My First Band Podcast

If you haven’t heard of Arlo McKinley yet, you should know he comes with John Prine’s seal of approval. Before Prine’s heartbreaking death this spring, the legendary folk singer handpicked McKinley to join his Oh Boy Records label, an honor granted to only a handful of musicians over the last couple of decades. This August, McKinley released Die Midwestern on the independent label, and his follow-up to 2014’s self-titled debut has been receiving high praise from music media and fans ever since. Before McKinley was releasing sad country ballads on the label of one of his musical heroes though, he was playing in Cincinnati punk and hardcore bands and teaming up with one of his buddies in projects that spanned more than a decade. McKinley recently joined My First Band host Tyler Maas via WiFi to discuss his first exposure to musical performance as a boy in his family’s Bapist church, digging through his dad’s extensive vinyl collection as a kid and forming his first band, Mourning Child, as a teenager. Over the