Photo by Michael Lavine (left to right, Greta Van Fleet's Sam Kiszka, Josh Kiszka, Danny Wagner and Jake Kiszka)

The very first song the band ever wrote – there in the family garage, before any of them were even old enough to purchase cigarettes - became a number-one rock radio hit.

Such is the origin story of “Highway Tune,” Michigan band Greta Van Fleet’s bluesy, accelerative debut single. Besides topping Active and Mainstream Rock radio charts, the track has been streamed on Spotify more than 5 million times. And almost 3 million times on YouTube.

Notable numbers, particularly for a band whose musicians currently range in age from 18 to 21 and hail from Frankenmuth, a city with a population of less than 5,500 and better known for Bavarian architecture than guitar jams.

But what’s even more notable about Greta Van Fleet is this quartet's already drawing comparisons to one of rock’s all-time greats: Led Zeppelin.

The similarity of 21-year-old Greta Van Fleet singer Josh Kiszka’s voice to Robert Plant’s gashing bay is a major reason for this. At times on Greta Van Fleet’s four-song debut EP “Black Smoke Rising,” that resemblance borders on uncanny. But it’s not just the high notes. Kiszka sings with the kind of fire and feel that make Plant’s early-70s Zeppelin vocals such an apex to this day. Josh’s twin brother, guitarist Jake Kiszka plays focused, spirited riffs and solos inspired by the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Zep’s Jimmy Page. Drummer Danny Wagner and bassist/keyboardist Sam Kiszka, both 18, do symbiotic grooves and textures that echo bell-bottom-rock’s prime. Greta Van Fleet’s youthful exuberance keeps the music from seeming like history lesson. And in the present tense.

The scary thing is "Highway Tune" might be the third best track on Greta Van Fleet's debut EP.

The goose-stepping “Safari Song” and folk-flecked “Flower Power” are a little stronger songwriting-wise, with just as much nubile-pow as “Highway Tune.” (Producers Al Sutton and Marlon Young, Kid Rock’s guitarist, did quite the job balancing retro tones and modern clarity throughout “Black Smoke Rising.”) Even with its lava-lamp interlude, title track "Black Smoke Rising" is easily the EP's most contemporary-sounding cut.

At moments does Greta Van Fleet teeter on sounding too much like Led Zeppelin? Sure, but just as early Black Crowes did with a heavy Stones influence, they pull it off and end up making each song their own. And there are worse aural zip-codes for a band to begin from. Remember, more than a few radio listeners in 1974 thought the Rush song "Working Man" was a new Zeppelin tune. And even early Zeppelin relied heavily on turbo-charging secondhand blues and folk before crafting their own signature dynamics.

For rock fans who've sorely missed a certain musicality, roots and oomph in new bands, Greta Van Fleet is an exciting listen. There's something about their music that's thrilling in the same way early Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Pearl Jam and White Stripes was.

Where they take it from here remains to be seen.

Like the rest of Greta Van Fleet's current headlining club tour, the band's 8 p.m. Oct. 11 show at Huntsville's SideTracks Music Hall, address 415 E. Church St., is sold-out. Arkansas combo Welles is the support act.

On a recent afternoon, Greta Van Fleet's Sam Kiszka, younger brother of Josh and Jake, checked in for a phone interview to discuss their band's music, tour and what’s next. Excerpts are below.

By Matt Wake | mwake@al.com

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Sam, what do you remember about the day you all wrote "Highway Tune"?

We were all just getting together as a band. And my brothers would be out there playing and they had this buddy that came over that played drums with them. So I started playing bass. We started playing some covers - some old blues numbers, some Cream stuff.

One day we came out to the garage and Jake was playing a riff he wrote and it turned out to be “Highway Tune,” so I guess what happened on that day five years ago kind of turned out to be a common artifact in what we do. A lot of the time Jake does come up with a riff and then me and Daniel will throw a rhythm section on it and Josh will do whatever he wants on it vocally. Back in eighth grade when we wrote the song I never thought that I would have a number one hit on the radio. It’s an amazing thing.

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Photo by Michael Lavine

Since your band has already had such big radio success, what songs did you hear on radio growing up that you really connected with, that were new at the time?

When we were kids there really was music out there I heard that I really liked. I think that in the time that I was growing up, the mid-2000s, I think we were in a musical depression. Since then music, I think the quality has been going substantially up and I think it works in phases where people get tired of listening to bull----. They produce a lot of songs, it’s like an algorithm. They’re not really evoking any kind of emotion from anyone. I think a lot of time it’s artificial. And I think it’s time that people are making real genuine music that they put their hearts into. The real stuff.

