Photo by Bridger Flory
Social Cig
Social Cig
When it comes to creating music, Milwaukee’s Social Cig creates big-hearted skate rock anthems that sound best with the volume turned way up. A typical Social Cig song includes a healthy dose of guitars, drums and bass. There’s little electronics, just pure, unabashed DIY rock and roll.
“It's somewhat indie surf rock, but I don’t surf,” says singer-songwriter Parker Schultz, who started the group in 2019. “I've grown up skateboarding, so that definitely fit my identity a little bit more. It just sounds like it’d be in a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game. I just love catchy melodies, so anything that's really catchy and fun to sing, and just getting weird with it as of lately too, just really fits into the idea of skate rock or Midwest skate rock.”
That sound has evolved over the course of several releases, as Schultz and the band have gotten better at writing and playing. The group has grown from a solo project during college to a full-fledged band. Their latest evolution can be heard on their fourth studio album Patchwork: A Road Dog Story.
“I've been definitely experimenting more with different sounds and just kind of having fun with it,” says Schultz.
For Schultz, each release represented a new chapter in his life. The songs for the band’s 2020 debut Prettier in Person were written while he was in college and made initially purely for fun and a way to share music with friends. He’s always “gravitated mostly towards writing” songs “from my perspective.” He calls subsequent albums an “evolution of expression where it's always changing, maybe getting better with trying different things, changing different ways of writing songs and just grabbing from its personal experiences. It sort of brings me back to that era of my life of what was going on,” he says.
For example, the band’s sophomore album Nothing Is Ever for Sure and Everything Is Always Changing was written during COVID and a breakup. 2022’s Cheesehead is “a lot about the post-college adjustments to life and friends moving away and thinking about how things used to be.”
For its part, Patchwork focuses on the past two years. In that time, Schultz became a full-time musician and has gone on many tours with the band. “It's been a very different lifestyle compared to the last albums and my life in general,” he says. “I'm grabbing a lot from the experiences of being on the road and just seeing the world through the lens of a DIY musician.”
A Road Dog’s Life
Photo by Avery S.
Social Cig
Social Cig
Schultz, a West Bend native, moved to Milwaukee in 2017. He continues to grow confident in his abilities with every song, performance and encouraging words from family, friends and fans.
Touring has been a big part of his and the band’s growth. Schultz says that lyrically the band’s new album is a “tour diary of my travels and experiences on the road or being back home in Milwaukee.” He picked the “road dog” part of the title in reference to the toughened mentality he’s gained as a touring musician. It also is fitting as he is a “dog dad” to a dog named Crab Cake, who often accompanies him and his girlfriend on solo tours.
“Road dog encapsulates being on the road and road dogging it, getting dirty, maybe not showering for a few days and ripping shows and just keeping on moving and going from city to city,” he says. “I'm on the road playing gigs, being a traveler amongst being a dog dad.”
He always enjoys seeing different parts of the country and cities he hasn’t been to before. It’s a chance to see different people and share his songs with new fans. It’s also a chance to reconnect with family and friends who are scattered around the country. “That definitely fulfills me a lot and just brings me back to my roots,” he says. “It just makes being on the road feel a little bit more like home.”
Being on the road has taught Schultz and the band valuable lessons of how to navigate everything. For example, he says they’ve had some tours where they’ve gone in and “not known where we were going to spend the night” and others where some of the shows were booked a week prior.
“Staying present amongst it all is a big one because when you're on the road time moves differently. It's like each day, just waking up, driving for a few hours and then unloading, it's just a pretty monotonous cycle of being. But to me it really feels like living and it's a whole lot of fun. But also, you can get pretty disoriented,” Schultz says.
Lessons of the road are detailed on new Social Cig songs such as “Midwest Cowboy.” Schultz wrote it in fall of 2024 when they were “headed to a show in Fort Wayne and the check engine light popped on.” After an unsuccessful attempt to get it fixed, they got back on the highway and were t-boned by another car.
“I literally thought the whole tour was going to be over,” he recalled. “We had seven or eight shows in a row, so I was like, ‘this is canceled.’ But we managed to get the rear wheels replaced, the van was still drivable, and we kind of figured it out with the help of some friends. Just being very vulnerable on the road and making it work and just trying to get to the next destination. That song is about that tour and getting through it.”
There are also many lighthearted moments of touring, such as countless times goofing off with his bandmates. The band also features Elias Dorsey on bass guitar, Kai Dee on drums, Isaac Repinski on lead guitar, and, occasionally, Anthony Kopczynski on keys.
“It’s a little party in the van,” he said. “We have fun. I'm fortunate that the band guys that I'm with right now, we all get along pretty darn well.”
Schultz enjoys the flexibility of having a rotating lineup of the band that allows them to perform in different configurations.
“I've been friends with these guys for years, so it just was natural to have them on,” he says. “It’s just more of a vibe thing than a musician thing. And they're all just the craziest [talented] musicians on top of that too. But first they're friends.”
