On Friday, September 6, Grand Rapids, Michigan based indie rock band The Crane Wives will release their first album in eight years, their long-awaited fifth studio album Beyond Beyond Beyond. It’s a release that’s been shaped and accented by many false starts as well as a revitalized philosophy and approach to music and songwriting for the group, which first formed in 2010.
The first seeds for the album were planted in the months following the release of their 2016 album Foxlore, when the group recorded a couple singles with the intention to record a new album. However, life happened, including the Covid-19 pandemic, which halted their plans and forced them to go into a self-imposed hiatus to recalibrate and find a new balance and new way forward.
“During that time, we kind of took a step back to assess how we were doing on the road, each other’s health, what was paying off and what wasn’t,” says singer-songwriter and guitarist Emilee Petersmark, who is joined by fellow lead singer/guitarist Kate Pillsbury as well as bassist Ben Zito and drummer Dan Rickabus.
At the time, a few band members were dealing with serious health issues, so traveling just didn’t feel as safe and comfortable as it used to. It also was tougher to make ends meet, so some of the band members took jobs to find increased stability.
“We didn’t see each other in person for about a year, which is crazy,” says Petersmark. “We went from seeing each other almost every day to not seeing each other at all.”
They didn’t forget about music, however. Band members spent a lot of their free time writing songs individually “as we were going through this kind of global shift in perspective.” Once things were safe enough to gather again, they reconvened to share the fruits of their labor and started to build out the new album from there. Exploring the complex emotions of fear, joy, and deep vulnerability that occurs when a person is nearing a new chapter or major changes in their life, the group found plenty of hope and direction.
“I think that a lot of our music in the past has lived in this very dark, cathartic place of facing a dark emotion and letting it kind of exist as ugly and as palatable as it can be,” says Petersmark. “Whereas I think the new record explores the concept of hope and possibility of things potentially being good in a way that we really haven’t dug into in the past. And it’s still cathartic, at least to me.”
Sonically, the album retains core elements fans have come to enjoy such as three-part harmonies while also veering more into rock territory compared to previous releases which were more acoustic and folk leaning. That change is thanks in part to Pillsbury and Petersmark putting an emphasized effort of growing as guitar players over the pandemic. Self-produced and engineered and mixed by Zito at his studio, Centennial Sound, the release marks the group’s most collaborative effort to date. The group put a concentrated effort to work as a team to make each song the strongest it could be.
Beyond Beyond Beyond also features special guest violinist Samantha Cooper and guest cellist Jordan Hamilton, as well as an album cover illustrated by longtime collaborator and visual artist Rebecca Green, who designed covers for the band’s previous albums.
Scummy Water Tower caught with Petersmark about their refreshed approach to music and songwriting, their fortunate luck lately on the road, and what’s next for the group.
What music have you and the band been listening to lately?
Oh, big question. Lately I have been kind of revisiting some older music. I’ve been getting back into Andy Shaw, who is a Canadian singer songwriter. I really like Hozier’s new record; it has been on pretty consistent replay. But amongst the four members of the band, we tend to have a really varied kind of musical taste. So, our bass player Ben really likes more complex things like Pinback and My Morning Jacket. He also really loves that groovy, irreverent music. Cake is one of his favorite bands, and he also used to play in a ska band when he was in high school. And our drummer, Dan, tends to a lot of world music. Michael Kiwanuka, he’s been really digging new Brittany Howard, and he also has a big deep love for Radiohead and more sensitive singer songwriters like Iron & Wine. Kate is a big fan of Margaret Glaspy and Fiona Apple and Mitski, big into Chappell Roan. We’ve been riding the Chappell Roan train for a few months as well.
What are some of your favorite or most memorable tour stories of late?
Well, in April we had a pretty crazy adventure. We woke up on the fourth day of the tour and found that our entire merch trailer had been stolen in the middle of the night. There had maybe been a five-hour window where it was unattended, so kind of wild that someone managed to haul it away, it must’ve been like 3000 pounds of merch. Someone managed to get it out of our hotel parking lot without alerting security, without alerting us with our windows open. So not a great morning. We were in contact with Charlotte Police before driving to Atlanta, but unfortunately we weren’t able to recover the trailer that day and drove to Atlanta had to come up with an online store solution. So, I made a bunch of graphics with a QR code, and we were lucky enough to be able to post that QR code on a bunch of the TVs in the bar where we were playing.
