Celestial is a five-piece band based in Kalamazoo. Brian Ritzer and Jeremy Cronk have been in the band since it started. 

 

[BR] I’m Brian. I handle the accounting, the promoting, the personal resource. I play bass and vocals in

the band... I write the songs.

 

[J] I’m Jeremy,  and I play guitar and do backing vocals in Celestial and I am 31.

 

The two have been playing alongside each other for a while now. 

 

[J] I met Brian like a couple blocks away from here at my middle school orchestra teacher's house in the basement. Yeah, I was jamming with her son, who played drums, and Brian was also over there to jam. I didn't really know him at the time but we jammed out when we were like, I think I was 14 and Brian was 15.

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They re-met each other in a high school jazz band class. 

 

[J] And played together in a band called Look at Your Shoes. It was pre-shoegaze, shoe gaze actually was based off that band. The entire genre, yeah, it's pretty wild, yeah. 

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Celestial was formed after years of on and off collaboration. 

 

[BR] Me and Jeremy were in kind of other projects simultaneously while we were living together, you know he lives above me. We got to a point where my other project was kind of ending, and he was starting new stuff that he wanted me to collaborate with again, so that was really fun to kind of reconnect and that kind of just became Celestial, in essence.

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[J] Our previous left and then we had started jamming with Brendon and we started doing that right before the pandemic.

 

[BI] My name is Brendon I play drums, when did I start, late 2020? Okay yeah, early 2020. I guess I've been playing drums since I was like 16, so I'm 32, so it doesn't feel like I've been playing drums for 16 years but I guess that’s true.

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Brendon said joining Celestial was a whole new experience. 

 

[BI] Drumming wise I played a lot of like metal and stuff and so it was definitely challenging to play a band like this since there's a lot of like rhythms and grooves to play and song structures that I wasn't used to. The only thing I knew before was going fast.

 

Amanda joined Celestial as a keyboardist and synth player for a livestream concert in May of 2021. 

 

[A] And then I played with them at Bell's last September. 

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Mike is the latest addition to Celestial, he joined a few months ago. 

 

[M] I’m Mike, I also play guitar and do backing vocals in Celestial. I’m 26.

 

Mike said he is traditionally a solo artist that doesn’t join bands but....  

 

[M] I am here because I posted something about a pedal I really like called the Fuzz Factory and then Brendon reached out to me and was like, 'I've got that pedal.' It's like his go-to fuzz pedal, and I can talk to people about pedals for a long time so him and I just became pandemic friends like over Instagram like half a year ago, I think. 

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According to Jeremy, that proved to be an integral step towards Mike’s involvement in Celestial.  

 

[J] It was probably in October, it was cold out, but you were playing at the Runoff and Brian and I were there and that was when we knew we needed to find another guitarist and we were both like, 'we should hit up Mike,' and then we talked to Brendon about it and Brendon was like, 'yeah I talk to him on Instagram, I'll hit him up,' and we were like, alright cool and it worked out really well. 

​

Mike moved from Lansing to Kalamazoo about three years ago. He performed solo acts in the area for about a year until the start of pandemic. 

 

[M] And then everything shut down and I started to realize like exactly how influenced I was by other people, like especially the local music scene like seeing them on stage, like it's one thing to just listen to music but to be actually present in an audience for a stage show, or a house show like whatever, it's like a totally different thing and I love that, like I love the live part of it. 

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Mike said he found it hard to be inspired without live performances.  

 

[M] I wasn’t making anything for like two years, I was trying to but it just wasn't really working out because I didn't have anything, like I was just waiting for stuff to start again and the creative part of my brain was also waiting for stuff to start again, but when I started playing with these guys like stuff has been closing down and stuff but I still have a thing I can go to for a week and hear what you guys do and practice is still like performing live.

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The rest of Celestial also adapted to the demands of the pandemic. 

