This episode features an in-depth dialogue with Matt, the lead singer of the band Plethora, a Michigan band known for their electrifying performances that seamlessly blend various musical genres. We delve into the origins of Plethora's unique concert experience, characterized by its comedic rock style and crowd engagement, which has garnered a dedicated following. The discussion illuminates the band's creative process, exploring how they fuse humor and storytelling with diverse musical influences, from metal to folk.

Website: Plethora Music

Welcome to front row Backstage, the show that takes you behind the velvet ropes of the media world.

I'm LCC student Greg Trimmer, and each week we'll explore the stars you see on screen, stage, and radio, and the tech and talent making the magic happen behind it. From unsung heroes to spotlight sensations, we've got the stories you won't hear anywhere else. So grab your popcorn and let's dive in. Welcome, guys.

Today we're joined by Matt, the lead singer of a band called Plethora. The ultimate party band is known for their high energy, comedic rock performances, and unmatched versatility.

With a Weapatar SPANNING over 80 original songs and parodies, they bring a concert experience like no other. Blending genres, humor, and crowd interaction into an unforgettable show.

From rock and metal to folk and acoust, Plethora truly lives up to their name by offering a little something for everyone. Get ready for a wild ride as we dive into their music, creativity, and the magic of their performances. Welcome, Matt.

Ahoy. Greetings and salutations. I need my classic eagle screech sound to play.

Just a couple little icebreaker questions. What inspired the concept of Plethora as a concert experience? I think you guys call it a little bit more than a band, almost.

Yeah. So we're like, basically a band of superheroes, so to speak.

The idea behind our main gimmick is that we were this group of heroes from the beginning of time. We save the earth, freeze ourselves in magic ice until the world needs saved once again. And we like to use kazoos in our music and in our kazoos.

Yeah.

In our band's lore, kazoos are sort of like celestial melodic weapons, sort of like a trumpet or something, but more powerful and sort of debuffs the enemies or, like, makes us more powerful.

And there was all of these, like, America memes, epic meal time, all the the guns blazing, like, team America, world police type stuff going on.

So I'm thinking, you know, if these medieval heroes from the beginning of time had thought out in the future, they might be confused or, like, not really aware of how things work. So they saw that, like, superheroes were this big thing.

So we kind of rebranded ourselves as these, like, medieval heroes meets Captain America type stuff.

So you have names, right? Everybody has names.

Yeah, I typically go by Captain America, the Freedomator.

Okay.

We've got Major Patriots, Sergeant Star, Screech, Lieutenant Liberatus, to name a few of them. Yeah, cool.

Cool.

All of them. Weird mix of superhero meets medieval characters.

So how did you guys develop such a wide variety of musical styles and themes?

So plethora just sounds more epic, but the word itself means a lot of something.

Yeah.

And we all have a lot of different styles and music genres. You like? I grew up originally, like, my parents only listen to country.

And then I found, like, a Boston record one day, and I really liked the classic rock, like Prague elements. And then I got into metal and thrash, and then I got into folk from various video game soundtracks and stuff.

And so I also played trombone in band, so I have all these different musical backgrounds.

And I didn't really want to confine us to one thing because I really wanted to take rock and metal and then throw in another style based on lyric content. So, like, our pirate songs, those have the folk accordions and the whistles.

For those of you that don't know, I met Matt and Anthony Nordic Fire Festival last year and ended up in their music video for y'all Hala, and then got to know them a little bit better at Magical Realm Fantasy Fair in June, which is like, it's a Ren faire, but it's a lot more fairies and mermaids, and it kind of anything Fantasy goes pretty small. It's. It's smaller, but it's a really cool festival. But they are just really cool people.

So one of the big things they do is they play Some of you may know it by Murph, but it's. The Michigan Renaissance Festival is one of their big gigs. And then they also play Nordic Fire Festival, and then they play Magical Realm.

So they play some of these fantasy and medieval fairs. Like, when I've heard you guys there, a lot of your music very much reminds me of, like, dwarven rock.

Ah, yes. Excellent Windrows.

But I know you guys have a lot. You have parodies like Drunk at a Walmart and.

Well, not so much parody. It's more of like.

Well, it's not really a parody.

It's like, you could say I. Parody styles.

Maybe Drunk at a Walmart is more.

It's like an Irish drinking song.

It's an Irish Drinking song that's modern and a bit farcical.

When we started off, we were writing more silly songs, more character based. Like, these are just made up silly things. You could almost say it was like rock music for children in a way. Not necessarily on purpose, but it just.

Like, we made up characters like Lucky the Pirate. He's got two eye patches, two hooks for hands, and two peg legs.

Yep.