But a few days later before we drove to Florida, we get a call from the North Carolina Highway Patrol saying that they found an abandoned trailer on the side of the road. So, we’re not sure what’s in it. They’re not allowed to open it up and check. So, we kind of sent a friend of ours from the venue in Charlotte to kind of check it out. He says there are boxes in there, so we paid him a bunch of money to drive it all the way to Atlanta and drop it off, which is I think a seven hour round trip. So, he was a big hero, but it turns out that they had left every piece of merch untouched in that trailer. They had taken $60 cash, a generation four iPad, and that was it. So, we were able to finish the tour with all of our merch, which was incredible.
You were very fortunate.
It was a miracle. Yeah, we have a lot of friends who’ve been unfortunately robbed on the road. It kind of feels like a rite of passage at this point just because as an artist, you tend to be targeted when you’re traveling with the trailer and a bunch of stuff. So yeah, we feel incredibly lucky to have recovered our merch.
Sonically, Beyond Beyond Beyond builds and expands on what’s come before, and a big part of that was more of a focus on the guitar playing. How did that come about?
As young people, we were really inspired by the folk bands of the time, the Decemberists, Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, a lot of the stomp clap folk. And I feel like as we grew as individuals and as musicians, we started to want to explore all the different sounds that a guitar could make. An electric guitar can be so versatile, and I think that as we were touring, we were starting to kind of play with those sounds on the road. And then once the pandemic hit, we spent a lot more time, obviously just playing to ourselves. I know I personally picked up a few more pedals and started exploring different textures and just different ways that the guitar could be used to create an entire vibe and universe for a song. And I just feel like, because that’s kind of where we were all at the time, we had this very natural evolution towards more rock as opposed to acoustic folk.
Also getting rid of the banjo. It helped kind of pull us into this new place. The songwriting is very folk in that raw way, but we get to take more risks in filling the space where the color instrument goes, which used to be the banjo. Banjo takes up a lot of space, so it’s been nice to use other instruments and other effects to fill that. Ben gets a little bit experimental with the different pedals and different textures that his space has to kind of fill that color instrument role, which is exciting.
What are some of your favorite examples of using the guitars in a different way?
Ooh, good question. So, there’s a couple of really beautiful guitar solos on this new record that Kate Pillsbury wrote, and she has this pedal, I believe it’s called Microcosm, but I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it makes all kinds of crazy noises. It just has a bunch of different settings. It just feels like it creates this infinite well of sound, and with a little bit of tweaking, it can create a sound that is completely unlike something that we just heard.
So, she’s been kind of experiencing what it’s like to fluctuate the texture of her solos, create extra crunch, create a little bit of dissonance, which has been really exciting. On the vinyl that we will be releasing of the new record, we have this secret little bonus track, and our bass player, Ben, has some really beautiful kind of washy bass moments that really fill the sound, which for the most part is pretty sparse on guitars. It kind of just creates this very warm rumbly feeling that is pretty unique to that sound and not necessarily in previous records.
It sounds like the album was the most collaborative yet for the group.
Yeah, I would say so. We have been experimenting more with co-writing, which is something that we really haven’t touched on since 2010 when we all kind of lived in close proximity to each other. Kate and I used to be roommates back when the band started, so co-writing was a lot easier when you could just walk down the stairs and there was somebody to help you work your way out of a tough spot. But now we have to be a lot more intentional about it.
With this last record, we ended up planning a few band retreats. We would rent an Airbnb, and we would plan on spending a weekend with all of our gear just out and making noise that didn’t necessarily have to become a song, just kind of jamming around on old tunes or random rifts that came to you in the moment. And because of that, I feel like we were able to create something that feels a lot more collaborative than other music in the past.
What are some specific examples?
Some specific examples would be songs like “Higher Ground” or “Predator,” songs that Kate and I both had bones for when we showed up to the retreat but weren’t solid on the overall composition. I think that, with the addition of Ben and Dan in the songwriting process, we were able to create different grooves that I wouldn’t have been able to come up with on my own. There’s a song called “Time Will Change You” that falls a little later on the record. That was a song that I had had some bones for and had tested out at an open mic a few times, but it had never really felt cinched together, if that makes sense. But Ben ended up picking up an acoustic guitar and writing the lead guitar line for that song for Kate, and then it kind of spiraled from there, a counter melody here, a potential string part there. So, it was really cool to see it all come together after so long of existing in this half-formed state.
