merz had sang on our latest EP he was tapped to play bass. We did approximately one-and-a-half shows as “Wilderhoney” before it became obvious that we should focus on exploring the rootsy-angle of the Dead since it was such a big part of our musical venn diagram. Thus, at the beginning of 2024 we started performing as Dead Honey Collective, with no plan besides playing music from all of our catalogs and leaning on the country/folk edges of the Dead (including New Riders of the Purple Sage, Old & In The Way, Jerry Garcia Band, et al), and from the first set it was obvious that we should keep doing this. Now we have original songs, a huge catalog of Dead-family material, plenty of other things we play just for fun, and the whole “collective” continues to create together. Now we’ve gotta get some live recordings together…