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It wasn’t until high school I started figuring out there’s modern music that’s good. You’ve just got to dig for it. But I’m a big fan of a band called Lewis Del Mar. They’re out of New York and they’ve got pretty groundbreaking work in my opinion. We definitely have our modern influences, like Kaleo, Rival Sons. There’s some great bands out there right now. Josh and Daniel are really big fans of Fleet Foxes.

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Photo by Chris M. Junior

The last new bands I can recall making a mainstream impact playing classic-rooted rock with youthful energy were The White Stripes and Black Keys …

You know, what’s interesting is that we actually covered Black Keys stuff when we were jamming in the garage. Like that “Magic Potion” album’s great.

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And that one didn’t sell as well as some of their other albums or get quite as good reviews, but it’s probably their most “rock” album. I think Dan (Auerbach, Black Keys frontman) described it as an album to sit on your porch and drink a six-pack to.

[Laughs] Yeah, that's really cool. And you know what? I think music like that, that fails to go to forefront, a lot of the times that's the highest quality music because it's more difficult, yes, but it's not instant delivery of what you want to hear.

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Photo by Ford Fairchild

Were you guys into the White Stripes at all?

Well, the White Stripes, I don’t think we started to pick up on them until a couple years back but we definitely know some of the songs. But Jack White, he’s an example of hope in the music of rock and blues, you know? Thankfully we’ve got guys like Jack White who keep the stuff authentic. I think he’s a very talented musician, artist and producer.

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How did you guys record “Black Smoke Rising”? Were you cutting the songs live in the studio?

We recorded all the material at Rust Belt Studios in Detroit. If you’re going to produce a rock album anywhere in Michigan or honestly in the Midwest it’s Rust Belt Studios. But (the title track from) “Black Smoke” was also an interesting piece, and this kind of goes back to “Highway Tune” and that’s because when we were working on all of our previous material, we were trying to get an idea together for our EP.

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And we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to put on it – “Flower Power,” “Safari,” “Highway Tune.” But then something kind of smacked us in the face. The full band was in the studio room, we’re just kind of sitting around waiting, and Jake just started screwing around with a couple of different chords and Josh he just instantly threw that melody on there. And I was on piano and Daniel he grabbed another guitar and ("Black Smoke Rising") wrote itself. It’s one of those songs that was just floating around in the universe or something.

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I’ve been told your band has been doing some more recording recently. Is that for the first Greta Van Fleet full-length album? Another EP? And what’s the vibe of material?

What I can tell you is we are currently working in the studio, juggling studio time and playing for our fans live. The material has a grand amount of continuity and all I can say is we've got some really good stuff coming. Maybe some of the songs are some of the songs that we play live. So yeah, I'm excited to get more material out there, to start showing different sides of what we're capable of.

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Photo by Jessica Earnshaw (From left, Greta Van Fleet's Josh and Jake Kiszka)

Are there many Greta Van Fleet originals in the live set that weren’t on the EP?

Oh yeah. Because the EP is only about 20 minutes. It’s probably less than a third of our show. So yeah most of the show is our originals and we have one cover in there that’s a Howlin’ Wolf tune that we spruced up a little bit.

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Of cool, what Wolf tune?

It’s called “Evil.” It’s kind of an obscure one. It’s a very vibe-y song.

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So looking here at a setlist posted online, songs like “When The Cold Wind Blows,” “Edge of Darkness,” “You’re the One,” “Watching Over,” “Lover, Leaver, Talker, Believer,” those are all unreleased Greta originals?

Yeah those are all Greta originals. And I’m sure that you will be seeing them in the future.

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Uninformed people used to ask the guys in Pink Floyd, “Which one’s Pink?” thinking that was the singer’s name or something. [This inspired the lyric in 1975 Pink Floyd track “Have a Cigar."] How much has that happened with Greta Van Fleet, people asking, “Which one’s Greta”?

[Laughs] It used to. Our old days of playing the local circuit, going to places like Bay City, Saginaw, Detroit, it used to happen all the time when people would go up to Josh and say, "Are you Greta?" It was just so funny. But we did take the name from a town elder from Frankenmuth, Gretna Van Fleet, and we adapted the name, and it was probably a year, year and a half after we had the name and we were playing at the local hall and up on the marquee it says, "Live Tonight Greta Van Fleet." And everybody was calling her saying, "Gretna, you haven't played in 30 years? Why didn't you tell me?" And they kept getting these calls so they had to investigate, so her and her husband showed up and sat through a whole hour of loud rock 'n' roll music.