It seems like the chemistry is pretty strong these days.
Yeah, I mean, I think that it has definitely changed since we were 24, 25. We’re all in our thirties now and in different phases of life. Ben’s got a kid on the way and we’re just kind of settling into this new place of being a grownup and what that means to be in a grownup relationship with four other people whose business depends on you. So, I think that the songwriting chemistry is definitely still there, but it has evolved in that way because we are now grownups who are trying to write music that feels like it fits the grownup niche.
We’re all working to heal our inner demons as well, so that we can be good role models for people younger than us as well. So yeah, I think a lot has changed, but I think it’s probably helped us to create a dynamic that feels like it has longevity as opposed to something that just feels like it clicks by nature of all of us just being in the same place in our lives.
Lyrically the album deals with the emotions that come with an impending life change. The album takes listeners on that journey through that. Where did that idea come from?
I feel like so much of the music that we make, we want it to tell a story even if it’s not a concept album. We like when there is a narrative to the songs that were picked and the way that they all kind of flow together, and we were really intentional with this record to make sure that it is taking you on a journey. This journey, at least in my opinion, is kind of a cycle. You hit that last tune, and it really just brings you back around. To loop the record one more time.
I think that a lot of the music that we’ve created for this record comes from a place of growth, both in acknowledging that trauma still exists no matter how old you get and how much work you do, but also in recognizing that the way that we engage with each other can change and the way that we heal ourselves can change. So, with this record, we wanted to make sure that we highlighted the things that felt like old Crane Wives. The record starts with a song called “Scars.” I like to call it a sister song to a song from Coyote Stories, which was our third studio release. It definitely borrows a lot of themes from that era of acknowledging the pain and acknowledging the hurt and how it creates who you are as a person in certain ways.
But that song also leads you from that place to a place where you have the possibility of lifting your head out of it. We released a single called “Arcturus Beaming,” and it was the first single that we released and that came out in May. And that song is where the title of the record comes from, one of the lyrics in that song. And it is kind of like the turning point on the record where we start to invite a little bit of “what if” into the narrative, what if things worked out, which is something my therapist likes to ask me when I’m in a doom spiral. What if it just works out?
And that was kind of an important message that follows you to the rest of the record, just what if things aren’t as bad as you’ve built them up to be in your head? Because I think a lot of Crane Wives music allows us to live in our heads and in those dark moments, and I think that that is a very cathartic thing, but it’s not the only way to heal trauma. So, it’s been really exciting to bring our listeners who are all very young for the most part, into this new era where we can have our hurt and we can acknowledge that it lives inside of us, but there’s also room for hope and there’s also room for something better in the future.
I like the Illustrated album cover. Why was it important to have that kind of cover?
We’ve used the same artist for all of our studio records. Her name is Rebecca Green, and she went to school with us in 2008, 2009 when we were all in college, and she is just one of the most incredible illustrators that I’ve ever known. She illustrates children’s books now, and she is a big-time illustrator. She writes her own books, and she is able to just kind of tell a story with an image, which is such a big talent.
And for this record specifically, we kind of let her have the music and build her own world from that. And what we wanted was for her to be able to tell a story with what she heard, and she gave us a few options, and this was the one that spoke the most to us. We loved this idea of the character of the girl in the front kind of embarking on this journey and having the potential displayed without really a resolution. So, there’s no real telling where she’s going in that record, that album cover, but I really loved that you could invent a narrative for her based on the music and where it takes you personally.
There are a couple collaborations on the album with Samantha Cooper and Jordan Hamilton. How did they help elevate the songs they were part of?
I feel so lucky that Sam and Jordan were both available and willing to help us with this project. They’re some of the most talented string players that we know in west Michigan, and they’re able to kind of come up with lines on the spot. So, there wasn’t a lot of writing that we had to do on our end for them, which was incredible. But they were able to kind of bring a more organic texture back into the record, which we felt was really important.
We didn’t want to venture too far outside of our wheelhouse, which traditionally had been pretty acoustic folk. We wanted to make sure that all five albums could kind of live in the same universe, if that made sense. And we had strings on previous records with different string players, and we just kind of wanted it to feel like an evolution of those moments. So, we have them on “Scars.” It’s going to be the first time that you hear them right at the top of the track, and I feel like it adds this kind of earthy texture back into what is a pretty electric song.
