Devin Weber, frontman for Grand Rapids alt-country band The Local Commuters, admits it’s taken a long time to finally release the group’s debut EP.
A project nearly five years in the making, the five-song record will showcase the band’s signature Southern rock-inspired sound, and continue to introduce them to an even wider audience.
Formed during the pandemic, The Local Commuters came together after the gradual end of Weber’s previous band, longtime local rockers Devin & the Dead Frets. Also featuring that band’s drummer, Jordan Kerbyson, Weber gathered together with some of his musician friends, ultimately teaming up with lead guitarist/backing vocalist Ben Erhart, bassist Matt Allen, and multi-instrumentalist/backing vocalist Sam Starkie.
Weber had some songs that he had written previously that he didn’t feel were right for the Dead Frets, and when he met up with the new band, they played through those songs, and they felt right, right away.
“I was sort of lamenting the loss of the Dead Frets, but then literally after our first practice with this group, I thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to be fine,” Weber said. “So that was reassuring.”
What wasn’t reassuring was the looming uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shifting protocols of lockdown that kept the new band in limbo just as they were getting started.
“Since it was the pandemic, we weren’t really playing live to an audience so much, but we just got together once a week and played and played and played,” Weber said. “We’ve certainly hit a groove. We do these bar sets sometimes for three or four hours, and we take requests. You know, these guys are good enough that we can pretty much sight unseen, play just about anything people ask us to play. And that part keeps it fun, because we’ve always had a touch of an improvised nature. And I think we can kind of read each other in a way that’s pretty essential in this day and age of putting on a good live show.”
The band’s name is an obvious nod to their busy outside lives and day jobs. All living in the greater Grand Rapids area, the band has small town roots, and that spirit shines through in their music.
“It’s sort of like a double meaning,” Weber said about the band name. “We’ve been doing this thing, we’ve been getting older, and we’ve been playing the same area this whole time.
“And then just in a simpler way, we bonded a lot over our love of John Prine,” he added. “He passed in 2020 when we were trying to name the band. And there’s a line from a John Prine song called ‘Bruised Oranges.’ Just talking about, ‘It’s just a local train, a commuting train.’ So I guess maybe we felt like that train was us, or something.”
In addition to Prine as an influence, Weber said the band would love to sound like “Drive-By Truckers meets the Allman Brothers, meets the Black Crowes, meets Sam Cooke,” but feel that their sound is hard to really pin down to any one given genre.
The Local Commuters recorded their upcoming five-song EP at Goon Lagoon studios in Grand Rapids with Tommy Schichtel back in 2023. Since then it’s been a long story filled with delayed mixes, and Weber’s own perfectionism, that has pushed back the release until this summer, when they will finally put the record out during a special release show at The Pyramid Scheme July 19.
After the EP’s release, The Local Commuters plan to play out as much as they can, branching outside the area, and hopefully getting onto some weekend or two-week run tours.
“I’m old enough now, and realistic enough to know that we’re not just going to go become Greta Van Fleet next weekend, or whatever Michigan band that’s huge,” Weber said. “We just want to work, and we just want to play our songs as much as we can.”
The Local Commuters EP Release
Wsg. Brother Adams, Silver Creek Revival
The Pyramid Scheme, 68 Commerce SW, Grand Rapids
July 19, 7 p.m., $17.98, All Ages
Pyramidschemebar.com, facebook.com/thelocalcommuters
