For Frontier Ruckus, aging represents a mixture of nostalgia, fear, and hope. 

The Detroit-Ypsilanti folk-rock trio of Matthew Milia, David Jones, and Zachary Nichols explores those feelings alongside the passage of time on its new album, On the Northline.

“The main soundbite that Matt has been saying about the record is that half of the songs were written before he met his wife, Lauren,” said Nichols, who plays trumpet, musical saw, melodica, and air organ on the album.

“He said half of the songs are angsty and half of them are happy. I hear a lot in the lyrics about getting older, looking back, and thinking about the future. I think we all feel a little bit middle-aged now.”

As part of that reflection, Frontier Ruckus engages in deep soul-searching across On the Northline’s dozen tracks. Contemplative lyrics, vivid suburban imagery, and wistful Americana, country, and jazz-inspired instrumentation encourage listeners to ponder their life trajectories.

“The feelings and the ruminations on aging and getting to the point that we’re at in our lives … they’re probably a little conflicted because it’s conflicting for all of us,” said Jones, the band’s banjoist-vocalist. “To a certain extent in Matt’s songs, there’s always a lot of nostalgia in a way that’s positive, but sad as well.”

Despite those conflicting thoughts, Frontier Ruckus forges ahead and finds some solace while revisiting hometown landmarks, adapting to everyday surroundings, and welcoming unexpected changes.

“There’s a certain amount of happiness to be where we are now and be past the turbulent days of our youth when we were in the van all the time,” Jones said. “There’s a level of contentment with being in this place that we’ve all settled in that feels good and more comfortable.”

I recently spoke with Jones and Nichols about waiting seven years between releases, dissecting the album’s introspective themes and tracks, writing and recording the album, preparing for two celebratory shows, and going back out on the road.

Q: It’s been seven years since you released your last album, Enter the Kingdom. What’s it like to come back and work together on new material as a band after all that time?
David Jones (DJ): I think we had forgotten how much work it is. For the most part, the main thing was the band, and we’ve had day jobs. I’ve been teaching lessons since 2013, but the band was more of the main thing. It was part of a machine that we had going and we had more people working for us, like a manager. Now, we have more busy day-to-day lives, and on top of that, we’re doing all this work to release a record. I had kinda forgotten how overwhelming it is. The logistics and shipping records … that whole process took us so long just to do that.

Zachary Nichols (ZN): For me, it doesn’t feel like there was a huge gap. We got busy with our personal lives and played fewer shows. The longest time we had without a show … was [about] a year.

Q: How has that time away rejuvenated you personally and professionally?
DJ: We recorded this record in 2020, and it took us a long time to mix it and then figure out how we were going to release it. With that being said, we haven’t played many shows or played much music together. [But] we do see each other all the time and hang out constantly. We sit and jam sometimes and play music. But playing as a band and practicing music together specifically either for the purpose of recording or playing shows, it’s been a decent amount of time. It’s the most natural thing for us, and we’ve been together for so long, we’ve known each other for so long, and we’ve played so much music together that our shared musical language and level of comfort is just ridiculous. For me at least, it’s the most exciting and natural thing to play music with these two.

We used to play 200 shows a year and that’s all we did. It is kinda crazy to go a year without playing a show, but we just slip into it so naturally [that] it just feels normal and comfortable.

Q: What’s the geographic backstory of On the Northline and how does it represent the trajectory of your lives while growing up in Oakland County?
DJ: I grew up in Rochester Hills, which is very northern Oakland County, and Matt’s from the West Bloomfield area, which he writes about in [his 2021 solo album] Keego Harbor. Zach’s from Milford. The Northline [concept] is still a little unexplained by Matt though. At first, I didn’t know what it was for the longest time either. I thought it was because there’s a Northline Road, which is further south in Wayne County and runs just south of I-94. I sort of thought he was referring to that at first, but he's not. I think he’s generally referring to upstate New York.

