The award-winning Wild Honey Collective continues to makes a splash, especially during its live shows, captured on a new double album. Get their back story, plus new tracks by a host of Michigan artists.
‘Almost Having Too Much Fun Playing Together’: The Wild Honey Collective (Courtesy Photo)
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After recording and releasing three studio albums, various EPs and a double live album over the past five years – and playing 300 shows of varying sorts – The Wild Honey Collective has developed a “shared language” on stage that’s made them a dynamic performing act.
“We’ve very much in a honing-our-craft phase of the band,” guitarist and singer Tommy McCord said of the rootsy folk, rock and string group based in Lansing and Grand Rapids that was formed amid the pandemic in 2020.
“Live performance is really our greatest passion, so the goal for the year right now is to play live and develop new original material more gradually as a full band, as opposed to the more individual singer-songwriter-oriented approach we’ve done so far.”
The eclectic seven-piece band – McCord, Danielle Gyger (fiddle, guitar, mandolin), Dan O’Brien (guitar, harmonic, bass, mandolin), Timmy Rodriguez (bass, guitar), Adam Aymor (pedal steel), Joel Kuiper (drums) and Jack Schueler (guitar) – released its double live album earlier this month, a project that McCord calls “an actual, really solid, completely live document of the band and what our show is like.”
On Stage: The Wild Honey Collective has played hundreds of shows, including last year’s Wheatland Music Festival. (Photo/Holly Holtzclaw)
After winning honors for Michigan’s best roots album at the 2025 WYCE Jammie Awards, The Wild Honey Collective will once again showcase its performing prowess at the 2026 Jammies pre-show hosted by Local Spins at SpeakEZ Lounge in Grand Rapids on Feb. 18. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., with special guest Dee Sutton (of Sweet Dee & The Wild Honeys). Show details here.
“It was just sort of this wonderful crowning moment,” McCord said of the band’s Jammies win last year.
“We worked so rapidly the first few years of the band, so it was a wonderful feeling of validation for our third LP to receive the designation of best roots album. The whole event is so well-run and inspiring, so just being there at all was a bit of an honor. Being able to return to SpeakEZ in a sort of coronation role to kickoff this year’s show is also very flattering.”
Originally part of the inventive rock band Drinking Mercury, McCord said the restrictions of the COVID pandemic forced his musical pals to start playing acoustically, thus sowing the seeds for the folk-driven Wild Honey Collective.
EMBRACING THE FOLK TRADITION AND ‘PSYCHEDELIC COUNTRY ROCK’
“My big inspiration point … is the Byrds and the web of bands around them, from Dillard & Clark to the Flying Burrito Brothers to Desert Rose Band and Kentucky Colonels – all this wide range of what roots music can be, the roots of Americana,” McCord said.
“The initial concept is still intact, but once we started playing shows, the rotating cast concept coalesced to include more full-time members and we became very much a full band with drums and more of a rock edge. The style and approach is still very much working within the folk tradition to explore the connection of American roots music from old-time string band to modern psychedelic country rock.”
Those moments on stage have defined the band.
The Live Album
“We were fortunate enough to just find the people with that undefinable alchemy that makes a band, especially once Adam Aymor joined on pedal steel and Joel Kuiper became our regular drummer,” McCord said.
“Audiences always tell us that it looks like we’re almost having too much fun playing together, and I think a crowd certainly engages with that spirit. We also shake things up constantly with different performing combinations, guests, collaborators and our huge catalog of songs, so I think the word has spread a bit that we’re a band you can see repeatedly and always get a new experience.”
This week’s edition of the Local Spins Michigan Music Showcase featured two tracks from the band’s live album — “Rocky Mountain Belle” and “This Old House” — as well as fresh tracks by Michigan artists Koipondcondo, May Erlewine, The Dangling Participles, CaliKo, Bryan Sutton & Billy Strings, The Legal Matters and Cold Mountain Child, along with a classic 1974 track from Heartsfield.
The Michigan Music Showcase airs at 11 a.m. Fridays and 5 p.m. Sundays on WYCE (88.1 FM) and online at wyce.org, and on Interlochen Public Radio at 7 p.m. Saturdays. Check out previous show podcasts online here.
PODCAST: Local Spins Michigan Music Showcase (1/30/26)
VIDEO: The Wild Honey Collective, “Rocky Mountain Belle”
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