'It's all about knowing what you can take': Greta Van Fleet talks MI roots, new album and touring

FRANKENMUTH, Mich. – When they set out to take a step forward with their new album, the guys in Greta Van Fleet decided to cast their eyes back.

The hard rock phenoms are from Frankenmuth, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit. They are back with “Starcatcher,” the band’s third full-length album, which summons a rawer sound following the sonic extravagance of 2021’s “The Battle at Garden’s Gate.”

The new record harks back to the days when then-teenage Josh Kiszka (vocals), Jake Kiszka (guitar), Sam Kiszka (bass) and Danny Wagner (drums) were woodshedding in a home garage and local spots such as White’s Bar.

The album is accompanied by an arena tour that kicked off Monday in the group’s newly adopted home of Nashville, Tennessee. It will include a Sept. 8 stop at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, Greta Van Fleet’s biggest homecoming show to date.

That Little Caesars Arena show will be the band’s first Detroit show since 2018, and it follows a pair of Michigan cancellations last year as Jake Kiszka battled pneumonia in a Detroit hospital. His situation was worse than many fans initially realized – the guitarist was “close to losing a lung,” his brother and bassist Sam Kiszka said.

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After steadily building a name in Michigan, the band roared onto the national radar in 2017 with the chart-topping tracks "Highway Tune" and "Safari Song," winning a multigenerational, global fan base that has lauded the young quartet as a rock savior of sorts.

While the band has scored big with its recorded work – twice topping Billboard's rock albums chart and regularly grabbing radio play – the live circuit is where Greta has made its real mark, selling out venues worldwide and notching a reputation for searing performances.

“Starcatcher,” released Friday, was recorded with producer Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell) at Nashville’s iconic RCA Studio with finishing touches in Savannah, Georgia. It's an album that finds the four-piece in a confident, comfortable space, instinctively leaning into the musical chops honed on the road.

The album and tour aren't the only topics making headlines for Greta Van Fleet of late: In June, singer Josh Kiszka publicly came out, announcing on Instagram he has been "in a loving, same-sex relationship with my partner for the past 8 years.”

Sam Kiszka spoke with the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, ahead of the album release.

Question: What do you guys want the world to know about this record?

Answer: If there’s one takeaway for me, it's all about the idea of the balance of the universe. If you look at it from a very broad standpoint, it’s about the balance between the ethereal realm and the tangible realm. Within those, it's about humanity and godliness. It explores a lot of those themes.

There are some elements that are, of course, autobiographical because we see things from a certain perspective, and we like to see things from different perspectives as well. So I think a lot of the time, we're trying to offer these stories within the world of Greta Van Fleet to demonstrate certain things – like in “Meeting of the Master,” where this character is convinced that his leader is the God, and that is all-encompassing.

With that sort of concept, is it something that's hammered out in advance? Or does it emerge organically as you begin to create these songs?

The music and the lyrics kind of get born together. One informs the other. I would say we were probably three songs into the album before we really figured out what the theme was. From there, it becomes somewhat more intuitive as far as which path do you take creatively. You know what it's about at that point. You really figure out what the music is trying to say.

Daniel, Jake and I start writing some instrumental music, and then (lyricist) Josh will listen to that and be informed off the music. If he takes it in a different direction, the music will follow that lead. For example, in “The Falling Sky,” it started off as a guitar riff, but by the time Josh had vocal parts, we put a chord progression underneath the riff for the choruses, which completely changes the song.

So it all homogenizes, and that's really what makes it Greta Van Fleet.

You also went for a more raw sound, reaching back to the early days. That’s noticeable from the opening track. What were the conversations that led there?

After we did “The Battle at Garden’s Gate,” it was difficult to say what the next move was. That was the album we had always wanted to do sonically. As long as we've been a band, we wanted our album to sound like that. And when we did that, it was really, really satisfying, exactly what we wanted.

