We have been trying to line up an in-studio session with the Driveway Thriftdwellers for the better part of 18 months. It’s no easy task to get all the members of the band in the studio, however, because they’re spread around southern part of the state - in Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine.
In the end, the better part of scheduling valor allowed us to get eighty percent of the group - Jon Knudson (vocals & guitar), Ryan Knudson (pedal steel & vocals), Aaron Collins (bass & vocals), and Jon Storey (drums & vocals) - into the studio recently. Lead guitarist and singer Kyle Rightley couldn’t make it to our Lake Effect performance studio session.
But it was worth it for a chance to hear a group that has been racking up awards, including the 2017 WAMI for Best Country Music Act as well as several Madison area music awards.
Jon Knudson says that for their new album, the band tried an interesting approach before recording - they really didn’t rehearse.
"I guess there’s two different ways you can look at it, which I think we did last time - we really wrote the songs and got them to where we wanted them, and this time we just recorded them where they were and that was it," he says.
Driveway Thriftdwellers will play a show at Anodyne Coffee in Walker’s Point Friday night to launch the vinyl edition of their self-titled (and latest) album. Ahead of that, they joined Lake Effect's Mitch Teich in the performance studio:
