Greta Van Fleet: Heart, Sound, and Bearing the Torch Under the Falling Sky

Throughout their meteoric rise, the Grammy Award-winning Greta Van Fleet have attributed their kaleidoscopic blend of classic-rock-fueled audiovisual aesthetics to their Frankenmuth, Michigan, upbringing. Whether you’re familiar with the Midwest or just the jokes about small towns, it’s difficult to overstate how significant this setting was to the band discovering and shaping their sound. To get the band is to understand how their voracious appetites for music, a limited assortment of family vinyl collections, and rigorous study of their musical heroes led to the formation of Greta Van Fleet. The insular nature of the small town hearkens to the longstanding tradition of using sociocultural seclusion to foster tighter band dynamics and define artistic identity. Consider their Midwestern compatriot, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who notoriously retreated to an isolated cabin in Wisconsin and emerged with his debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Hell House,” where the band honed their chops at Ronnie Van Zant’s dock.

For brothers Sam, Jake, and Josh Kiszka as well as Danny Wagner, “Classic Rock” is more than a spectator sport. Their multifaceted embrace of its sound, style, and swagger has far more in common with traditions of folklore than pop culture. Taking up the forefather’s gauntlet because of one’s personal connection rather than an inherited reflex is about as genuine as it gets. Amid their 2023–2024 Starcatcher World Tour, Sweetwater caught up with Greta Van Fleet and their crew ahead of their Indianapolis show to talk all things creative process, inspiration, and the gear that makes it happen.

Roots, Part I: From Frankenmuth, with Love

So, let’s start at the beginning: Gretna Van Fleet. Sorry, Greta Van Fleet. According to a 2017 HuffPost interview, Gretna Van Fleet is the name of the real-life Frankenmuth resident who inspired the band’s name. Don’t worry, Gretna has given the band her blessing, but this factoid illustrates how deeply interwoven into the band’s identity their Frankenmuth origins truly are. While most small-town bands’ dreams of “making it big” conflate erasing their roots with a growth that gives them license to thrill on the stateless stage of the “Big Time,” GVF inverts the narrative by displaying these roots to audiences of thousands through the art that’s blossomed from the Michigan-planted seeds. We can trace two tenets integral to the band’s 2012 formation back to Frankenmuth.

First, it’s about numbers. Frankenmuth’s population hovered just under 5,000 residents, according to US Census data from 2010. For context, the nearby Saginaw and Flint host upward of 20 times that many residents, while Detroit — around 100 miles to the southeast — is home to over 600,000 people. If you include the surrounding metro area, then this number climbs, eclipsing 4,000,000 residents. By numbers alone, fewer people means less diversity of experiences, and Detroit’s metro population equates to about 800 Frankenmuths. But this isn’t just a question of math.

Second is the culture. Deeply intertwined with its Bavarian roots, Frankenmuth abounds with Franconian architecture. In fact, Germanic traditions continue so powerfully that, in 1996, Frankenmuth became the first town outside Munich to have their Oktoberfest celebrations legally recognized by the German Parliament. Frankenmuth’s majority-German heritage permeates much of the everyday, earning it the nickname “Little Bavaria.”

It’s 2013. Twin brothers Josh and Jake Kiszka, younger brother Sam, and then-recently recruited Danny Wagner are officially one year into their tenure as Greta Van Fleet, occupying the roles of lead vocals, guitars, bass and keys, and drums, respectively. The Kiszka family’s garage had become their stage, spending countless hours jamming to hone their craft, unaware of the five-figure-capacity arenas waiting less than a decade around the corner. By this point, the band’s only attempt to capture these efforts were “just crappy iPhone recordings,” Danny jokes.