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Photo by Michael Lavine

Why did you all name the band after her?

Well, I guess initially it was a cool name and something unique. It doesn’t define our music. It’s something that identifies us instead of boxes us, because there’s a lot of bands with name that you say it and instantly know what they’re going to play. But I look back now and it really represents our roots and reminds us where we came from, and it grounds us to a certain degree. So I think carrying on the legacy of a musician that shares our hometown, I think that has a lot of extra meaning than it did when we first picked it because it just sounded cool.

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Some people have been comparing Greta Van Fleet’s sound to Led Zeppelin's. It’s a very cool compliment. But I remember reading a Jimmy Page interview once where he said something like, “If you want to learn how to play like me, don’t listen to me listen to my influences.” And your band is very into old blues, like Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker. Who are some other Greta Van Fleet influences people might not be picking up on?

For me personally, it really goes into the depths of the Crosby, Still, Nash & Young catalog. And that was perhaps the best music ever made in that time frame, with that mentality. It was really magical with those three guys, sometimes four guys. I could talk to you all day about that. But more interestingly for me as the bass player, as the keyboard player, it really goes into jazz. Herbie Hancock. Even listening to horn players like (John) Coltrane. Even going back to Motown, that’s where I learned to play bass listening to Motown.

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Photo courtesy Everett Collection (James Jamerson, left, and Uriel Jones performing at a Detroit nightclub in 1964)

James Jamerson (bassist on many classic Motown recordings), that’s a good place to start.

Oh yeah, James Jamerson is my favorite bass player. So it really does go back a lot farther and a lot wider than most people would guess. Then you have Josh who just listens to weird stuff, the world music, the Cuban stuff, he likes African very heavy drum kind of things.

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Fela Kuti, things like that?

Yeah, the weird stuff. Daniel, you’d never guess it by watching him play but he really digs into the world of folk. Jake is just a straight-up rocker. Jake loves rock.

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Photo by Jessica Earnshaw

We talked about diverse influences, but if you had to pick your favorite Led Zeppelin album, which one would it be?

Hmmm. [Long pause]

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I’m a “Physical Graffiti” guy.

Oh yeah? That’s kind of a cheater because it’s a double (album). But oh man, that is tough. I’ve contemplated this before but I really couldn’t come to a conclusion. I would have to say probably "Zeppelin I" (the 1969 self-titled debut LP). The roots. But imagine the innovation of the time.

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Photo copyright DreamWorks/courtesy Everett Collection (promo for 2000 film "Almost Famous"

What’s the groupie scene like for young rockers in 2017? That was such a big part of being in a young rock band in the ’70s.

The groupie scene? [Laughs] That's a good question – people definitely stick around, that's for sure. It's definitely not as prevalent as it was, that's a fact.

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There’s been a lot of acrimony and fighting in some of rock's biggest brother bands, like Oasis, Black Crowes and The Kinks. Is the vibe between you and your brothers more laid-back and cool than that, or is there some rivalry and tension there?

Well luckily, I think we’re past the animosity and the brotherly affection that we all love, beating the hell out each other. I think that went out a long time ago. So thankfully we work very well together and it really adds that extra dimension when we’re onstage. I think there’s an extra level, a deeper level of communication that we can achieve through our instruments being related. And also Daniel, who I’ve known since kindergarten. So I think that a big part of the chemistry between us, our roots together. And we all grew up listening to the same music.

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Here in The South, music fans really love what the Allman Brothers did with that. If you don't have their live album "At Fillmore East," you'd love it.

Oh yeah, I listen to that at least once a month.

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Greta Van Fleet is playing all sold-out shows on this tour. What’s the energy like for the band, to be playing so many packed-out rooms like that?

When we started the first headlining tour it was so crazy because we would get up onstage and the response we got was just so beyond enormous. We played “Black Smoke Rising” and people are singing all the parts and it is just so cool. And that opening riff to “Highway Tune,” people go nuts. Packing all those people into a club is just so fun. It’s hot and sweaty. It’s rock ‘n’ roll and it’s loud. People are having a great time and we’re having probably an even greater time giving it to them.

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In recent years there's been a lot of discussion and headlines about how “rock is dead." As a young band playing the music you do, what’s your reaction when you read or hear “rock is dead”?

I would have to say that mainstream rock a lot of the time is a formula, so I can understand why people say that. And I think that it’s time for someone to come along and kind of smack everybody in the face and show them what authentic roots are. But there’s definitely some amazing rock ‘n’ roll there, you just have to find it. Rock is not dead. Rock can’t die.

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