   

[J] We practiced for a little bit, then we were like ah we probably shouldn't be doing this so we took time off of it, but throughout it we would kind of like go with the ebb and flow of number and stuff and mask up, and then we had like times where people were exposed to Covid or people had Covid where we had to stop and kind of take our time with it, so it's just been adapting to a different reality of doing stuff in. 

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On the topic of a different reality, Jeremy recalled an anecdote representative of that. 

 

[J] Brian ordered a bass during the pandemic and I remember like very seriously talking about like we were concerned because it was coming from New York and New York's numbers were really high, like we shouldn't get this shipped here because somebody's gonna sneeze on it and were gonna get Covid and die, but it was like a serious thing, like you were showing me it and you were 'hey is this a good idea' and I was like I don't know, it could be a terrible idea, this could kill us, but it's a really cool bass. 

​

Celestial also experienced a shift in their ability to perform live the last two years. 

 

[J] Pre-pandemic we played around more like we played at Shakespear's and we played some house shows as well, but since the pandemic, I mean, we haven't played a ton because things really just started going on in the summer, but we played at Bell's in the fall. We played a food truck rally in Battle Creek which was definitely kind of a different sort of venue from what we're used to playing, but it was fun. We learned a bunch of covers for it and that was fun to do. Then we played at Turnstiles in Grand Rapids and then after that, things got kind of crazy with Covid again so we're looking to like get back into it this spring and play more. 

​

Instead of booking shows in October, Celestial focused their efforts on recording their self-titled EP.

Mike made the album art for it. 

 

[BR] Michael is a very talented visual artist and he designed the EP in like a day.

 

There are three songs on the project. Brian and Jeremy wrote most of the music for it.  

 

[BR] The third song in particular he came up with pretty much the music composition, yeah, that song is called one sided die or dice, depending on which inflection you're using. 

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The second song is called Streetlights. 

 

[BR] Streetlights, I kind of had it structured but he came up with his guitar parts and some flair knicks nacks and whatever. All I Know is the first track, that's all I know. That was actually a jam, yeah, that we had years and years ago and that became a song. 

 

[J] The lead that I was just like messing around with I feel like on one of those early jam recordings like Brian was like 'oh that sounds cool,' and then we took that and I think Brian came up with a chorus, chord progression and we just built off of it from there, but yeah that one originated with a jam which is always cool to have that kind of stuff happen. 

​

[M] I have not contributed anything creative to this group except for a killer guitar solo on All I Know on the EP out now available for streaming. 

 

All I know isn’t the only song that originated from a jam session.  

 

[J] We have a song called saddles and like the middle bridge section of that came from a jam, kind of the mellow spacey section but then we built off it. 

  

[BR] What I really like about this group and how we operate is there's definitely a variety of ways that songs are written. Sometimes its completely structured and I bring it in and say this is what I've got put stuff on it and other times, like if you go back a few years, some of these songs did come out of a jam that we were just like recording and just looking for things that might become something so I just like that because it makes a variety in ultimately how the music turns out. 

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Brian went to Western Michigan University and studied music there.  

 

[BR] I learned a lot of stuff that is not useful information, but a lot of stuff I did learn is very applicable to what we do, so. At least just being that I don't play guitar I think it's been very beneficial to have learned those things, at least on paper, so I can communicate with the guitar players. 

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When asked about his song writing process, he says it starts with... 

 

[BR] One of the several main elements of a song, it might be a lyric, it might be a lick or whatever. It usually takes two or three ideas that go together, whether it be a melody or a chord progression but usually once I get it to a progression and a melody I can comfortably bring it to the guys and say this is what I got, and I don't like to finish a song until its been accepted by the group because otherwise it would be a big waste of time trying to write lyrics and other things, so, but they're fun people you know, they are always receptive, they at least give it a chance. Whenever I work with people I like to build a sound based on what they like to do and what they like to come up with and then we just go from there.

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Brendon said he joined the band with most of the music already written.

 

[BI] In terms of this band it mostly comes from Brian and Jeremy so far but I think we are going to do more of a collaborative effort going forward as a band. 

