Today I’m thrilled to bring everyone a really cool music video for a cover of an Uncle Kracker classic, “Follow Me,” presented in the style of alternative rock/punk band Nautical Mile. The band, who hails from Perth, Australia, have toured with scene heavyweights like Senses Fail, Hawthorne Heights and Hands Like Houses and also released an EP of their own tunes recently called Embers. I was able to catch up with Nautical Mile to discuss their cover song, as well as what they’ve been up to musically, and if you’re enjoying the new single, you can purchase it at your favorite streaming service.
Thanks for your time today! I love your take on the Uncle Kracker song, “Follow Me.” Can you describe why you felt this song was a good choice for your band to put a spin on?
It’s an absolute classic that we don’t think has ever been covered in this style before. We love a good singalong and “Follow Me” has to be up there as one of the most recognizable songs of the last 20 years. It was a lot of fun to give it the Nautical Mile treatment. We were sat down messing around with some other tracks which weren’t really working for us, eventually we came across “Follow Me,” a song that we all loved to singalong to. We knew this would work in a similar style to our previous cover of “Beautiful Soul” by Jesse McCartney so we put together a demo for it and everything just seemed to translate really well and the whole track came together super quickly.
What are your current touring plans for the rest of this year?
Now that we can travel internationally from Australia again we’re looking to get over to the USA for the very first time, which is a massive leap forward for us. We had to cancel our Australian tour for the Embers EP release due to various COVID lockdowns and restrictions, so we’re also looking to get back out on the road here later in the year too.
What was the process like for writing and recording your latest EP, Embers?
We worked on the demo tracks for Embers during the course of 2020 lockdowns. We used a pretty similar process to how we wrote our first album; Dan and Caleb bounce songs between them for a while until we have a good instrumental base and then we move on to vocals before coming together to polish everything. The EP was tracked midway through 2021 and it was good to get into the studio after spending so long away through the pandemic.
Every band has a unique story to tell through their music. What do you hope people who decide to check out Nautical Mile will take away from your music?
Throughout the journey we’ve tried to make our music reflect our own experiences and feelings around particular topics close to us such as loss, grief, relationships and addiction. We’ve all lived these things and we know how they feel. For us music has always been our way of escaping those feelings or at least coping with them, whether that’s through writing it or listening to it. We hope anyone who is enduring any of the same feelings or experiences is able to connect with us through our music and realize that they’re not alone in what they’re going through.