And so after that first album, we started writing a little bit more mainstream comedy. So I was like, what's more, something funny. I wanted to take your old Irish Celtic, those old type of folk songs and start making them more modern.

So we have, like, Drunk in a Walmart, we've got Yoho, Costco, like, Hop on Board My member ship, that type of stuff.

Yeah, that was the first time I heard that. I couldn't help but laugh.

It's so good. There's obviously our Captain Crunch song.

Oh, yeah, I love that one.

People at Renfest just shout crunch. Itize me. Captain, like, all the time is amazing.

On a consistent basis, I listen to that song.

Good song.

It's a great song.

It gets stuck in your head a little too easy, which is good.

So speaking of some of your guys's music, you guys have a song called Yalhala. I mentioned it before. You guys had a music video for that that you guys can find on YouTube. If you guys just search plethora on YouTube.

I know we're saying it probably weirder than what you think, but it is the word plethora. So just search plethora. But it is. Plethora is how it's supposed to be pronounced.

And you may want to do plethora because there's this. There's another band with our name.

Weird.

That's in the Philippines.

I didn't think that would be a thing, that another band would be called.

That, but it doesn't make any sense because, like, when we were getting our name originally, there was no inkling of another band with our name on the Internet. And then, like, five more popped up, like, a few years after. And of course, that band.

You started a movement.

That band blew up huge over there and has, like 250,000 followers. But they're like weird boy band Christian rock. But it's all in, like, Filipino boy band Christian rock. And I don't know why they have.

I didn't know a boy band could do Christian rock. That's interesting. But yeah. So speaking about their song, y'all holla a little bit. We're gonna go ahead and just give you Guys, a little taste.

You guys can go find it for yourself later. But I wanted to give you guys a little taste so you can kind of hear for yourselves a little bit as you're listening to this. Exactly.

Kind of what we're talking about with this experience.

The redneck Viking anthem.

I climb your feral hogs hunt to the southern coast we're in the wackins question to the place that I crave most who needs a long boat when you've got a fleet of derby cars? Except for me all that I need are hordes of PBR I crash yeah.

Take us to a fortress filled with mighty halls there's one that falls a bloodline pouring out every wall there's no real way to find it no map can show around we'll have to die in batt of B, no doubt. One world quest through the hurricane winds forward to glory the fight we can win no need to defend we must meet our end into the br we shall send.

And that was y'all, Hala. Honestly, it's one of my favorite songs by you guys.

I might be a little biased because I got to me in the music video, which was super dope, but I think it's just so well composed. It's got elements of comedy, but it's also got elements of seriousness. And I think it's a great all around song.

And I think it's one of the best representations of you guys as a whole in your repertoire.

I agree there because we have the whole America superhero thing going on, which was never meant to ever be political or anything. It was sort of just like we're taking this hilarious Persona of the memes about America. We like to write songs about food.

Not all of our songs are even like folky. Like we've got like a song about drinking gravy. It's kind of a. I don't know.

If I've heard that one yet. I'll have to check it out.

I wouldn't say it's rap rock, but it's. It's got a lot of groovier elements. And we got a song called Planet Fatness, which.

That one's sort of in the style of your dude bro metal type bands like Five Finger Death Punch or something.

Nice.

Because, you know, what other band would you listen to while you punch? Drywall Fair. We kind of take the styles and kind of like, you know, just if we take the lyrics and we try to make the.

The other style that goes along with rock or metal, we try to make them all kind of cohesively fit together. Like, we have a song I've been working on called Cat Party. It's about your cats just, like, destroying your house in the middle of the night.

And of that. That one's kind of. It's metal meets, like, dance music. Is party. Like, so there's going to be, like, dubstep elements in the breakdown.

I love that so much.

We have a song called Flavortown, which is also sort of in the works for recording. I mean, we have a lot of stuff recorded, but.

Oh, I think you guys. I think you guys mentioned that because you made a post about, hey, what should we write about next?

And somebody was like, you should write about Guy Fieri or whatever.

So that post was not actually us looking for. It was more of a. Like, yeah, it was like, this is all the stuff that we constantly write about. And when 90% of it was food.

So it was like, what are they gonna do this time? Probably more food. Like, we've actually been playing the Flavortown song for, like, five years.

Okay, that's cool.

It was like, just bad life stuff kept happening.

Right.

So we couldn't get into the studio to finish it. And seven years later, we still don't have an album.

And we were just, like, starting to get pissed off because we have, like you said earlier, 80 original songs around there, and currently only about 40 of them are recorded. So we're kind of playing catch up.

Right.

I ended up getting the album from the guy. Like, he basically downloaded the Pro Tools recording all the sessions. All the sessions. He gave them to me. I learned how to finish it.

Then I started taking it to my buddy's studio, Paco Higdon. He's got a place called Tuxedo Avenue.