I feel like it’s a very good grounding element. It fills up the space in this very beautiful orchestral way without necessarily becoming the forefront. I think it just kind of roots it back into this element of folk that makes it feel a lot more Crane-y than it would’ve without acknowledging where we came from in that way.
One of my favorite songs on the album is the last one, “River Rushing.” Can you talk about that song, what inspired it?
That one’s actually a Dan tune. He was the one who wrote the bones of that, and he’s our drummer. So, Dan has written a few songs for albums in the past, usually one or two per record. It was really exciting to have his songwriting contribution on this record. It felt really important to make sure we had a dance song on the record, but this song, we wanted to be the start of the final battle in a movie. We didn’t want it to be any amount of action necessarily. It was more like the call to action.
Dan wrote the chorus, the lyrics on the first verse, and I wrote the lyrics on the second. We all collaborated on the instrumentation and the composition, and in my opinion, I think it might be one of the more collaborative songs on the record between the four of us.
Do you think he’ll pick more of that approach going forward?
I think so. I feel like it was a really good exercise in pushing our abilities as songwriters and reminding us of the magic of collaboration. When we started working on Coyote Stories and Foxlore, we were more focused as independent songwriters. We only did one retreat during that time to kind of work up the songs, but we spent a lot of time in our own houses kind of perfecting the bones of a song and building it out a little bit more.
But it was nice to have something that was still just in pieces, and we can move things around like a puzzle and find what works best. I feel like “River Rushing” was one of those fun surprises when we were in the writing process to see what other people heard from the song before it was finished. And I personally would love to do that again. I think that it brought out a part of our songwriting that doesn’t normally see a lot of light, which is this idea that we can all share a moment on the song. There’s no real lead singer. We all get a turn. Passing that spotlight around helps us create something that is not pretty common on the rest of the record, which is exciting.
What was one of your favorite moments in the studio?
I had a couple. I really love doing, we call them “ghostly whales,” which are just background “oohs” and “ahs” that we add effects to reverb the hell out of the sound like they’re coming from deep in a well or up in the rafters. And I personally love just going into the recording booth and just ripping six or seven vocal takes in a row, layering them on top of each other and kind of seeing what comes out of that once you add effects to it.
So, there’s a couple of moments on the record that kind of highlight those things. Both Dan and Ben also got to sing into a pedal, a Microcosm, which creates different reverb and echo effects and delays, so they don’t really sound like voices anymore. Just kind of spacey sounds that add texture to the background. It was really fun to just get to record all of those ambient noises. Lot less pressure than having to lay a perfect vocal take for the chorus of a song.
Next year will be the band’s 15th anniversary. Are there any plans in the works?
Oh boy. It’s wild to think that we’ve been a band for 15 years. We don’t have any big plans aside from we’re probably going to go out, try to grab a nice meal and have drinks and just celebrate with the four of us. But that said, the past year we’ve really expanded our team.
We have a booking agent now who has been supporting us in this way that we can’t even, there’s no words to thank him. He is a godsend. We also have a tour manager who’s made the road so much easier. We travel with a sound engineer and a merch team, and just having the support has really made a world of difference to the way that the machine works. And so now that we’re hitting year 15, it would be really wonderful to kind of bring the team in to celebrate with us. Yeah, I’d love to have everyone on for 15 more years. That’d be ideal.
What are you most looking forward to with the upcoming tour dates?
This is going to sound silly, but I’m really looking forward to Vegas. I’m not a gambler, but I am a big people watcher and Vegas is one of my favorite places to do that. We have a pretty large show there, so I’m nervous about ticket sales. It’s going to be one of our biggest rooms ever.
I’m excited to be playing in these spaces where other big acts have played and also with the opportunity to be a person on the road. So, with Las Vegas, we have a couple of days surrounding where we can kind of relax, maybe find a hotel pool to post up by, and just spend time as people outside of the touring life, which I’m really looking forward to.
We have a couple shows coming up in Colorado where we have our friend Hayward Williams joining us. He is an absolutely phenomenal country folk artist who has written jingles for Budweiser, and we are lucky enough to get to play on a few of his songs for his set. So, I’m really looking forward to being a backup singer, living my true dream, which is to put on a matching outfit with some other girls and just sing backup.
You can follow The Crane Wives on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and check out their music at their Bandcamp page.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
