Led by Nick Stevenson, the new Grand Rapids band started recording a new EP this week and plays Cowpie on Saturday. Local Spins also premiered tracks by LVNMUZIQ, Antilogical, Fauxgrass, Plain Jane Glory and Jonny Carroll. Listen to the full podcast.
Even as a young musician in his 20s, Nick Stevenson has experienced plenty of the highs and lows that come with the territory as a singer-songwriter and performer.
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But he’s found his stride as part of a new Grand Rapids rock band, The Autumnatic, which has started working on its debut EP, with plans for touring and a full-length recording down the road.
“There’s been a ton of ups and a ton of downs,” conceded Stevenson, a Grand Rapids-area native who started as a solo artist and spent time at Boston’s Berklee College of Music before returning recently to West Michigan.
“It’s really good to have this group of guys who I can call family but also business partners. There have been a lot of downs, but it’s all about how you recover from it.”
Dubbed until this week as Nick Arthur & The Habitat, The Autumnatic features Stevenson on guitar and vocals, Caleb Denman on bass, Aladin Kadic on lead guitar and Scott Tabor on drums. Stevenson said they decided to change the name to better reflect the way the band works.
“I’m not the only one writing the music anymore as it used to be,” he reasoned. “I said, ‘We need to have a name that represents all of us in our whole creative process. We are The Autumnatic. Our favorite season is fall and I live in an attic, so …”
Delivering a sound that band members describe as “pop-rock baptized in blues and R&B,” The Autumnatic officially made its public debut this week as part of the 100th episode of Local Spins on WYCE. The group performed two songs – “Over & Out” and “Taking Flight” – and talked about its music during the show. Listen to the podcast here.
PODCAST: Local Spins on WYCE with The Autumnatic
Denman joked that it took awhile for band members to settle on what to tell fans when they asked what sort of music the group plays. “We finally figured it out,” he said.
Stevenson noted the musicians “all come from so many different backgrounds” to create the sound that distinguishes The Autumnatic — from relishing punk, Guns ’N Roses and R&B to growing up in Michigan, Illinois and Bosnia to spending time absorbing the music of other cities.
“We’ve been around a bunch of different places and I think we’ve been fortunate enough to have soaked up a lot of different culture, and we try our best to play that through our music,” said Stevenson, who says he got a lot of support for his music at a young age.
He credits his neighbor, Joe Cartoon, aka Joe Shields, a West Michigan singer-songwriter who recently was named one of six New Folk Winners at the prestigious 2016 Kerrville Folk Festival, and Grand Rapids producer/musician Michael Crittenden of Troll for Trout and Mackinaw Harvest Music studios, for inspiring him as a writer and singer.
“I was always very, very interested in music and those two really coached me,” said Stevenson. “In fact, I wouldn’t be singing if it wasn’t for Joe telling me to quite being a sissy.”
The Autumnatic started tracking a new EP this week and plans to stage a gofundme.com campaign to finance a full-length recording in the future.
The band performs at 4:30 p.m. Saturday as part of the Cowpie Music Festival on Shagbark Farm in southern Kent County. Get more information about the two-day festival that kicks off today – and features headlining performances by Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers and Strange Arrangement – in this Local Spins story.
Stevenson said the four-month-old band aims to do some touring and is in the process of signing to an indie record label. “We have a lot of things in store,” he said, adding that The Autumnatic just wants to “keep making good music.”
The 100th episode of Local Spins on WYCE also featured the premiere of new tracks by a host of West Michigan bands and solo artists, including LVNMUZIQ, Antilogical, Fauxgrass, Plain Jane Glory and Jonny Carroll, as well as songs by The Muteflutes, The Legal Immigrants, Devin & the Dead Frets, Valentiger and the Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra with Edye Evans Hyde.
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