A bunch of his dad’s family lives in St. Lawrence County in northern upstate New York on the St. Lawrence River. They have a cottage up there, too, that he goes to all the time with family, and as a band, we’ve been there a lot. It’s been a big part of our development as a band escaping to that place.

I think it’s a little mysterious and I think there are elements of the mythology in the record that are more fictitious than past records. It’s very specific experiences that can be applied to the universal and maybe there’s a reading of the album and the various lyrics that you could apply to anywhere you live. Maybe we can look at it in the suburban Detroit lens or the upstate New York lens. There are very specific geographic references to southeast Michigan everywhere in the record and anything that Matt writes. I think we chose [On the Northline] as the album title just because we liked the way it sounded … It just has a good feel to it.

Q: The forlorn opener, “Swore I Had a Friend,” remembers a romance from one’s youth and how it abruptly ended. It also examines the ongoing struggle with change and uncertainty against a backdrop of past and present northern Oakland County landmarks, including Opdyke Road and the Pontiac Silverdome. How did processing a past relationship and the passage of time in Metro Detroit lead to writing this track?
ZN: I’ve always thought it was about a relationship that was more than friends, but I’m using the word “friend” here euphemistically maybe. It’s sort of a dumpee’s recollection, and it informed my sad trumpet playing on that track. Maybe his whole career, Matt has been writing these great driving-home-after-something-emotional songs, which is a great genre.

DJ: There’s this lilting to Zach’s trumpet playing and there’s the creepiness of the saws and that certainly informed my banjo playing on this one as well.

Q: The title track reflects on the ideals we had as children and revisits them as adults who wonder what their younger selves would think of them today. What was it like to go back and revisit those ideals from a wiser perspective while writing this track? How does it help you accept growing older and understanding the losses and challenges that come with it?
ZN: When you’re a kid, you have all these ideals and you think, “I’m never gonna work in an office” and “I never wanna be like that. I’m always going to love video games and no one can take them away from me.” There are all sorts of things that kids say about how they’re gonna be when they’re grownups. I think it’s about letting that kid out and saying, “Judge me, kid, from when I was 10. What do you think?”

DJ: The lyrics have always stuck out to me in this song … [and] that hook of “You peel at the way you feel today” is really wild and interesting. The [lyric] of “You have the physique of a youth travel soccer coach,” I’ve always really loved that line and “Your hatchback was matte black and sleek in its nightly approach.” There are all these trappings of “I’m this age now” … and all of a sudden there’s a “10-year-older version of you.” I think that it factors into that discussion of where we are now, we’ve reached this point, and there’s a little bit of looking back, too.

Q: On “Mercury Sable,” a battered car represents the unexpected arrival of true love in someone’s life despite their bleak surroundings. How does the rattling, quirky vehicle featured in the song serve as a rite of passage for marriage and as a beacon in “a life of false alarms?” 
ZN: Early in their dating, Lauren [Milia], Matt’s wife, had a Mercury Sable. She would drive it and Matt would hear it and say, “That’s the love of my life coming over to my place.” Like the song says, it was rattling and really loud. It sounds like and it feels like a love song and it’s in the face of a lot of the imagery, like the broken car and the grim landscape. It’s just kind of observing it, and it’s not like someone is depressed about it.

DJ: You could hear it from blocks away and she would drive over because Matt used to live in southwest Detroit. He could hear her all the way from the tunnel next to the old [Michigan Central Station] in Corktown. There are some really good metaphors here, like “It rattles like a busted guitar cable.” I like that it “growls”—there’s just a lot of good wordplay. There’s a lot of grim imagery, too, something about “discarded nitrous oxide whippet tanks.”

Q: “Clarkston Pasture” addresses a refusal to change and move forward in life. How did spending time in Clarkston and reflecting on everyday stagnancy inspire this track?
DJ: This sort of falls into the realm of Matt’s fascination with northern Oakland County and writing about Clarkston and Lake Orion and having memories of being there and driving around out there. Sometimes Matt will just get in a car and drive around northern Oakland County and take in all this imagery and digest it. These images just pop into his head and he comes up with interesting, descriptive ways to throw them into lyrics.

