In a world full of instant gratification, it can be easy to rush music to the listener, especially for artists recording at home. There’s a temptation to cut corners and finish a song quickly, rather than take time to construct it into sturdy and well-crafted structure that pays attention to detail. For the Milwaukee-by-way-of-Kenosha outfit Greatest Lakes, which recorded everything but the drums for their new self-titled full-length album at their homes and practice spaces, the quick and easy approach wasn’t going to cut it. Instead they took their time, spending most of last year crafting big, atmospheric folk and rock songs.
“We had a four-song EP out there and we really wanted to go for a full length and not keep shooting out EPs,” explains drummer/singer Jon Nichols. “We wanted it to come across the way we portray it live and the way we hear it. In our own hands we were able to do that, with help from Nick Stumpf.”
Stumpf, best known for producing albums by bands like Caveman, mixed the album in Brooklyn. Nichols says the collaborative nature of the band, which started in 2010, helped the process go smoothly. That’s partly because the band members all know each other from high school in Kenosha.
“They all pitch in,” Nichols says of his bandmates. “It’s a roundtable discussion. We throw it out there and, whether its vocal ideas or melody ideas, it’s just a big group collaboration. It’s not just one person solely for vocals or solely named for instrumentation.”
At times the band’s sound can conjure up similar harmony-driven bands from The Beach Boys to Band of Horses. Other times a more experimental side comes through from keyboard player Melissa Steinseifer.
“We all love The Beach Boys or any other throwback like Simon and Garfunkel and Mamas and Papas. We all like that vibe,” Nichols says. “There could be that folkier undertone, but we also have that experimental undertone as well. So we’re not really pinned down to one or the other. It’s across the board what we like musically, whether it be from old to new. Overall we really like the harmony thing and honing it in and embellishing on that.”
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To get the best drum sounds, they turned to Midwest Sound in Rockford, Ill., where they spent two days recording.
“Things like guitars you can get away with and have a little wiggle room,” says Nichols. “But when it came to drums we wanted to be certain everything was going to be nailed in that aspect and they’d be picked up right, and when it’s mixed it’s something that could be worked with. There were these little things we didn’t want to chance. It was fun because they have all kinds of goodies in there.
“This was about exploring all possibilities musically and if you record too much you can always take it away,” Nichols adds. “But to say, ‘What if? What if a cowbell would sound great there?’ We kind of overdid it to have more to work with than less.”
After the trio of Nichols, guitarist Brian Steinseifer and bassist Mike Hawes recorded the album, they sought help to recreate the big sound on the live stage. They took on drummer Josiah Werning (who provides a boost of auxiliary percussion and freed Nichols to focus on vocals), second guitarist Kevin Kaufman and Melissa Steinseifer providing keys and backing vocals.
“It’s nice to be able to recreate that all,” says Nichols. “We wanted to do it justice and the songs justice and it made it that much easier that we were all friends.”
Greatest Lakes play a 9 p.m. album release show at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn on Friday, Oct. 3 with Paper Holland and Myles Coyne. Stream the record below.
