Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Rellick.
Mike, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Rellick started when our lead guitarist Teddy Petersen and I started jamming together around New Year’s 2023 where we shared song ideas and just talked about our musical influences and where we wanted the music to take us. I had been on and off the road traveling with a festival production company through the spring and early summer but we always made sure to keep playing together any chance we got. The first time we ever called ourselves Rellick was the summer of 2023 at this open mic at Fish Bar in Painesville after Teddy Petersen and I had been playing open mics anywhere we could find them in the Cleveland area. We spent that entire summer playing as a duo on Monday nights at Edison’s Pub’s open mic and every Tuesday at Fish Bar. We always had the desire to add other members but we wanted to be patient to wait for the right people to come along. Eventually, we started recording our first song 23 with our producer Billy Carrick who also managed to show a lot of patience with us as we figured out how to cut a record in real-time (thanks Billy). Once the fall came around Teddy and I started going to the Wednesday night open mic at CODA which completely opened the doors to this amazing group of musicians who were attempting to do the same thing we were. We felt welcomed by this community which is led by Mikey Silas who I lovingly refer to as the Nucleus of the Cleveland Music Scene for his constant work to empower young and hungry musicians. After all this time cutting our teeth at open mics, we felt we were ready to take the next leap and try for our first opening slot. Our friends in LoConti and Slag Genie were playing a show at Cebars on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and to say that I begged Henry LoConti to let us open the show would be an understatement. After I wore him down enough that he finally caved in Teddy and I with the help of our producer Billy Carrick (Slag Genie) on drums and Trevor Carmichael (LoConti) on the bass we played 6 total songs, 4 originals, and 2 covers, (Pull Me Free, Eventually, Althea, Honeybear (Sweet), 23, Back in the USSR, and Salt-Stained) we were finally on our way.
The next week after this show I had reconnected with a friend from college, Brandon Arnold, who just came back from Chile after doing post-grad research. Where he told me that he had been playing drums for the majority of his life and I almost immediately offered him to join the band. Brandon played with us all the way till August when he left to continue his education in Public Health Administration in Colorado.
We’ve had members come and go since then but our current lineup is comprised of musicians who I feel very lucky getting the chance to share the stage with, these being Billy Raffin on drums, Will Abramovich on Bass, and Max Reynolds on drums and keys.
It hasn’t even been a year since our first show and we’ve played now 34 shows, released 2 EPs for 11 total tracks with an album on the way and after all, we have only just begun.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Haha, it’s been interesting, to say the least. Obviously, like every other musician when they’re starting you get large ideas without as much of a clue how to execute them but you just try. We are very fortunate to have a mentor figure like Mikey Silas to help guide us as we’ve grown and it is also nice to not be the first of your friends to take the leap and make a band. None of this would be possible without right-hand man Teddy by my side, from the beginning he entrusted me with a large chunk of his free time which could’ve very well have been a dead end; but it hasn’t been. One of the hardest parts of all this was having an empty schedule and still keeping up the tenacity. All we had was a desire to keep pushing, playing more and more, asking venues and other groups to play, collaborating with fellow musicians to learn, and booking recording sessions a couple of weeks out without a full clue of what we were going to record.
Now the hardest part is planning far into the future, whether that be tours, album releases, or something we haven’t thought about yet, it’s all part of the rain covered road we are all traveling down.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We like to call our music Cinematic Rock because the focus of it is on storytelling and attempting to capture vivid pictures of the human experience. We recently released our second EP “One Of” which over five songs tells a story of Falling in love, getting it wrong, feeling the bitterness leftover after the heartbreak, and picking yourself up and starting the journey to becoming whole again.
Our primary influences are Father John Misty, The Grateful Dead, Radiohead, The Backseat Lovers, and GOOoOose. We take a lot of inspiration from The Dead and Goose for our live performances which allows us to have a free ability to improvise and create a unique experience each and every show.
We are most proud of our ability to create music that resonates with the audience, our love and respect for the music itself, and finally our still very fresh but diverse discography of original music.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love the pride that people who love this city have and how much in my lifetime alone it has grown. I was born in 2000 and in my life, I got to see the flats turn from a Scooby Doo Ghost Town back into the hot spot of nightlife. I’ve been able to be a part of what feels like a once-in-a-lifetime boom of local independent music that has anything from funk to punk and everything in between.
What do I like least about this city? The Browns make me wake up every Sunday during the season to just destroy the rest of my day, but that’s just Cleveland baby!
Contact Info:
- Website: Rellick.net
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/rellicktheband/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RellickTheBandFB
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rellick
- Other: linktr.ee/rellick