We’re all into pop music, power-pop music, and digestible, interesting chord changes. I think this was Matt putting all that mental imagery of northern Oakland County into a pop song, something that’s listenable and catchy. The cool thing about Matt’s songs is that we can find something in them for all of us.

Q: The nostalgic ballad “Bloomfield Marriott” addresses the fear of being in the present and anticipating the future, but it also yearns to live in the past. How did writing this track help you embrace who you are today and reconcile who you were in the past?
DJ: Matt and I went to Catholic high school together—that’s where we met. We met at Brother Rice [High School], which is an all-boys high school. I [also] think this might be a pre-Lauren [Milia] song; it’s just a very sweet, sad, imagistic, nostalgic tune.

ZN: Marian High School is right next to Brother Rice, and “Bloomfield Marriott” is a conscious reference to the all-girls Catholic high school. It’s “Bloomfield Marian,” and I think “Marian” sounds close enough to “Marriott” in the sense that they’re all in Bloomfield Hills. There’s also a Courtyard by Marriott [nearby].

Q: “Wherefore” serves as a thoughtful and hopeful closer for On the Northline. How did this instrumental come about for you, Zach? What type of feeling do you want listeners to take away from it?
ZN: I brought these guys a couple of chord progressions. I kind of knew this one was going to be the most Frontier Ruckus-y of the bunch. I can write some different, out-there chord progressions, and this one fits in more with the folk vibe. This one had some sentimentality to it, which we see as positive. Dave rocked it and there’s some quick banjo that he had to learn for it and he killed it.

DJ: We’ve had a Zach instrumental on the last three records and pedal steel has played a big role in all of them. They’re the only songs where all of the parts are written out beforehand, so Zach writes all of our parts … which we kinda love because Zach is the maestro who can weave all these complex webs in such an interesting way. This tune has kind of a sweet, sad, hopeful optimism to it and it almost sounds kind of cosmic to me for some reason. It’s always felt like it could be a space exploration song. Zach writes very surfy music … He has a really specific way of creating melodies and his brain works in a very specific way. I can hear a piece of music and think, “That’s so Zach.”

Q: How long did you spend writing the 12 tracks featured On the Northline? Were any of those tracks written before the pandemic?
DJ: A lot of them were written by 2017 and even before Enter the Kingdom was released. We had been performing “Everywhere But Beside You,” and a lot of them had been around for a while. I found an email from 2017 that said, “Hey, what are the songs on the new record gonna be?” And a lot of them were there—“Magdalene (That’s Not Your Name),” “Swore I Had a Friend,” “Mercury Sable,” and “Clarkston Pasture.”

Q: What was it like to record On the Northline during the more challenging days of the pandemic? Did you encounter any delays or alter your recording process in any way?
DJ: We did some demos at Willis Sound a long time ago and we tried demos in various ways with various people for a little while before we decided on [working with Ben Collins]. The core of the band is me, Matt, and Zack and then we have Conor Dodson and Evan Eklund who play drums and bass. This version of the band, this five-piece, is as good as it’s ever been—maybe way better than it’s ever been.

We recorded it all live to quarter-inch tape with Ben Collins, except for Zach couldn’t be there because of the COVID scare. We did most of it in a week and then it took us a while to figure out the logistics for recording Zach.

ZN: I didn’t have a part until really late in the game of recording. The way I recorded this record was weird because ordinarily, I’d be in the studio hanging out with everyone, but it was April of 2020 and someone at my work had had COVID. We were like, “OK Zach, you stay home.” I Zoomed in and got sent some tracks. Eventually, we just had all the tracks, and I just got to hang out around here and record all this stuff by myself at home.

