From becoming childhood friends on the playground to sharing the stage at venues such as Mac’s Bar and The Loft , three friends from Traverse City anticipate new transitions as they work towards launching their band to new heights.
Calling themselves the Hacky Turtles, the band consists of MSU food industry management senior Marc Kanitz , MSU alumnus Austin Spencer , and Grand Valley State University student Alex Rushlow , who met when they were in the second grade.
A few years ago, the three of them met MSU arts and humanities senior Erik Krueger , also from their hometown.
After becoming a band in January 2014 and naming themselves over the summer , the Hacky Turtles have played at locations in Grand Rapids, East Lansing and their hometown with both cover songs and original pieces.
As the band members are currently focusing on school, they have clear goals that they intend to work towards after graduation.
“I think it would be really cool to set up a chunk of time to pursue a tour, whether it’s big or small,” Krueger said. “Just being on the road going from gig to gig and hanging out or camping in between. That’s a dream.”
Regardless of where they end up in the future, the band said one of their goals is to continue performing and creating music that the audience can relate to in some way.
“I think it would be really cool to make an impact on people’s mentalities, even if it’s just making their day better,” Kanitz said. “There’s a lot of positivity that comes out of our music just because naturally, the four of us are very positive and happy people.”
According to Kanitz, the band has close to 30 original songs that they are hoping to record as an album .
“Our creative process is kind of just jamming to see what we come up with,” Kanitz said. “We aren’t musical geniuses or anything, we just really enjoy playing music.”
Kanitz said their original songs blend together a variety of musical styles and lyrics that are influenced by each member’s favorite artists.
“We call our genre funk rock with strong folk roots and a dash of reggae,” he said with a laugh.
Although Spencer currently lives in Chicago and Rushlow attends GVSU , the band said they do not let distance limit their collaboration on new songs. The members continuously send each other ideas, and they finalize songs whenever they are together.
One of their original songs was chosen as the Traverse City theme song in a contest over the summer, which Kanitz said had a big impact on their intentions as a band.
“We received a lot of publicity and we were give the chance to make a music video,” he said. “It was sort of like a springboard to becoming more serious about our music.”