Sam Kiszka: Bass, Keys, and Luscious Locks

Despite what you might assume about a group of teenagers with the benefit of modern technology, the band found themselves turning inward to begin their musical odyssey. Seated at the cockpit of his multi-instrumental bass-keyboard fusion rig, Sam Kiszka is clad in a denim jumpsuit and yellow-tinted glasses that allude to another midcentury hallmark: Ray Ban Shooters popularized by Hunter S. Thompson. Sam remembers he and his brothers pillaged their parents’ vinyl collection, where rock, gospel, folk, and country were standard fare, and everyone from James Taylor and John Denver to Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones were in regular rotation. Years spent baptizing themselves in the works of the era haven’t gone unrewarded — all we have to do is look to their gear to understand how their studious dedication informs their sound.

Sam’s affinity for keys originates with his great-grandfather’s Hammond H-100 Series organ coupled with the soulful catalog of Billy Preston and a steady diet of gospel and organ-centric music. “So many iconic sounds,” Sam beams, smashing out a few chords that reverberate throughout the arena. “When my digital stuff gives out,” he continues, “this thing is still working. It’s been working since the ’40s!” He’s practically bursting at the seams to talk about the pièce de résistance: an original, 1940s custom-built Hammond B-3 organ. It’s responsible for a sizable chunk of the sonic palette that inspires him. He fires up the era-authentic Leslie rotary speaker, demonstrating the iconic effect with pride. As he increases the rotational speed of the speaker, his visage distorts with an intensity being fought by a grin, listening for the exact moment the speaker reaches its target velocity, finally letting the grin take hold in satisfactory reverence of the B-3 and the Leslie working in harmony.

Mark Messina, Sam’s tech, reports that it took time to convince Sam to incorporate a Moog Minitaur for an array of bass parts that he’d relied on the B-3 to achieve. Seeing as the Minitaur is a spiritual successor to Moog’s iconic Taurus bass synth, popularized by the likes of Rush, Yes, and Genesis, the Minitaur is both a sensible extension of Sam’s roots and an out-of-time sonic artifact that contrasts the vintage-accurate B-3 or Mellotron. The Minitaur isn’t the sole outlier there. The accompanying Nord Stage 3 keyboard is the workhorse of the rig, according to Mark. Sam uses it as both a primary instrument and a MIDI controller for additional sounds, making it indispensable in literally and proverbially navigating GVF’s live performances. Mark gestures toward an array of pedals and controllers that connect instruments and sounds across time, revealing a nuanced balance of new and vintage gear.

It’s much easier to stay in one spot when playing keys than it is while toting around a bass guitar, and Sam’s recently taken a liking to a striking Sea Green Rickenbacker bass. Like the Fender P Basses that occupy Sam’s onstage arsenal, there is no shortage of iconic rockers who’ve brandished a Rickenbacker, many of whom Sam cites in his pursuit of tone: prog-rock heavyweights Geddy Lee and Chris Squire of Rush and Yes, respectively, alongside Paul McCartney for his late-Beatles and solo work. Sam’s desire to achieve a similar tone that “pokes right through the mix” led him to finally rocking the Rick.

Fun fact: McCartney was one of the earlier recipients of a Rickenbacker 4001S bass, but a shared affinity for the sound is the only connection between Sam and McCartney. Sam takes the road with a Hofner bass in tow, the kind precisely identified with McCartney. Though Mark claims it’s never played, its on-tour inclusion says more about Sam’s artistic disposition than anything material. Greta Van Fleet is a band defined by proximity, but we’ll revisit that later.

Sam’s streamlined rig brings his dyad of total-spectrum instrumentation to life. Per Mark, an “RJM gizmo” (Mastermind GT) controls Sam’s array of boosts, octavers, phasers, and more, while a Radial 4-channel distributor attenuates the output. Bass tones are equally straightforward: a Fender Super Bassman and a sole 8×10 cabinet, pumping out 2,000 watts of bona fide low end via eight Fender Special Design Eminence Neodymium 10-inch speakers.