 

Celestial said their sound has evolved some over time, which makes it hard to label their music under a specific genre.  

 

[BI] I do not know it touches on a lot of different styles, I think. It's in that realm of alternative and kind of like psychedelic rock.  

 

[M] There’s certain parts of a lot of the songs where it sounds like different genres. There's part of Streetlights that I think sounds a little like reggae.

 

The group said they pull from a lot of different influences, which can help shape their unique sound.  

 

[BR] I have mostly been influenced just by like most of the household names like classic rock. When I started playing I was really into grunge because it was easy and it was fun, but when I started to learn more about music I started getting into like the Beatles and like Elton John. I mean Rush is probably my biggest influence of all time. I can't hide that, but like newer stuff like Silversun Pickups, I'm really influenced by them, just kind of like that psych-pop sound I've always kind of related to that. 

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[J] I listen to a lot of like heavier stuff, I guess, but I also really like hiphop, country music and bluegrass too. There's a really great post-rock band called And So I Watch You From Afar that put out a really good album that's good if you like cinematic pretty music. 

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[BI] I mean like I grew up listening to Foo Fighters and stuff, so Dave Grohl is pretty iconic for me for drumming. I feel like I do a lot of his tendencies when it comes to fills and stuff. 

 

[A] I listen to pretty much everything. I don't know there's a bunch of like Ben Folds, acoustic-y kind of shenanigans. Pearl Jam, Audioslave kind of stuff. Occasionally some jazz because why not?

 

[M] King Gizzard’s a big one. I mean I used to be very strict Pink Floyd kind of rock, but they kind of made me start branching out in other stuff, and opened a lot of doors for me of what I can enjoy. Then, I just think Pinback is the best band that exists. David Maslanka was one of my biggest creative influences actually, and that's where I got a lot of my scales from. Maslanka and John Corigliano they have very interesting, pretty progressions with notes that I tend to find a lot more inspiring then just a lot of other stuff that I've listened to. I can give an example of that bullshit I was just talking about. 

[Mike running through guitar scale]

 

After Mike’s demonstration, I asked if they would perform a song from the EP. They assumed their positions and began tuning. 

[Tuning sounds]  

 

[Celestial playing All I Know] 

 

They played the full EP live for the first time at Bell’s February 25th, which was their first show in several months. Brendon said it's his favorite place to play.

 

[BI] It is a cool place, it's a nice size, and I've seen bands I really like there, like one of my favorite shows was Deer Hoof, they came there and that was really fun, but yeah it's cool to share stages with people I look up to I guess.

 

Here is a snippet of their song Saddles which they played at the Bell's concert. 

[Celestial playing Saddles at Bell's] 

 

Celestial hopes to play more live shows in the future now that it is becoming more normalized. According to Mike, it has not always been so easy to perform during this time.  

 

[M] I recently was going to play a show at this venue that the show that was happening right before it happened to be a bunch of white pride nazis and then the venue got shut down. Oh boy, I tell ya, that was disheartening. That was my first show in like a long time and then then I was just like I give up, being a musician sucks. Nah just kidding, it's the best. All you young musicians don't give up, even if white incel nazi's come to your venue and shut it down.

 

Brian said a lot of bands broke up during Covid and he was happy Celestial wasn't one of them.

 

[BR] I think it’s great that we took the time to really sink into, you know, not only our musicianship on an individual level but like together, you know, me and Jeremy were still hanging out and working on music, so I feel like the time was utilized, as much as it sucked, I feel like we're a new band after it.

   

In case you were interested in checking out Celestial’s music... 

 

[BI] On streaming services we're Celestial-MI, Michigan, because it was a last minute thing and it was like there's too many bands with this name and so we were like, we already got CDs made and stuff like...what do we do?

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And their linktr.ee URL is...  

   

[BI] linktr.ee/celestialbandMI  

 

Celestial’s next live show is at Old Dog Tavern in downtown Kalamazoo on April 15, 2022