Overview
Great Lakes is an American rock and roll band formed in Athens, Georgia, United States, in 1996. The band was formed by Ben Crum, James Huggins, & Dan Donahue. Great Lakes were among the second wave of bands included in The Elephant Six Collective.
History
The debut self titled album Great Lakes was recorded 1996–1999 on Crum's 1/2" 8-track tape machine in their home studio in Athens, Georgia. It was released in 2000 on Kindercore/Elephant 6. The group consisted of founders Ben Crum, Dan Donahue, & James Higgins III, with a bevvy of supporting players from the Athens/E6 music scene. After relocating to Athens, Ga from Birmingham, Alabama, the trio met like minded musicians in fellow Athens bands like Elf Power, Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Of Montreal. Great Lakes grew from a three piece recording project to a full-blown rotating ‘mini- orchestra’ featuring over 12 musicians for the recording sessions & live tours for the first two albums. By the third release Donahue and Crum had moved to New York, and the band entered a new phase. By 2008, Crum was solely at the helm, and had assembled a Brooklyn-based lineup of the band that would continue playing together for over a decade. Crum discusses this shift in an interview with Dagger Zine:
"I’ve been the only original member of the band for over 10 years now. But it was really only for the first 2 records that the original members were a big part of the band, anyway, to be honest. And even then it was really just the first one that was the product of genuine collaboration. Back then it was me and Dan writing songs together, but by the time the first record came out we'd put together a big band that also featured Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal, Scott Spillane from Neutral Milk Hotel/Olivia Tremor Control, Bryan Poole from Elf Power, and Derek Almstead, Dottie Alexander, Heather McIntosh, and Jamey Huggins as a multi-instrumentalist and our main drummer. Jamey and I really collaborated very closely on the first record, in terms of working out the instrumentation on the songs. That was a really good, positive collaboration. And, truthfully, it hurt me when he chose to pretty much leave the band and focus on Of Montreal. But I understood his decision. They were getting really popular, and I couldn't blame him. Then, in 2002, I moved to Brooklyn and Dan followed not long after, and once we'd both left Athens that was basically the end of the original lineup.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).