I'm very familiar with Pro Tools. We use Audition here at wlnz. But I'm very familiar with Pro Tools. I've mentioned it on this podcast before.

The DMACC program, Digital Media, Audio and Cinema here at lcc. Amazing program for anybody that wants to go into that stuff, but they primarily learn on Pro Tools.

Yeah, I basically just now will track drums at Paco Studio, and then he'll give everything to me. I'll record everything at my house, you know, have the other guys over to get their parts. It just streamlines everything so much faster.

Yeah, you recorded one during COVID called Corn Tunes, right?

Yeah.

That's where drunk at Walmart comes from, right?

Yeah. So that's an acoustic album.

Basically what happened there is the album that took seven years was called Liberate and that was supposed to be our second album.

Right.

And then when Covid shut everything down, we were about 95% done recording that album.

And then like there was no way we were gonna be able to get it out in time for our 10 year anniversary at that time, which is when we wanted to co release it. So once lockdown happened, I basically locked myself away for three months.

We all did.

And it's fine. I just like shut myself away and just recorded a whole album by myself in my room.

And I kind of figured, you know, I want something to drop on our 10 year anniversary. But I also want.

If you think about the quarantine and all that stuff, I was like, okay, if this was an apocalyptic type setting, there'd be no power, so we'd have to rely on acoustic instruments. That's part of the reason why that album was acoustic too. It was also way easier to do on my own.

It did, yes. And then a lot of the songs were all sort of like loosely related. Like there's a song called Corona Blues that's the more obvious one.

But like back there's lots of references and songs like Costco about toilet paper because people were like hoarding that and stuff. It's a song called Vaccinate your kids, which isn't even about COVID It's just about general vaccinations. Tide Pod Picnic was on there. That.

That was back when the kids were eating Tide pods.

Oh, Lord.

So there's a.

That was. That was a whole thing I was like. When they were doing that, I was just like, what are wrong with these kids?

There's a. There's a lot of hilarious, just like things from the times getting made fun of on that album.

And then, yeah, a year after that, we dropped Liberate finally. And then right after that, we ended up getting the Renfest gig finally. After years of trying to get in there.

Well, what year was that that you.

I was actually going to bring that up because you guys started with Murph first, which is weird because, like, usually when bands are getting into performing at Ren Faires, they're not starting at the top with places like Murph. They're usually starting with places like Magical Realm and then working their way up and ending up at places like Murf.

But you guys just went to the top.

I mean, we've been around for a long time. The band, it kind of exists in two different versions.

We have our full electric rock metal thing where we play a variation of all of our songs in the big warrior hero costumes. And then we have our acoustic version that plays at the Renaissance and Nordic Fire.

Okay.

And for some reason, even though we were like we auditioned, they said we're good, we're in. We never got contracts or something. Something fell through the cracks. Emails stopped getting responded to. So he didn't end up playing.

And then their Ellen pipe player was already having too many health problems. He had like really bad carpal tunnel Lyme disease memory issues.

They ended up having to kind of retire and like his immune system was too compromised.

Every time he got unfortunate and said, because I know he'd been there a long time.

Yeah, something like somewhere between 10 and 15 years. I don't remember the exact time frame. It was at least 10.

But he kind of helped put in another good word for us to get us back there because we were going to apply again. But he kind of gave them the final push to get us in there.

And then of course as soon as we got in there, they, the people started hearing our Captain Crunch song and they were just going crazy. We only did five dates as like a fill in act on the Guinness Pub stage when they were missing a band.

And so after that first season, they definitely brought us back for the next one. So we've done three seasons so far. We plan to be there again this year. Nordic Fire is coming up, so that should be fun.

Yeah, Nordic Fire is a blast. Guys. If you ever get a chance to.

Go in Charlotte got some new y'all holla. T shirts coming. We got these new hoodies.

Hey now. So you started going to Murph and you've always been kind of doing this like America like party band kind of thing.

So where, where did the connection come to go from there? And then you got the gig with Nordic Fire for the first time last year, Right?

Yeah.

How'd you guys hear about Nordic Fire and get involved there?

I think their promoter is a regular at Renfest because he. I think he talked to Anthony, but he was. He was there like three times to see us. I think this last Renfest season, maybe more.

He was probably like five or honestly. But I think just a lot of people have offered us shows that's cool from seeing us there.

And you know, at the end of the night there's the pub Sing too. So a lot of people even from fair who might be working all day if they.

Some of them end up at the pub sing and all the other people and bands are there. So you kind of get some good exposure.

Yeah.

To the right people you need to talk to for a lot of stuff. Because that's how we got the Medieval Fantasy Fair too, I think is they just saw us at Renfest and yeah, people seem to like it.

