From Ferndale to the Fillmore: Detroit rock band Mac Saturn is ready for the spotlight
Melody BaetensOn Friday, the members of Detroit-based rock band Mac Saturn will play the biggest show of their lives.
Playing the Fillmore Detroit is a dream that most area musicians have dared to consider, yet few have accomplished. In the 2010s Mac Saturn was very much a local Ferndale band, playing area clubs that could fit maybe 100-300 people.
Now, after some time, some growth, a new home base and a wring through the proverbial polishing machine, the guys are poised for the national spotlight.
Friday’s Fillmore Detroit concert is a release party for the band’s first physical album, "Hard to Sell," a driving collection of rock songs that pulls in strong elements of R&B with a bit of soul, Motown and classic blues rock. After the show at the storied and historic 99-year-old venue on Woodward, which holds nearly 3,000 people, the six-piece band will embark on a 35-date, coast-to-coast headlining tour of North America.
"The Fillmore is the biggest show we've ever played up to this point in our lives and it means the most to us," says frontman Carson Macc. "We're really stepping into the headlining thing. We just did support for 50 dates with the Struts all around the world, and we honed in on becoming the best opening band ... but being a headliner is something completely different. You're carrying on the energy, you're putting on the show. You are the show."
Along with Macc and guitarist Nick Barone, who have been working together for nearly a decade, Mac Saturn includes drummer Angelo Coppola, lead guitarist Mike Moody, keyboardist Even Mercer and bass player Ian Lukas.
The members of Mac Saturn are not weekend warriors or a local band anymore. They've got a bona fide manager, booking agent and record label, Saturn Sounds. They're all-in, focusing on recording, touring and fostering a relationship with their growing fanbase that includes six groups of people, says Macc.
"You got young girls and you got young guys and everybody in between, then you've got old guys and old girls and everybody in between," said Macc. "And all six of those groups, we see at the shows, they all like it, they're all having the same party and it really creates this energy in the room where there's certainly something to be said about a group full of older people that believe in this thing that you're doing. It's authentic to them."
He says the younger audiences are important in getting a band like theirs momentum and national attention, but it's "the stamp of approval" from an older crowd that can sniff out simple mimicry that is personally meaningful to the band.
Mac Saturn rising
Are they the next Greta Van Fleet, the Frankenmuth-founded rock band that beat out Weezer, Fall Out Boy and others for the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album? Mac Saturn pushes back on that notion, naturally, but worse comparisons could be made.
The two all-male rock bands are from the same state, after all, and the members are about the same age. They have the same producer in Al Sutton of Royal Oak's Rustbelt Studios, and they both have great hair and play music that leans heavy on the stylings of American and British classic rock.
They sound different, though. In addition to different vocal approaches, Greta Van Fleet has more of a classic rock and blues sound and Mac Saturn sounds like they grew up closer to Motown, with nods to soul, funk and rhythm & blues.
"I think the music speaks for itself," said Barone. "You know, we are different, and if people can't hear that, go listen to more records, I guess, until you hear it."
"As far as working with Al goes, he does it like we do it and that's why we really clicked. He's not bombastic, and he's not a peacock, you know. He's very nose to the grindstone and he works really heard ... his priority from day one was let's make a great song and start there."
Barone and Macc says that ethos is what connected them with Sutton, and that it wasn't an overnight thing; they were very green when they went into the studio.
"He's the kind of producer who will go down that road and go that deep with a group, and that's what we needed," said Macc. "We needed somebody who saw that in us and wanted to get something out of us."
The early Ferndale days
The band members all used to live together in a tiny house in Ferndale, not too far from a high school both in the geographical sense and time-wise, being barely in their 20s.
After starting in the early 2010s, some of their first shows were neighborhood block parties on this street, as well as in small clubs like the nearby Loving Touch and Corktown's Lager House. They found support from their peers as well as established acts like the Muggs, whose bass player Tony Muggs was encouraging of Mac Saturn early on, and producer Chris Koltay, who recorded a very early version of the band.
The Ferndale house on W. Troy street was "where everything started," they said.
"That street was just crazy, all the families knew each other, all the kids grew up together and they would have block parties and we'd even play them," said Macc, who was once the drummer in Mac Saturn before becoming the charismatic, well-dressed frontman. "The first time I ever sang in front of people with the band behind me was actually at that block party. We were the band on the street ... they had our back."
These days, guys still live together, but in a bigger house in a more eclectic neighborhood: Boston Edison. They say the move to Detroit has helped their sound and charisma as a band.
"Once we moved to Detroit and we started writing and letting the city influence us. It kind of changed everything," said Macc. "When we were in Ferndale we found each other's voices but it wasn't until we moved to Detroit that we really found this Mac Saturn sound and energy."
"It made us take ourselves more seriously," Macc and Barone both said, almost in unison.
"It's a serious place, I mean, the hustle is real," said Macc. "People go hard, they hustle hard and that affects us and you can't not be affected by that especially if you're living in the city. It's an incredible phenomenon, what the city does."
mbaetens@detroitnews.com
Mac Saturn
with the Thing with Feathers
7 p.m. Fri.
Fillmore Detroit
2115 Woodward, Detroit
Tickets start at $35.50
"Hard to Sell" listening party and meet-and-greet
6 p.m. Thurs.
Dearborn Music
22501 Michigan, Dearborn
Free admission