Break on Through: Michigan Rattlers' and the Will to Keep on Rockin'

What happens when your Midwest band is on the rise and inches from the big time — then time stops?

By Craig Manning | Aug. 7, 2021

 

“I felt the storm coming, it was coming for you and I/I felt the storm coming that night.”

So goes the chorus to “The Storm,” the song that opens the sophomore full-length album from Petoskey-born-and-bred roots-rock band Michigan Rattlers. In the song, the words are about the things in life that change who you are forever. In the context of the band and the times, though, those words could just as easily be about everything that’s happened since they were written.

Michigan Rattlers’ new album, called That Kind of Life, arrived in May of this year, but it was more or less finished in February 2020. According to Graham Young, the band’s guitarist, lead vocalist, and principal songwriter, most of the songs were written in 2019 — a lifetime ago, in other words. When a true metaphorical storm struck in March 2020 and shut the world down, the album was set aside.

Certainly, Michigan Rattlers weren’t the only band in the world to get roadblocked by COVID-19. In many ways, the wheels came off the music industry last year. Albums released on or near the day the pandemic hit a boiling point — Friday, March 13, 2020 — disappeared into a bizarre kind of interdimensional vortex, their social media buzz, streaming numbers, and sales figures pummeled by nothing more than terrible timing. Huge sold-out tours went up in smoke overnight. Music venues shut their doors and prayed for a quick deliverance they wouldn’t get.

But the blow definitely hurt for bands like the Rattlers — bands that were, for all intents and purposes, at a crossroads between “lovable underdog” status and genuine breakthrough success.

“I think it definitely did put a pause on anything happening for us,” says Christian Wilder, who plays keys in the band. “We got to do one tour in 2020, and it went from late January into the first week of March before we canceled the rest of it. But I felt like we had a really great momentum building. We’d put out a single in February, and we were going to plan on getting the record out in the spring. And I think for our band, for the past five years, we’d built up a reputation as a very hard touring band. We played 125–130 dates a year. And as a natural byproduct of that, I think our online presence more or less got defined as ‘How long it’s been since we've been in your city.’ That kind of formed our online identity. So when that stopped, it did feel like there was kind of a vacuum.”

As it turned out, Young’s words had been prophetic: There was a storm coming, and it was coming for everybody — not least, his band.

If there’s one message in the retro-style rock ’n’ roll albums that form the basis for Michigan Rattlers’ DNA, though, it might just be resilience. From Bruce Springsteen to Creedence Clearwater Revival, the music the band members have listed as influences in the past is often about the strength of the human spirit to overcome the slings and arrows of fate. So when the storm did come, the Rattlers naturally only had one plan of action: weather it, by any means necessary.

Fast-forward 17 months and things are looking brighter. On May 19, after a long, long wait, Michigan Rattlers unleashed That Kind of Life, an eight-song LP that evolves their sound in just about every conceivable way. The band’s debut EP, a self-titled release that dropped in 2016, was a largely acoustic affair, thanks mostly to the fact that only two musicians appeared on it. While all four members of the Rattlers grew up together in Petoskey, went to high school together, and have known one another (and played music together) for years, the band ultimately took its first steps as a duo, just Young and bassist Adam Reed. Wilder joined on keys in 2017, in time for the band’s debut full-length album, Evergreen, which came out the following year. Tony Adia (drums) officially climbed aboard the train in 2019.

As Young tells the story, the plan was always for Michigan Rattlers to be a four-man band, specifically with this current lineup. As the members scattered in the wake of high school, though — especially once Young relocated to Los Angeles — the eventuality of the full team-up got kicked down the road a bit. In 2019, all the ingredients finally came together.

That Kind of Life, the band’s first album as a proper four-piece, is the product of that evolution. It’s an album that takes advantage of all the new potential, packed as it is with well-choreographed arrangements that find a good balance between the stripped-back acoustics of the band’s earlier days (“More Than Just a Dream,” a lovely little lullaby tucked at the beginning of side two) and the roaring rock ’n’ roll energy that drums and keys can unlock (rollicking barnstormers like “Sleep In It” and “Desert Heat”). In fact, the album’s very best songs might just be the ones where the guys master the art of dynamics, building crescendos from restrained opening verses to big, exciting peaks; case-in-point is “Like a Kid,” a song whose last minute and a half feels like a spaceship lifting off.

That mix of sounds, moods, and dynamic contrasts will serve this self-described “hard-touring” band well as they launch back into road life. When the Northern Express caught up with the Rattlers, they were in a hotel room in Davenport, Iowa, in the midst of a 60-some date tour that will — barring any disruptions from COVID-19 and its dastardly Delta variant — carry them through to the end of the year. The tour started in Chicago on July 15, and for all parties, it’s been a life-affirming experience — a bit like the sun breaking through the clouds after a destructive storm.

“It was like a lightning bolt,” Adia says of getting back on stage and playing in front of audiences once more. “It was like I could feel again. To play again after not hitting the road for so long, it brings back life — to my soul at least.”

The audiences, it seems, are feeling the same way.

“I felt like we played our first record around the country a few times before people started singing along,” Reed says. “So it was a little strange to put this record out and then, the first show we played after that, to have so many people already know the words. It was a little mind-blowing. But we’re hearing from a lot of people that we’re their first concert back out in the world, and that’s pretty cool.”

“People's energy at the shows, too, it’s been such a jubilant vibe,” Wilder adds. “It’s really awesome for us to know that they trusted us to be one of their first experiences back out. And so far, the audiences have been really phenomenal. Cities that we didn’t think we did that well in before have been turning out way better than expected. And we feel all of that on stage every night: When you hear people sing along, or you feel the radiant energy from the crowd, you’re just happy to be there and part of something again.”

ROCK ON
Where to see the Rattlers
Michigan Rattlers are back in their home state right now but only for a brief time. Following stops at Grand Rapids’ The Stache and Cadillac’s Coyote Crossing Resort Aug. 5 and 7, they’ll play at noon Friday, Aug. 13, at the Hoxeyville Music Festival in Wellston. Daily and weekend tickets (which include camping) for adults and kids are still available to the festival. Buy them at Hoxeyville.com/admission, or plan to catch the Rattlers at one of dozens of upcoming shows across the nation. See the lineup at www.michiganrattlers.com/tour.