GTG Records’ annual celebration of independent music and community is back with events in Lansing, MI on Oct 22 and 23.
Friday October 22 – The Avenue Cafe
8 PM, 21+, $5 Cover:
I Believe In Julio
Bloody Butterflies
The Hunky Newcomers
Narc Out The Reds
The Plurals “Futurospective” Full Album Live
Saturday October 23 – The Record Lounge
3 PM, All Ages, $5 Cover:
Cashcow Boytoy
Drinking Mercury
The Plurals “Hattest Hits” Set
Dasterds
Rodeo Boys
Saturday October 23 – The Avenue Cafe
8 PM, 21+, $5 Cover:
A Rueful Noise
Jeremy Porter and The Tucos
KIND BEAST
Bank of America
The Wild Honey Collective & Cutlass Supreme
All venues are limited cap. Be vaccinated!
This October a unique version of The Wild Honey Collective led by Tommy and Danielle will hit the road, featuring Jeremy Porter (who will also play solo in addition to accompanying the Wild Honey set on lap steel, mandolin, and guitar) and Nicholas Richard. This tour is hitting a lot of new spots for this GTG crew, so while the tour is officially designated to promote The Wild Honey Collective Volume 1 and Jeremy Porter and The Tucos’ Candy Coated Cannonball, given the unique band lineup and that this is the first proper extended GTG artist tour in 2 years(!) it’s safe to also expect some Plurals tunes, a variety of covers, and some collaborations with other friends at certain shows. Dates are all listed above and there’s a full event thing going here. NY, VT, ME, PA, NJ, OH…. we’ll see you out there!
Local Lansing folk will probably be hip to this now, but GTG is more-or-less booking and promoting the majority of the music at The Avenue Cafe these days. Here’s what we’ve got for the whole month of August:
That’s a good run there, eh? We’ve got the first full-length show by The Wild Honey Collective, the first public Lansing shows from Cavalcade and The Plurals in at least 18 months, a record release by the Cartridge Family(?!?!??), GTG Fest familiars like The Ryne Experience, LVRS, and Marsha, Mike Reed from Small Brown Bike… great stuff all around!
On top of these Lansing shows, Jeremy Porter and The Tucos are making their re-debut at The Village Idiot in Maumee, OH on August 14. They actually played their last pre-pandemic show at this venue back in March 2020 – Jeremy wrote a great piece about it here – so it’s extra exciting to have the Detroit rockers hitting this stage. The Tucos JUST released their new music video for “Put You On Hold,” check it out:
Shows are getting to be a little more commonplace – on top of the above listed we’ve got The Plurals playing Taste of Michigan City (Michigan City, IN) the afternoon of August 7, The Wild Honey Collective play from 5-9 at the Beer Garden at Horrocks Farm Market in Lansing on August 21 as well as an afternoon slot at Sundried Music Fest in Mason on August 28, and then The Stick Arounds take the Horrocks stage themselves on August 28 too. All of these events are free and promise great times. We need ’em! Stay safe out there everyone, masks are still a good thing!
2021 is bringing some shows! The Wild Honey Collective will be gracing The Corner of Main & Steele in Ionia, MI with a full-length set on Sunday June 13– this band has been playing virtual shows for almost a year but this is, at last, a, for real, in-person show. No cover, bring a lawn chair!
Never one to waste an opportunity to get on the road, Jeremy Porter has a run of solo dates in the Midwest from June 17-19 – Candy Coated Cannonball has been out on vinyl since the beginning of the year but just like the aforementioned Wild Honeys, this is the first chance to truly catch Jeremy playing live in support of it. Fingers crossed for Tucos shows soon!
We had a guerilla parking lot show at GTG House over Memorial Day weekend with sets by The Plurals, Marsha, and The Hunky Newcomers. We’ll be having more of these as the shows start to come back… just what we needed! But HEY – get vaccinated! We wanna keep doing this and not have anyone die! If you think you know better than medical professionals about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, look, you just don’t. It’s awesome to be part of a secret club and to feel in-control of your destiny – as a collective of punk musicians we understand that more than most – but the so-called “anti-vaxx” movement is rooted in publicity stunts by insecure celebrities for TV ratings in the 1980s and, well, we ain’t looking for answers in Al Capone’s vault are we? Anyway, get your shot, we’ll do shots, don’t be a dick, etc etc here’s some pictures (c/o Michael Boyes ‘n Danielle Gyger).
Friday May 21, 2021! Best Friends Club is gonna take the summer off from our “big show” series (but will still post video content periodically) and we’re going out with a bang! We’ve got the great Cryptkeeper Five streaming a full set with Tim and Dim from Honah Lee and The Wild Honey Collective opening things up. After the show we’ll be broadcasting video of The Plurals Futurospective CD release party at Mac’s Bar from May 21, 2011 i.e. 10 years later to the day! This album was very important to the band and the label, and the video is a riot. Check it all out at 7 PM, Friday 5/21 at bestfriendsclub.us or on facebook.
And HERE is an article written about BFC and the show, thanks to City Pulse!
We’re very excited to be hosting This Must Be The Place: Quality Hits From Lansing, a new 24 track compilation of Lansing-area artists performing some of their favorite covers, a project that was spearheaded by acclaimed music writer Rich Tupica (of the definitive Big Star book There Was A Light fame). Lots of old friends here! It’s a little glimpse into what us creative types have been up to with a year of no shows. From the GTG family we’ve got The Plurals, Cavalcade, The Wild Honey Collective, RK Andrews (No Skull/Red Teeth), Counterpunchers (members of Narc Out The Reds), The Stick Arounds, Isaac Richmond Vander Schuur (The Hat Madder), Jennifer Toms (Scary Women), and Disappointed Dad, plus lots of old friends throughout like Crystal Drive, Frontier Ruckus, Dylan Rogers, Rodeo Boys, Nonbinary, La La Delivery and plenty more! 24 tracks! Free download!
