Today we’d like to introduce you to Northern National, Michael Kanne.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
In May of 2016, Northern National recorded our debut EP “The New Age” at a studio in Carrolton, TX called Drive 35. We had just released our first single “Love Is Fire” and songwriter’s Michael Rossi & Michael Kanne (Myself) brought on bassist Dylan Greene & drummer Anthony Comas to be part of this band called Northern National. We had partnered with a producer out of Brooklyn named Dan Stringer, who had produced the early X-Ambassadors record, to come in and produce this new EP for us. It came together over a week and was finished in early June with a release date set for September. Over the next few months a few crazy things happened.
Spotify started pushing our first single “Love is Fire” on them discover playlists nationally. In over a week it went from having only a few thousand streams to having close to 50,000 and counting. It charted on Spotify’s “Viral 50” charts worldwide at #43, and was added to multiple playlists by curators such as Topsify & Filter. Later that summer we found out that Coca-Cola had added “Love Is Fire” to their Spotify playlist and by the time the EP was set to release, we had over 250,000 streams on “Love Is Fire”. We released our debut EP “The New Age” on September 23, 2016 and quickly saw our song Dallas grow as well as Love is Fire. At this point we had added guitarist Andrew Supulski to the band and became a 5-piece. We went back in the studio and recorded our next single “MoneyBlind” that released in March of 2017. Between this single and our first EP, we caught the attention of the band Blue October and got offered to tour with them for the month of June.
After doing our first national tour with Blue October, our guitarist Andrew Supulski moved to LA and we hit the studio with Dwight Baker (Missio, The Wind & The Wave) as a 4-piece. We recorded 5 songs including a single called “Slow Down” that released in January 2018. It was playlisted by Spotify on New Noise and debuted by Ones To Watch, the Live Nation publication. We are now sitting at over 1.7 million streams on Spotify in our music, currently booking for tours this upcoming summer and our second EP “D.A.R.K.” is set to release on June 15th.
Please tell us about your art.
We write songs that are personal to us, and we hope people connect with the music in their own way. Our singer Rossi usually starts a melody and brings it to myself and the rest of the guys then to work on acoustically. We write lyrics, talk about the feeling behind what we want to get across or the issue, and go from there. The first EP “The New Age” tackled relationships and doubt, while this new EP “D.A.RK.” talks about self-doubt, personal struggles including anxiety and depression, and where we are now in our lives.
Everyone takes different approaches to how they respond to music but our goal is for people to connect and emotionally respond to what we write. We want them to come out to our shows, experience it live, and keep coming back.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
In today’s world it opens up the art we create and the music we write as a powerful tool. However, we think the world has always been filled with chaos and art is a way to keep the calm in the crazy of this world.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
We tour often and are booking shows throughout the US for later this summer/early fall. They can find tour dates on our website www.northernnationalmusic.com. They can also find our music on any online store they find music including Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, & more.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.northernnationalmusic.com
- Email: northernnational@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/northernnational
- Facebook: facebook.com/northernnational
- Twitter: @northernnatl
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/77uddrwADVuSI16ASFWF3c?si=ghoiVCfxRUu6PTPU9pW19A
Image Credit:
Abby Stanford
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