I can quote the couplet that grabbed me.
Radio makes me crazy and the silence does the same,
But there's a savior of a sunrise just behind the mountain range.
The lines halted my casual listen through a new artist playlist. I went back to replay the song to hear them again. My immediate attention needed to know the who, what, when and where of the band involved—but first I had to hear those lines again.
"Just Good Night" is the magic windows-down track that gave way to the rest of the Michigan Rattlers catalog that night. Fans of Dawes or other such heartland rock will enjoy the precious few tracks the band has put out. For now, it's just shy of a full-length album's worth altogether—a collection of singles and an EP—but we recognize the thread that will keep them going.
Analogue: I want to get the story right, because you guys have played together since high school days in Michigan and yet you didn't all move to L.A. as a band already formed, right?
Graham Young: The three of us all grew up together—through middle school and high school together. Adam [Reed] and I have played on and off for the better part of 10 years at this point. We had a high school band and then all went off to college separately. Adam went to Kenyon in Ohio. I went to Columbia in Chicago. During the summer and winter breaks, we'd come together and jam.
I was in Chicago for three years in a band and then moved to Los Angeles to do my own thing. I was there for a year doing the whole singer-songwriter thing playing open mics. Then Adam graduated from college and I said, "Hey, let's get the band back together." So he came out and Christian [Wilder], the keyboard player, was a little younger than us. He graduated from school in Boston and moved to L.A. just last October. So that's how the band technically formed in Los Angeles, even though we've been playing together for a long time.
Analogue: How similar was the music in Michigan to what you're making today?
Graham: Not too similar. When we were playing in Michigan, it was a lot of goofy cover songs and classic rock kind of stuff. We were big Red Hot Chili Peppers fans, so we had a lot of songs where I was pretending to be Anthony Kiedis. [Laughs] On my own, I started diving deeper into the whole songwriting thing and got into Ryan Adams, Wilco and the older country guys and a lot of people like Petty and Springsteen who really care about songwriting when I was living in Chicago.
Analogue: When you're joined in L.A. by the guys, were they falling in line with the same sort of music at the time?
Graham: Yeah, it was kind of weird, especially for me and Adam. We weren't together, yet we continued on the same path of what we discovered and what we were listening to. Adam went to school and started playing upright bass and that totally fit into the space I was heading into and the style of music I was wanting to play. So it all worked out organically.
Analogue: Was it clear from the beginning that everyone was all-in to give this a go or was it a bit more organic at first—like we'll see where this takes us?
Graham: No it was definitely about giving it a go. When I moved out to do the solo thing, I also knew Adam would be done with school. I'd call him every other week and say, "Hey, you're moving out to L.A. and we're doing this. No messing around." So I think we definitely had an idea that we were going to make this a career to make music.
Analogue: It seems like the music caught on quickly with critics. There are a lot of great reviews and comments out there about that first release. Did you have any clue what to expect?
Graham: Yeah, everybody was really kind. I don't think we were expecting people to be unkind, but I also don't think we were really expecting... well, I don't know what we were thinking. We just had this batch of songs and we wanted to record them and put them out. The people who have heard them all seem to think they're pretty good, too. So I don't know. I try to write songs for myself and somehow it comes across as universal enough for other people.