We're probably the rowdiest band there.

And to be clear about a comment I made earlier about like, usually bands are starting at somewhere like Magical Realm. That is not to discount. Magical Realm. Magical Realm is one of my favorite fairs ever. I don't care how small or big it is.

It's about the people and it's about the event. That's not to discount anybody that plays what you would call smaller fairs, I guess.

But I mean it's not much different from like playing the. Your rock scene. You go from bars to clubs to theaters to arenas.

Yeah. I just want people to be clear. Magical Realm. Fantastic. Go check it out. Will be first weekend in June. First weekend in June this year.

But back to Plethora. We don't have a lot of time left, but we're going to do some quick rapid fire questions here. What is your favorite song to perform live?

Oh, man. I mean, Yahal is a good one. Buy us a drink's fun. Captain Crunch is a. Is a banger. Like it. It's a tough gravy. Jams. Flavortown's a good jam.

We have one called Space Force. It's like a space metal synthy 80s.

That's cool.

There's. There's too many. They're all fun. They're all a good time.

What's one of your funniest moments you've experienced during a show?

So we throw food into the crowd a lot, especially at our rock shows. There was. We have this love song about cheese that we played a long time ago. Like we were tossing Kraft singles into the crowd.

There was this one show we did at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor where during our song called Mashed Potatoes, it's a heavy metal song about a potato recipe. And we always hand out potatoes with our band stickers on and people will fight in the crowd for them.

And there was this kid sitting on his dad's shoulders and one of our stunt guys throws a potato to him because the kid wanted it, but he went right through his hands, hit the kid right in the face, this rock hard potato. And so at the end of. Right after the set, we went to the kid and we're like, hey, I have a T shirt, you know, Or I don't remember.

I think we gave him a shirt and a CD or something. But the kid was loving it. And his dad, he's this real Australian guy and he's like, this is my. My son's first like rock concert. Very apt.

He gets hit in the face with a potato. So yeah, we just. Lots of. Lots of stuff like that. We used to have this thing called a war toaster that would shoot like bagels into the crowd.

That's fun. That's what. Okay. Dream collaboration for Plethora.

Oh, man. Gwar. Probably I want to do Guar. We actually are members of the comedy punk rock band Green Jello. We wrote a song, the Drinking Song.

We play that one a lot at Renfest. That one, we wrote it with Bill Manspeaker, their front man. And that's on an album called the Garbage Band.

Kids and the Trailer Park Boys are on there. Weird Al's on that album. Wow. I think Suicidal Tendencies, that's so Fishbone. So it's kind of crazy having my name with like those guys.

That's so.

On an album. Because there was a lot of features. Yeah, because the Green Jello thing is kind of crazy because the way they tour is they used to just.

Bill would fly out to regional areas and hire local bands to be his backing band. So then when their last album came out, he's like, let's get all the bands that have been playing for me.

Like you could submit a song if you want and if it gets accepted by the record label, you get it on the album. And we had one of the 15 songs that made it on the album.

That's so cool. Favorite crowd to play for.

The Machine Shop in Flint is a. Is a big one. We've played there with Psycho Stick a lot. We just did Hammerfall last May. I think that place is like. It's always got a good crowd.

The owner, Kevin Zink, is Amazing. He just like, he really supports local bands opening up for like national touring.

So we play there with Psycho Stick a lot with a Green Jello show there where we played. We opened as ourselves and then we played in Green Jello Renaissance festivals. The other good one, like, that's just.

You can't beat the Guinness pub stage and playing like the pub sing every night.

Yeah. Before we go, where all can listeners find your guys music? Find out about you?

Man, we are everywhere. You can get us on Spotify, we're on YouTube. Plethora Music Official, you can find us@phthora music.com if you want to read up on our lore.

Because I write there's an entire giant backstory that you can read about all.

The pretty wild guys.

I've read all the stuff that I've been talking about. Every album release, I update the lore to the next thing. Our next album, which will be our fifth full release, is called Kazoo Metal.

It's going to be featuring a lot of our heavier songs because right now we've gotten to the point where we have so many songs, they all fit on themed albums.

So we're looking forward to doing our metal album, then doing another folk one called Ragnarok, and then we're going to have an album that's full of most of our big rock and roll banger songs. Then we got our Space Force album because we want to do a bunch of space metal songs. We got so many projects lined up, it's nuts.

All right, well, thank you so much, Matt, for joining us today on front row backstage. As he said, you guys can find him anywhere. You guys listen to music. And they have a website@phthora musicofficial.com it's.

Just plethora music dot com.

Okay.

Thank you guys for joining and thank you for listening in to hear about Plethora. Until next time, thanks for tuning in to front row backstage. We hope you enjoyed this week behind the curtains of the media world.

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