Q: You recorded and co-produced On the Northline with multi-instrumentalist Ben Collins (mandolin, bass) at his home studio in Ypsilanti. How did Ben help you shape the album’s overall sound?
DJ: Ben has to have one of the most incredible technical minds of anyone that I’ve ever known and [he] has a very creative mind, too. He’s an amazing musician … and is just very fast with the ins and outs of recording and what’s needed for things to sound good. He’s an incredible problem-solver, and whenever we would have little issues with how we’re going to do things, he would have some tricky little technical [solution] for it.

ZN: We were debating whether we wanted a line, or a part of a song, to have Matt’s voice doubled or not. It’s an aesthetic choice and it can sound cool or a certain way. There’s an in-between that [Ben] found and that we at least tried. Gosh, it was a little bit of a hassle, but [we used] some software to perfectly align two takes so [that] it’s kind of in-between a double take without any discrepancies. If [Matt] sings the same word, it won’t be the same … but this would line everything up. [Ben] would go the extra mile and he’d say, “Hey, do you want to hear it like this? It’s kind of in between what you want.”

There’s something to be said for a person who’s engineering a record, too; [Ben] produced it and engineered it. The person who fades up on a part has all the control … and ultimately the producer says, “Please turn up that part.” The engineer turns up that part, but the way they do it is all up to them, and [it’s about] the finesse. [Ben’s] really good at what he does.

Q: On the Northline features collaborations with Pete Ballad (pedal steel guitar), Conor Dodson (drums, tambourine, shaker), and Evan Eklund (bass, vocals). How did they help elevate those tracks sonically?
ZN: Pete Ballad was who Matt wanted to play [pedal steel] instead of him [on “Wherefore”] and he did really well. When you have pedal steel on the record, it’s nice when you can just say pedal steel by Pete Ballard … It adds some continuity to everything, too. I want to give [pedal steel] its due; I want to give it a lead role in a tune because it can replace the vocal in a tune.

DJ: [Conor and Evan] are so in step with each other; they’ve been playing music together for many years. They just have tasteful and groovy sensibilities. They do such a good job of not overplaying and just serving the song and making things feel like they’re in a pocket. Conor is a great technical musician, but he just has a good feel as a drummer.

Evan is a great harmony singer; we were able to get some good three-part harmonies with me, him, and Matt. His voice just meshes well with ours. Sometimes I have trouble telling if it’s Evan or me; the timbre of our voices is similar when we’re singing. That’s cool because it makes them meld well, but he has a much higher range than I do. He can hit some of those high fifths—the harmonies—and I can sing the third just above Matt.

Q: You’re performing February 17 at The Loving Touch with Fred Thomas and Loose Koozies in Ferndale and February 24 at The Alluvion with Elizabeth Landry in Traverse City to celebrate the release of On the Northline. What do you have planned for your sets? Who will be joining you on stage for those shows?
DJ: It will be Conor and Evan with us at The Loving Touch. We’re gonna play a pretty full, expansive set for the record release. We’ll play probably most of On the Northline and then probably a selection from every record. We haven’t decided yet if we’re going to do a trio or full band at The Alluvion—that’s a little bit more of a listening room. That might be more of an acoustic show.

Q: What’s up next for you later this year? Any plans to go back on the road?
DJ: We’re thinking about some bigger plans. We’re thinking about if and when we want to go to Europe for a little while. We’ve decided as a band that we can take some time off from our stuff to go to Europe. Our record label [Loose Music] is based out of the U.K. Of course, they want us to come over there, and we want to go over there, too. It’s just harder now to do what we used to do and we don’t want to do what we used to do.

We [also] love playing house shows; we might do a few of those here and there. We’ll do some regional [shows] and do a weekend in Chicago or somewhere. We’ll probably do a little run of something out east as well.

Lori Stratton is a library technician, writer for Pulp, and writer and editor of strattonsetlist.com.

Frontier Ruckus performs February 17 at The Loving Touch in Ferndale. For tickets, visit The Loving Touch’s website. The band also performs April 13 at The Ark in Ann Arbor.