But from there, it's like, what, what do we do now? We just reached the mountaintop. Where do we go from here? The obvious move to me was to look backward and say: “OK, let's not layer this one all up with string parts and orchestral sections and thousands of overdubs. Let’s make every part count.”

With “Starcatcher,” the way that we’ve minimized actually maximized the sound. The harmonious fashion in which all the parts work together just make it really big and very powerful. We took bigger swings. It wasn't like, “Oh, let's do a bunch of guitar dubs.” We've really accented all the parts. Some things are way too loud and some things can't always be heard.

It's a really wicked mix too. It's very textured feeling. It hits on some notes of psychedelia, and, of course, the classic recording techniques of the ‘60s and ‘70s were used in there. But we used all the equipment to make something that was, in my opinion, modern sounding at the same time.

What was the recording process?

(Producer Dave Cobb) said, "We're gonna demo some songs out." That's pretty normal. We've done that before. So we were really just kind of casually playing all the songs. Then we got back to the studio and Dave was using all those things we said were demos. (Laughs)

We said, “But aren't we gonna record it again?” He's like, “No, this is amazing.” And in hindsight, it really is fantastic because that's us at our most relaxed, our most casual and authentic. It’s not like the red light turns on in the studio and you’re thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to play this really well.” You can feel on the record how it's very relaxed and laid back. It's not trying to be anything. So that was a really innovative move on Dave's part

I know you've road tested a handful of these songs. What are some of the tracks you really see emerging as the live contenders on this tour?

I think a very strong theme on the Starcatcher Tour is going to be “The Falling Sky.” It's quintessentially Greta Van Fleet. Another really strong theme with “Starcatcher” is “Meeting the Master.” We’ve never had a track like that. It's very strange and very dynamic as well. It’s all-encompassing as far as the album goes.

I think we’ll be bringing back some really old tunes as well. Reminiscing a bit will be important to us. As we were building the set list, it was like: “Oh, we have a lot of songs now. What are we going to do?” So it was very difficult. But we're gonna bring out some old ones, songs that we've never really played before. It’s really about connecting with the people who know all the music and really want to hear those things.

Can we revisit what happened last year? You had five homecoming dates (in Michigan) lined up to start the tour. And then health issues struck for Jake and Josh, and the last two were abruptly canceled.

We were really hustling to create a different show, kind of a skeleton show to try to get through this. We were talking with (opener) Rival Sons about merging; we were kind of talking about kind of merging a lot of the set to take some pressure off Jake.

But it became very obvious that Jake had crippling pneumonia. It became very apparent that we could not go and do those shows. He was close to losing a lung. It was really bad.

Since then, we’ve been really good. I feel like there’s a new era, and hopefully, this doesn’t just go for us. I think there are a lot of artists who are kind of backing off because there’s a big mental health awareness now. But I know we’re in a really, really great spot.

Are you saying you guys have learned how to pace yourselves in a different way?

Exactly, yes. It's all about knowing what you can take, what you can do, what you can pull off on the road. The pacing for this tour reflects that. We’re going to do this tour, then next year, we’ll try to ramp it up a little bit more because we love being on the road. It's just that everything is trying to kill you and everything is out to get you.

Those canceled dates mean that some of us here in Detroit have not seen a Greta Van Fleet show in five years. What will we see when you play in our arena?

Five years ago we, obviously would’ve had a much smaller stage. We were still playing theaters at the time. We had a cool backdrop, and we had lights. But (2022’s) Dreams in Gold Tour was the first time we incorporated pyro – giant cauldrons of flames and explosions and low-hanging fog. And it was really amazing.

Now we're expanding even more on that. There’s more blowing up, more fire, massive moving lights, a bigger stage, and a little surprise – kind of another stage in the arena. It’s going to be really extensive and it’s pretty daring. We’ve been working hard to pull it all together and really know what the show is. We have a set list that we love, and we have a plan for moving around the arena and really interacting with a lot of people.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Greta Van Fleet talks MI roots, 'Starcatcher' album and upcoming tour