Sound Strategy

How the Crosscut Kings quickly cut into northern Michigan’s music scene

Jan. 19, 2019

A little less than a year ago, musician Jim Bonney, fairly new to northern Michigan, landed a solo gig at the esteemed Red Sky Stage in Petoskey. He was thrilled but saw one problem: “I couldn’t imagine making people sit through two hours of just me playing guitar and singing.”

A friend had long been telling him he had to meet “this amazing harmonica player,” Charlie “Hipps” Witthoeft, part of another local band, Charlie’s Root Fusion. Bonney thought maybe he’d ask Witthoeft to play a song or two with him at the Red Sky show. The two met at Witthoeft’s house to play a couple of songs together and see how they gelled, pre-performance.

“Right from the get-go, it sounded awesome,” Bonney says. “So we tried another, and another, and another ... and by the time we were done with that first rehearsal I meekly asked Charlie if he would be interested in doing the whole two-hour show together.”
        
After the concert, it was obvious to both musicians that they should approach their collaboration seriously.
        
“ … we started booking more gigs all over Michigan,” Witthoeft says. “The energy was infectious, and both our talents together just inspired us to get better.”

Only months later, the pair — known as the Crosscut Kings — released their first CD EP. They nabbed a slew of street busking gigs (Street Musique in Harbor Springs, Stroll the Streets in Boyne City, and Buskers on Bridge Street in Charlevoix). Then they recorded an another CD EP. Then they issued a vinyl 45” single, part of a Kickstarter campaign that not only hit its goal in less than 24 hours but also raised three times as much as they’d intended.

Today, the guys play regularly all over northern Michigan: gigs at Stigg’s Brewery and Red Mesa Grill in Boyne City, Beard’s Brewery and Ernesto’s Cigar Lounge in Petoskey, the Whi-Ski in Boyne Falls, and Right Brain Brewery in Traverse City.

HARDEST WORKING BAND IN NOMI?
What’s propelled this young band so quickly to the forefront of northern Michigan’s music scene?

“When we started, our goal was to play one show at Red Sky Stage in Petoskey,” Witthoeft says.
        
“Yeah, we weren’t thinking long-term at all,” says Bonney. “We were a new act, with no following, and we wanted to sell tickets, so we looked for every chance to promote that show. We played open mics around the area. We played live on KLT’s Garage. Corey Adkins shot a video of us playing our [then] one-and-only original song for the 9&10 news show The Four.”
        
“And we post videos on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube,” Witthoeft says.
        
They’ve even targeted unusual venues, just to get their music out there.
        
“We play free shows at the senior centers [in Boyne City and Charlevoix], open mics to introduce ourselves to prospective bookers, and private house concerts to help spread the word and build our audience,” Bonney says.
        
“The challenge [of promoting your band] is probably not unique to northern Michigan, but the biggest challenge I have found here is that while there are lots of places to play, pretty much every venue has their own isolated booking system — so just because you get into one venue in one town doesn’t mean you’re gonna get booked at any other. You have to take it on club by club, town by town.”
        
And so they have — and continue to do. The band kicked off 2019 with a short tour around the Upper Peninsula, Minnesota, and northern Lower Michigan. In the coming months, they plan to keep writing and recording, with a special focus on booking more performances and music festivals.
        
“We’ve been very lucky and super fortunate, and people have been extremely generous and kind, but it’s still a lot of hard work to get booked,” Bonney says.
        
“ …I feel we accomplished a lot in our first 10 months together,” Witthoeft says, “and we are looking forward to even more success in 2019.”

MUSIC NOTES
The bandmates define their sound as “acoustic roots, blues, and Americana,” but they don’t let that definition limit them. They take on current rock music, too, remolding it into their own distinctive sound.
         “There’s a long tradition of guitar-and-harmonica duos, especially blues duos, so we’re just trying to keep evolving,” Bonney says. “We do play classic blues with a traditional approach, but then we also try to take modern songs, like ‘Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty or ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes, and remake them in a more stripped-down way.”
         They also write their own songs, drawing from a lot of different American influences — blues, bluegrass, classic country, cowboy songs, Appalachian folk, Cajun zydeco, and more.
 
NOW HEAR THIS
Crosscut Kings’ two EPs and vinyl 45 are available at www.crosscutkings.com. Bonney says the pair aims to get the tracks streaming, and the 45s in record stores, later this year.