Danny Wagner: Drums, Wind Chimes, and Home-brewed Snare Solutions

Danny Wagner holds down the rhythm, night after night, with the somewhat bizarre distinction of being the only band member that’s not a blood relative. Like the Kiszka boys, Danny was raised on a solid diet of rock, blues, and folk music, following in his mom’s footsteps by learning to play the guitar. Don’t worry, you’re not losing the plot. As Danny tells it, stepping in to play drums emerged from practical necessity before morphing into a welcome avenue of its own. He notes that everyone plays a bit of everything, which is huge for the creative process.

Danny’s Paiste Formula 602 cymbals include an uncharacteristically large 22-inch crash alongside a cracked cymbal that he chose to keep due to its unusual timbres. The bulk of his kit comprises Ludwig shells with Remo rototoms and SJC timbales rounding things out. Danny also reveals that his first real drum kit was purchased from Sweetwater.

As interesting as that all is, Danny’s drum tech, David Atkinson, makes a solid case for the most-interesting aspect of his kit: the snare. Purchased as a teenager, the snare drum was acquired secondhand, and — much to the delight of David’s tech sensibilities — Sam took it upon himself to manually install a muffle sans formal training. Doing as much as a teenager, for someone who never even set out to become a drummer initially? That’s enough to earn the respect of any drummer. In a further test of Danny’s ingenuity, David recounts Danny’s kick pedal breaking mid-performance. While parts are difficult, but not impossible, to find, Danny felt a more robust replacement would suit the demands of live shows, especially with his self-admitted lead foot. For all Danny and David’s combined technical and creative proficiency, do you know what really makes the audience go wild? “Wind chimes,” David laughs.

Roots, Part II: Where Time and Tone Intersect

Nearly everything about Greta Van Fleet oozes ’60s and ’70s panache: the font of their logo, the art direction of their album covers and music videos, and lyrics that weave sensuality and raw emotion with motifs of high-fantasy and existential esoterica. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s heard their tunes or experienced their live shows, but you’d be forgiven for wondering how this voltaic mash-up of classic-rock aesthetics emerges with such fervor in the 21st century, some 50-ish years after their heroes’ heyday. The answer, it turns out, is both simple and deeply nuanced: tradition. Whether it’s the gear, the music that inspires them, or their onstage threads, their unwavering perseverance in channeling the counterculture’s Zeitgeist is anything but put on.

When it comes to stage presence, the guys are naturals, not because of their exotic sartorial indulgences or laundry list of sought-after vintage gear (though those all help, too), but because Greta Van Fleet was born for the stage. Following their residency in the Kiszka’s garage, they cut their teeth on the expected gamut of new-band gigging, taking on a circuit of small clubs and bars to earn their rock rite of passage. Through this liminal phase, they crystallized a performance dynamic that stemmed from the essential need for the band to play for hours on end without a guaranteed audience. This led to an unusual reality: the often-lauded studio experience felt lackluster by the time they first began recording.

Danny remembers this happening around the time they were 13 or 14 years old. Laughing, he insists that they “had no idea what was going on” in the studio until they met Michigan engineers Al Sutton and Marlon Young, who “taught us everything they knew.” For Danny and the Kiszka boys, the endless jamming between garage and bar stages led to a synchronicity that Danny credits with allowing their collective creativity to “flow out.”

Danny, Sam, Jake, and Josh soon realized that Greta Van Fleet is, in no uncertain terms, a bona fide live act. Initially, the near-sterile atmosphere of the studio starkly contrasted the dynamism of the stage, resulting in a serious bout of introspection. On the one hand, there’s a self-consciousness to your first bit of studio time, not unlike adjusting to hearing your own voice or — in Danny’s case — realizing that he’s stomping the kick but only grazing the snare. The studio forces you to confront your limits in the absence of the ebb and flow of live performances. What’s clear from Danny and Sam’s musings is that the weight of the live show’s influence isn’t merely a byproduct of their early days but essential to the band’s DNA.