Here’s what Rich had to say about the project:
“This Must Be the Place: Quality Hits from Lansing is a totally free download of Lansing, Michigan bands performing select songs by artists they love. This is meant to serve as a fun stop-gap between now and the (eventual) return of live shows. So, please: Listen. Download. Repeat. There’s a wide range of covers here because each band/artist chose whichever song they wanted for this collection. The reason? Every band has a good cover in them—perhaps one they’ve always wanted to tackle, but never had a proper reason to. So, the “art of the cover” was fully realized here. With no limitations, it left the tracklist up to them and it made for a bizarre, yet somehow cohesive blend of genres.
Aside from a long roster of area fixtures Like Frontier Ruckus, Cavalcade, Rodeo Boys, The Plurals, Wally Pleasant (and many more!), there’s also new solo tracks and fresh side projects featured here from Lansing vets: RK Andrews (of No Skull, Red Teeth), Jennifer Toms (of Scary Women), Counterpunchers (members of Narc Out the Reds), Dylan Rogers (L.U.V.S), Isaac Richmond Vander Schuur (The Hat Madder), Seth + Modern Sadness (features Seth Rentfrow of Way to Fall, Kyle Daniel), Myron James (Edible Intention), and The Wild Honey Collective (a new GTG super group). Scroll through the selection, and you’ll see plenty of familiar names. Enjoy!”
Holy smokes, has it been a year?!?? Just over a year ago as the stay-at-home order was issued in Michigan we started doing daily videos of GTG family and friends in quarantine. Weird times, but the solidarity experienced was a pretty awesome thing to take in, though we’re not quite ready to start getting pandemic nostalgia. Here’s a playlist of Staying Home With GTG Records from spring 2020, and there are a few more on the GTG facebook that never got uploaded to youtube. Glad we’re all still here!
Today (March 5, 2021) – as part of Bandcamp Friday – we’re plugging a release to benefit the staff of Michigan music venue Mac’s Bar who have all been laid-off for just shy of a year due to COVID-19. One of these staff members happens to be my partner (and I’ve worked there on and off as a sound tech for several years as well) so I can say with direct experience that we were all expecting a fairly lucrative year for live music and had the rug pulled out unexpectedly with no safety net. Prior to last year serving and contract work within the music industry was actually always a pretty safe bet for employment, especially for those of my persuasion that leave town for extended periods to tour, etc. Long story short-ish, we all want to be able to play the stages of independent music venues and have our industry folks be able to come back, so a great roster of bands donated songs, including our own The Wild Honey Collective (lead singin’ by one of these laid-off Mac’s bartenders), Cavalcade, The Plurals, Pancho Villa’s Skull, Rodeo Boys, Flatfoot, Foxgrave, Grey Matter, The Lippies, Heartsick, Silktail, Dogleg and many more, totaling 24 tracks! We’re suggesting a $10 donation but any little bit helps.
Here it is, The Wild Honey Collective‘s debut album – the whole thing! 11 songs, originals, traditionals, and songs written by friends. Stream and download right now via the GTG Records bandcamp, and pre-order CDs and Vinyl too!
The Wild Honey Collective is very much a product of the events of 2020 – without any shows to play or go to and missing the spirit of an active band, GTG originators and Drinking Mercury bandmates Tommy McCord (Plural, etc) and Timmy Rodriguez (Sleeping, etc), joined with DanielleGyger (who had contributed harmony vocals to the last few Drinking Mercury releases) in June 2020 to play some acoustic music on a back porch in Ionia, MI. Dan O’Brien (multi-instrumentalist and a former bandmate of Timmy’s) joined the group a few weeks later and very quickly we began building an extensive catalog of music ranging from folk traditionals, original songs, and songs written by friends. An appreciation for classic country music and early country rock had been rising amongst the individual musicians for the last few years, and with Danielle’s lifelong association with the legendary Wheatland Music Festival came a catalog of traditional songs (both vocal and fiddle-led) that were made for these back porch sessions. This bridging of musical styles modern and traditional dramatically helped fill the void of a concert-less summer, played outdoors for only the crickets to hear (or possibly Tommy’s dad who developed a reputation as a conspicuous eavesdropper on these practices).
As the summer ended and COVID-19 cases began rising in Michigan again – and thus, no shows anywhere in sight – we shifted our focus to making an album through a series of socially distanced recordings and file sharing to capture the spirit and friendship of a musical collective. And it is a collective! In addition to the core band members the album features contributions from acclaimed pedal steel guitarist Drew Howard, drummer Dave Shilakes (Small Parks, Gumsmack), singer Alyson Rodriguez, pianist John Gyger, Tommy and Timmy’s Drinking Mercury bandmate Michael Boyes (who took the original photo featured on the cover and the band also does a rendition of one of his songs), Crooked Sound/ Calliope/ Sexy Murders songwriter Eric Merckling, and the rhythm section of The Plurals, drummer Hattie Danby and bassist Nicholas Richard. It’s a new year, but the pandemic isn’t over, and to help get this winter over with a bit sooner we’re releasing the album right now for everyone to listen to. Thanks for being along for the ride, and bring on 2021!
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