Motor City Rides

The High Strung are from Detroit. They don’t exactly live here though. And when they’re not gigging inside libraries, they’re your basic rock ’n’ roll road dogs, living, breathing and beating the highway, touring in their 1992 GMC G3500. The raucous pop trio purchased the “bus” three years ago for a paltry two grand. They’ve since logged 200,000 miles. Its cavernous interior is customized with a huge bunk, so sleeping and stretching out ain’t an issue.

 

 

The band — guitarist-vocalist Josh Malerman, bassist Chad Stocker and drummer Derek Berk — began as a quartet in 2000 and released the shoulda-been-bigger These Are the Good Times three years later. When the original singer split, Strung soldiered on as a trio and released Moxie Bravo in 2005. Their forthcoming, 17-song, Jim Diamond-helmed record, Get the Guests, is set for a May 15 release on the mighty Park the Van records.

So, yeah, the 1992 GMC G3500’s a shambolic home on wheels. “It’s faster than a rolling donut, more powerful than a local voter, able to leak all the oil in a single town,” Malerman cracks. “It’s absurd, it’s insane, it’s the High Strung bus.”