Sam articulates their performances as “very attitude-based” — an insight that led them to realize that their best studio work would result from an ability to grasp the complexities and nuances of their time onstage and transpose them for studio recording. To that end, Sam credits producer Dave Cobb for capturing the electricity of happenstance moments that occur almost exclusively in a live setting, in the timeless dimension of locking in with your musical co-conspirators and letting intuition take hold of your artistry — the “true” Greta Van Fleet.

Proximity and the Art of Torch Bearing

Taking in the band’s suite of desirable instruments, you’ll notice a pattern: if they aren’t relics of the eras that inspire them, then they’re either a modern approximation or something intentionally designed with older sensibilities in mind. Let’s look at the aural arsenal of lead guitarist Jake Kiszka. It’s stocked with 1960s Gibson SGs and Les Paul SGs alongside a sea of Custom Shop guitars. According to Jake’s guitar tech, Johnny Meyer, some of the vintage models have had pickups swapped, tuners changed, or old-style Dunlop strap locks installed. Between those guitars and the Custom Shop models, Jake’s onstage presentation exudes a glam-fueled hue of ’70s swagger that drew Johnny into his now two-year-long tenure with the band. “His sense of timing and phrasing and what he chooses to play... it’s interesting,” Johnny remarks of Jake’s guitar work. “That jumped right out at me.”

Similarly, Josh Kiszka — lead vocalist, twin brother to Jake, and elder brother of Sam — spares no effort in capturing the aggregate spirit of the band’s multifaceted range of influences. For their Indianapolis show, Josh dons an all-white, sequin-adorned jumpsuit that rings equal parts Studio 54 and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie with a dash of Robert Plant or Marc Bolan, thanks to the deep-cut neckline. A recent shift to wireless mics allows Josh to elevate Greta Van Fleet’s onstage theatrics, wielding a chromed-out Shure microphone like a sonic scepter as he shepherds the audience through an audiovisual feast of dazzling technicolor lights and galvanizing pyrotechnics. For Josh, well-coordinated stage direction yields an easy yet determined stage presence come showtime. Tanner Peters, the band’s audio and stage technician, points to a newfound pastime of Josh’s on the road: “playing a game every night with the spotlights to see if they can keep up.”

Pop culture has conditioned us to paradoxically conflate familiarity with quality while encouraging us to disregard work that’s new to us for not meeting an arbitrary, unstable threshold of being sufficiently “new” or “unique.” For the pantheon of bands and artists that inspires Greta Van Fleet, the once-rich soil in which they collectively planted themselves has grown arid, yet for a new generation of rockers, an inevitably distinct orientation to sound, time, and history allows them to find fertility amid the blight. Inspiration is inescapable, and GVF — consciously or not — chooses to refine and reiterate as they seek to tap the same source of artistry that fueled the now-totemic works that defined their roots. The fact that we might struggle to categorize GVF’s music within the limits of the “Classic Rock” banner is all the evidence we need to plainly see how they’ve taken up the gauntlet of a new history’s tradition.

Greta Van Fleet’s onstage energy blends carefully curated aesthetics and meticulously detailed show design with the palpable electricity of the straight-up fun the guys are having with each performance. And who can blame them? Their bordering-on-insular Frankenmuth upbringing allowed them to voraciously study the pantheon of midcentury classic rock, gospel, folk, country, and soul with near-academic levels of detail. To storm the stage with an arsenal of instruments that were in regular rotation among their most esteemed influences, banging out arena-size sonics as you jam with your closest friends: what could be cooler than that? Greta Van Fleet rose to prominence during what is arguably the beginning of an unexpected rock renaissance. Proudly wearing the styles and themes of their influences on their sleeves obscures a critical tenet of the band’s identity: they’re bearing the torch.

You can catch Greta Van Fleet on the 2024 leg of their Starcatcher World Tour at the dates below:

Learn more at GretaVanFleet.com

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