By design, Wild Honey Collective has featured a rotating cast of players both in the studio and live – between all its “collective” projects over 300 shows have been performed since summer 2021. Even the band gets confused sometimes, but generally speaking “Wild Honey Collective” is both the name of the musical performances fronted by the “core four” founding members and also an umbrella term for the dynamic web of offshoot and related projects:
Dead Honey Collective
First uttered in January 2024, “Dead Honey Collective” initially referred to a live performance residency in Lansing featuring Jack Schueler, Tommy McCord, Adam Aymor, Joel Kuiper, and Nicholas Merz (all contributors to Wild Honey recordings) spotlighting the country and folk influences of the Grateful Dead. Dead Honey Collective quickly developed its own following, touring the midwest and east coast, releasing original material and embracing a “Grateful Dead and more” band identity, moving beyond the “roots” catalog of the Dead but maintaining country and folk instrumentation for a unique spin on the repertoire.
Wild Honey Ramblers
Even in a four hour show, there’s never enough time to get to every song in the constantly expanding Wild Honey catalog. Seeking an outlet to explore more classic country, Tommy McCord and Adam Aymor recruited singer and multi-instrumentalist Mercadez Kelley for performances as “Wild Honey Ramblers” to shine a light on favorite material by the likes of Gene Clark, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, George Jones, Patsy Cline, Randy Travis, Neil Young and more.
Wild Honey Boys String Band
Wild Honey Collective began completely unamplified, sitting in a circle with acoustic instruments. As the project and stages expanded, so has the equipment, and volume of both members and music. Never wanting to lose sight of the rustic heart of the music, Tommy McCord, Dan O’Brien, and Timmy Rodriguez periodically stage very stripped down acoustic trio performances as “Wild Honey Boys String Band.”
Wilderhoney
The most loosely-defined of all the “Collective” projects, “Wilderhoney” was born out of improv-heavy duo performances by Tommy McCord and Adam Aymor. The two issued an EP of the same name in 2024, featuring contributions from Joel Kuiper, Nicholas Merz, Danielle Gyger, and Jennifer Toms. “Wilderhoney” has also been used for trio performances with Joel, and was briefly a quartet with Nicholas… before evolving into Dead Honey.
Further Activities…
Jeremy Porter & The Wild Honey Collective – on two occasions (fall 2021 and fall 2025), touring revue-style shows have been built around a collaboration with Detroit musician Jeremy Porter and a lineup of Wild Honey Collective. Wild Honey members also contributed heavily to Jeremy’s 2024 solo album Dynamite Alley.
Matthew Carlson & The Wild Honey Collective – in December 2025, singer-songwriter Matthew Carlson assembled a lineup of Wild Honey musicians for a performance that was recorded for a live album. The first single, an arrangement of Woody Guthrie’s “Deportees” was released in early 2026. In addition to being longtime friends of the band, there was precedent for this collaboration – in summer 2022 a collaborative tour of Wild Honey and Matt’s band Harborcoat did a run of dates on the east coast. (Harborcoat drummer Joel Kuiper then became a member of Wild Honey!)
Drinking Mercury – the immediate preceding project to Wild Honey Collective, Drinking Mercury is a spacey, rootsy, indie rock project formed in Ionia, Michigan in 2000. Tommy McCord, Kevin Adams, Michael Boyes, and Timmy Rodriguez have been the primary members of the band for most of its existence, issuing an acclaimed self-titled album in 2019 (which included singing contributions by Danielle). Tommy and Timmy took the Americana angle of Drinking Mercury’s repertoire (including the Michael Boyes song “The Bright Side” and the group’s catalog of folk and country standards like “Shady Grove,” “I Know You Rider,” “Dead Flowers,” “Never Will Marry,” etc) as the jumping off point for the first socially-distanced outdoor “quarantine” Wild Honey practice session, and in the ensuing post-pandemic years Kevin and Michael both contributed to Wild Honey live performances and recordings.
Other Wild Honey contributors have included Nicholas Richard and Hattie Danby of The Plurals, longtime GTG Records musician Loren Pudvay, drummer extraordinaire Dave Shilakes, guitarist Liam Van Der Heide, multi-instrumentalist Tony Halchak, session aces Jerry Wenger, Drew Howard and Mike Lynch.
More Info: A rundown of every musician that has contributed to Wild Honey Collective
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