Dave Miess
The Oregon High School students beat out 50 others bands to play Summerfest.
Sam Miess, guitarist for Oregon’s Distant Cuzins doesn’t much care for his band’s name. “We wish we could change it,” admits Miess, a 17-year-old senior at Oregon High School, who met the band’s drummer Ben Lokuta back in fourth grade when they formed a surf-rock duo. “We needed a name, and we used the “z” because another band was already called ‘Distant Cousins.’”
That name hasn’t stopped Miess, Lokuta, vocalist/bassist Nic Tierman and second guitarist Nate Krause (none of whom are cousins) from gaining a firm following and emerging as one of the most engaging and enthusiastic young rock bands in Wisconsin. They just won the statewide Rockonsin garage-band competition at Summerfest.
“They have the whole package,” says Rockonsin producer Dennis Graham. “When you watch them, you pick up on their love of music. They put on a show.”
With a sound that’s been called everything from “classically punk” to “classic rock meets rockabilly” to “just straight-up rock,” Distant Cuzins takes influences from their parents’ album collections (Journey, Rush, the Clash, Bruce Springsteen), as well as Foo Fighters and the ska scene.
The band was a state finalist for two straight years at Launchpad, Rockonsin’s predecessor, and beat out more than 50 other high school and middle school bands this year. Twelve Rockonsin finalists competed for two days on the Johnson Controls World Sound Stage at Summerfest.
Rockonsin is considered the only competition of its kind in the United States, and as its prize Distant Cuzins received a second Summerfest slot and a professional recording session at the Madison Music Foundry’s Blast House Studios.
The fruits of that session can be heard on Big., a new EP produced by the band and engineered and mixed by Dustin Sisson, a longtime mentor for the Foundry’s Rock Workshop program for young musicians. Featuring five original songs, the EP provides a succinct sonic synopsis of Distant Cuzins’ sound, highlighted by the dark, hook-filled “Explain Yourself” and the delicious diss “Wok Fried Soba” — one of the first songs the band wrote.
Miess and Tierman write most of the songs, and Tierman’s lyrics convey the complicated emotions and harsh realities today’s high school students encounter. “He writes what’s real,” Miess says.
The name of the EP and its cover, featuring a 1966 photo of a young girl guzzling a bottle of beer, are attempts to dispel the notion that Distant Cuzins belongs on a Kidz Bop record.
“We’re not a little kids’ band,” Miess says. “We’re an actual working band.”
Distant Cuzins will celebrate the release of Big. with fellow Rockonsin finalist Surround Sound (featuring members of Waunakee, Middleton and Madison Memorial high schools) at Headquarters Bar & Restaurant in Oregon on Sept. 17. Music begins at 7 p.m.
With high school graduation approaching, Miess says he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to Distant Cuzins. Lokuta and Tierman want to continue making music, and the four have discussed several hypotheticals. But this band isn’t too worried about all that quite yet. After all, there are more songs to record and bigger gigs to play.
Says Miess: “We’re just living in the moment.”
