Greta Van Fleet's new album lists 10 tracks but it's really 9 1/2. Halfway through, there's a song fragment that runs barely past a minute. It's like a nugget of distilled Greta Van Fleet.
“Runway Blues” has the bluster of the Rolling Stones, the driving force of Led Zeppelin, a dash of Humble Pie and some John Lennon solo work. It was captured spontaneously as the band came back from dinner and just started jamming.
“We just had a bit too much wine and I just sort of cracked into a riff and everybody kind of jumped on instruments,” says guitarist Jake Kiszka. “It’s really basic and it’s just a great example of what can be accomplished with pure attitude.”
The quartet show plenty of rock star attitude on “Starcatcher,” the Michigan-bred rockers' third album. Their early sound and classic rock look was reminiscent of Zeppelin but has grown artistically, moving into prog and psychedelic rock.
“’Starcatcher’ represents boys becoming men in a way,” says Kiszka, 27, whose bandmates include twin brother and singer Josh, younger brother Sam on keys and bass, and family friend Danny Wagner on drums.
The band recorded much of the album in Nashville’s historic RCA Studios, where Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings recorded.
“We learned from the old masters, the giants that walked the Earth,” says Sam Kiszka. “A lot of the record is take No. 1 – the conception of the idea.”
The first sprawling, '60s-vibing single “Meeting the Master” has made the top 40 of Billboard's Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, hit No. 4 on Hard Rock Songs and was a No. 12 entry on the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.
“This is definitely some of my favorite material and some of my favorite songs that we’ve written together,” says Sam Kiszka. “I think that our ability to work with each other just keeps becoming more and more elevated and that keeps evolving.”
“Sacred the Thread” was one of the first songs the bandmates agreed had to be on the record and which has hit No. 25 on the Hot Hard Rock Songs chart. The seeds were first planted in 2016, with Sam supplying the original chords for the chorus and Josh a melody. It kicked around in various forms over the years.
“I always find that the longer the song is that we’ve got sitting on a shelf, the better it turns out in the end," says Jake Kiszka.
The final product is a soaring, cinematic anthem, with Josh Kiszka wailing some of his best lyrics to date: "I’ve caught the wind in a kite of dreams/In a flight of seams/Like freedom sewn/And the people roar/And the people soar."
Their last album, “The Battle at Garden’s Gate,” had more elaborate arrangements, layers and chord progressions, lots of instrumental sections and strings under the guidance of super-producer Greg Kurstin.
This time Dave Cobb produced — as he has done for Chris Stapleton and Brandi Carlile — and he took the guys back to their roots as a live band, recording all the time to capture lightning in a bottle.
“Some of the objectives on ‘Starcatcher’ was to really focus on the individual instruments being played as opposed to something like ’The Battle at Garden’s Gate,' the previous record, which I think is very, very layered,” says Jake Kiszka.
“So this this is a sort of a love letter to minimalism in a way. And I think it’s also the record that we wanted to make at this particular time right after the pandemic, to sort of like juice the room up a little.”
That's not to mean Greta Van Fleet, whose name was inspired by the octogenarian bluegrass musician Gretna VanFleet, threw away any equipment. In fact, they experimented with phaser pedals, alternative tunings and accessories like a B-Bender.
“It’s just about texture, texture, texture — moving you dramatically to a different world, not only through the feeling or the emotion of what’s going on musically, but also the sounds,” says Sam Kiszka.
Members of the band moved to Nashville at the start of the global shutdown and that has led in part to Josh Kiszka publicly coming out, writing in an Instagram post this month that it is "imperative that I speak my truth for not only myself, but in hopes to change hearts, minds, and laws in Tennessee and beyond.” The singer declined to talk about his decision to The Associated Press.
Kiszka’s post came after Tennessee legislators passed a bill attempting to ban drag shows on public property where minors could be present, as well as another signed in March that bans gender-affirming healthcare for children.
The band's Starcatcher World Tour kicks off Monday in Nashville at the Bridgestone Arena, with stops at Madison Square Garden in New York, The Kia Forum in Los Angeles, TD Garden in Boston and Allstate Arena in Chicago.
“It’ll be really fun to play more of this record live because the way that these songs are structured there’s a lot of room for improvisation,” says Jake Kiszka. “It’s very attitude-based. And so we get to take people on a whole new journey.”
One song that may spark some intra-band debate playing live is “Runway Blues,” that weird song fragment. Josh Kiszka has never been a fan and he didn't want it to grow into a full song, even though his brothers loved it.
“We really pushed for the entire thing to be on the record. But Josh, he just hates it too much,” Sam says. Jake sighs, laughingly: “This is a democracy, unfortunately.”
