Alya Sulaiman
The band’s name is a nod to Wisconsin’s geography and the idea of escaping to the northwoods.
Josh Pankratz and Adam Prinsen met through mutual friends and immediately connected over their love of music. A guitarist and a drummer, respectively, they started collaborating in 2017, first playing covers and later writing songs under the name The North Code. Shortly after forming the duo, they submitted a track to Project M, 105.5 Triple M’s songwriting competition and were among eight finalists chosen from about 50 submissions.
Each week, they faced the challenge of coming up with an original song based on a prompt and performing the songs for judges and spectators at Funk’s Pub in Fitchburg. They were eliminated halfway through the competition, but the experience was “validating and motivating,” Prinsen says. “It got us amped up about taking the next step with our music.”
That next step involved turning the duo into a full band, bringing in Ben Strohbeen on bass and Craig Hoffmann on keyboards and mandolin. All graduated from UW-Madison; Hoffmann had played music with Prinsen during their undergraduate years; Strohbeen joined the band after North Code members saw him play a gig with another band at Bos Meadery. “We kind of poached him,” Prinsen jokes.
With Hoffmann commuting to band practice from Milwaukee, the group started practicing and writing songs together, building on the body of work that Pankratz and Prinsen had amassed as a duo. “Our first 12 songs, every one was from a different genre,” Pankratz says. They experimented with slower tempos and dabbled in rock, pop punk and even ska before eventually settling into a sound that’s somewhere between indie folk and pop Americana. “We brought all our influences together and moved toward a more consistent concept,” Pankratz says.
Last month, The North Code released their self-titled debut EP, a six-track project influenced by bands like The Lumineers and The Avett Brothers. Hoffmann, who eventually moved back to Madison, recorded the songs in his home, which doubles as the band’s practice space. One of the tracks, “Hindsight,” is a holdover from the Project M competition; and the band says the fast-paced songwriting style honed during the contest has also influenced their collaborative creative process. “You can’t force creativity, but deadlines are important,” Pankratz says. “It helps so you’re not so focused on perfectionism.”
The North Code is planning to throw an official EP release party at some point, but right now they’re focused on playing out as much as possible and have started creating live music videos for some of their songs. They’re all balancing their creative work with demanding day jobs (Pankratz is a doctor, Prinsen is a lawyer, Hoffman is an engineer and Strohbeen works at Epic), but the dream is for the band to become their career.
Says Hoffmann: “The overall goal is just to keep pushing and see where we can take this.”
