Behind the mic: Z96.5 sits down with Greyfield's lead singer

When Z96.5 WZOX booked studio time for a sit-down with Mara Quinn, the lead singer of Michigan-bred indie outfit Greyfield, the conversation ran long in the best possible way. What started as a quick pre-show chat stretched into a two-hour deep dive into songwriting, restless restless creativity and a life spent chasing the next chorus across continents.

Greyfield have spent the last four years turning a string of self-released EPs into a genuine grassroots following, anchored by Quinn's unguarded lyrics and a live show that trades polish for sweat. The Kalamazoo scene that raised them is stitched into every bridge they write, and that sense of place came up again and again during the chat at the station.

Listeners who want the uncut version of the conversation can find it on the z96-5-listener hub, where the full audio sits alongside photos from the session. The short version, though, is that Quinn is heading into the next chapter of Greyfield with a clearer head, a fuller notebook and a passport full of stamps.

From Kalamazoo porches to the front of the room

Quinn grew up in a two-bedroom house on the east side of Kalamazoo, the kind of place where neighbours still wave from the porch and the postman knows your dog's name. Music arrived early, through a hand-me-down acoustic guitar and a stack of mix CDs her older brother burned on a discman that barely worked. By fifteen she was sneaking into open mics at the Bells Eccentric Café, scribbling lyrics on napkins and learning that performing meant telling the truth, loudly.

Her move to fronting a full band happened almost by accident. Greyfield began as a side project between two college friends who just wanted a reason to keep playing after graduation, and Quinn was drafted in for a single vocal session that turned into a permanent seat at the table. The first show was a chaotic house party on a snowy February night, with a PA held together by duct tape and good intentions.

These days the group rehearses in a converted print shop on South Burdick Street, a space that still smells faintly of ink and sawdust. Quinn credits the smell, oddly, with shaping the band's mood. "There's something about a room that used to make something else," she told Z96.5. "It reminds you that what you're doing now is just the latest version."

The new record took shape in a barn and a borrowed car

The follow-up to Greyfield's breakout EP was tracked across a handful of unlikely spaces: a barn outside Hastings, a friend's lounge room during a Melbourne summer, and a long stretch of nights in a borrowed Commodore that rattled down the Mornington Peninsula coast. Quinn laughed about the last one in the interview, calling it the most unhinged mobile studio anyone's ever used and noting that the car's owner still has not asked for reimbursement.

Producer Jai Lenton, who has worked with a stack of Australian indie acts, flew in for two weeks and pushed the band to strip back their arrangements. The result is a record that feels more spacious than anything Greyfield has done before, with Quinn's vocals sitting closer to the front and a looseness in the drums that the band has never quite captured on tape. The new collection is set for release ahead of a run of dates through Sydney, Brisbane and a long-awaited slot on the Laneway Festival circuit.

Quinn was candid about the pressure that comes with a second record, especially when the first one struck a nerve with listeners in places the band has never toured. "We kept getting messages from people in Adelaide and Perth saying the EP was the soundtrack to their year," she said. "You can't unhear that. It changes how you write the next thing."

The Australian connection that keeps pulling her back

Quinn's ties to Australia run deeper than a few festival slots and some borrowed cars. Her mother is a Hobart-born violinist who moved to the States in the late nineties, and the family spent every other Christmas catching flights across the Pacific, where Quinn fell hard for the country's sense of space and the way locals shorten every word. She still says arvo without thinking, orders a flat white like a native and follows the AFL with a worrying amount of commitment.

It was those childhood summers in Hobart that first introduced her to the country's alt-rock lineage, from the church-hall energy of early Midnight Oil shows to the more modern hum of acts like Julia Jacklin and Big Scary. Quinn credits those long car trips along the Tasman Highway with teaching her how to write a song that fits a landscape. "There's a lot of silence in Australia," she said. "You learn to leave room for it in a song, or the song sounds wrong."

That sensibility shows up all over the new record, especially on the track slated as the next single, which Quinn described in the interview as the closest thing the band has done to a love letter to the Tasmanian coast. The bridge was written on a ferry across the harbour, with the salt wind pushing her notebook around the deck.

Tour life, Tim Tams and the search for a decent coffee

Greyfield's upcoming run is the longest stretch of dates the band has ever attempted, and Quinn was honest about the parts of tour life she still finds difficult. Long drives, dodgy motels, the same three t-shirts on rotation, the slow drift of weeks where every day feels like a copy of the last. She also has a soft spot for the small comforts that get her through: a proper meat pie before soundcheck, an iced coffee that costs more than it should, and a stash of Tim Tams hidden in her suitcase for emergencies.

The band has mapped out a route that hits Adelaide's Crown and Anchor, a few smaller rooms in Fremantle, and a stop in regional Victoria that Quinn is particularly excited about. She is also making a point of visiting the Sydney Opera House for the first time, a place she has talked about for years but never actually walked into. "I've seen it on every screen, every postcard, every album cover," she said. "I want to stand in front of it like a tourist and feel a bit silly about it."

Back home in Kalamazoo, the band is already fielding messages from fans curious about setlists, support acts and whether there will be a Michigan leg before the end of the year. Quinn hinted that more dates will be announced once the record drops, and that the gap between Australian shows and the next stretch of US touring will be shorter than fans might expect. For ongoing tour updates, the band recently shared more details over on the station's blog, including a few behind-the-scenes clips from rehearsal week.

What comes next for Greyfield

The next twelve months are shaping up to be the busiest of Greyfield's life, and Quinn seemed fully aware of that during the interview. New record, new tour, new festival slots and the slow, patient work of building a band that can survive all of it. She talked about wanting to write the kind of songs that age well, the ones that still sound right when a listener stumbles across them five years later on a random Tuesday morning.

She also wants the band to slow down, in ways that sound almost contradictory given the schedule. More days off between shows. A proper writing retreat somewhere quiet. A commitment to finishing a song in the room where it started, rather than over email between cities. The kind of small, deliberate choices that keep a band from burning out before the second record has had its full run.

For Z96.5 and the wider Michigan alt scene, the pride in watching a homegrown act head into a moment like this is real. Quinn is still the kid from the east side who wrote lyrics on napkins at Bells, and she is also the frontperson of a band about to step onto bigger stages than anyone in the print shop rehearsal space could have pictured. Both things are true at the same time, and she seems comfortable holding them together.