Calumet, Michigan is a brick-built town of former glory and the home of Gratiot Lake Road. Once it was the cradle of the largest copper mining company, Calumet & Hecla, which produced over half of the United States' copper from 1871 to 1880.

Ever-expanding during Michigan's copper boom, Calumet nearly earned the honor of becoming the state's capital. But due to a plummet in the value of copper, mine collapses, and union strikes, the copper mining industry altogether vanished, leaving nothing but ornate buildings and a struggling remnant tucked away in the Keweenaw Peninsula, the northern-most point of Michigan.

Now Calumet is preserved by the area's persisting economic doldrums; the quest for commercial advancement has yet to touch the ancient mining relics scattered about this eerie hinterland, conjuring the sense that the 1800s have yet to end. Woodie Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" immortalized Calumet in song by recounting a Christmas Eve disaster that occurred when someone deceptively yelled "fire" into a holiday party, leading to a stampede and the deaths of 73 men, women, and children in the stairway.

The Keweenaw is the setting for Gratiot Lake Road's music. Freda, Dollar Bay, Baraga, Eagle River, and other locations make up the backdrop for songs that examine such themes as: careening recklessly away from a world of problems, tall tales of escape, suffering the inevitable winter, the tragic beauty of nature, musings of age-old lovers, knowledge of your own mortality, and the weight of regret.

These stories are coupled with the elements of the Keweenaw, such as stamp sand: the unwanted rock byproduct of the mining process that was crushed into tiny bits and dumped into Lake Superior, creating a strange black shore full of coarse "sand."

Gratiot Lake Road was founded in 2009 and has been active in recording and performing. Ben and Emaleigh are often accompanied by Tony Laux on bass guitar and Matthew Radue on a stripped-down drum set. Sometimes additional friends lend their talents on violin, cello, mandolin, harmonica, electric guitar, and dobro.

Recorded in a hotel room in Virginia, "Seasons" (EP, 2010) was Gratiot Lake Road's first release. This was followed by "Stamp Sand Shores" (2012), a full-length album set in the Copper Country and recorded in freezing temperatures in the historic Orpheum Theatre.

Gratiot Lake Road makes Hampton, VA a second home by a few months of temporary residence. They perform regularly in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (Houghton, Marquette) and in Virginia (Newport News, Hampton, Charlottesville).

Other cities they've musically marked include Grayling, Kalamazoo, Lansing, South Bend, Detroit, and Milwaukee in coffee shops, bars, art galleries, basements, and music festivals.

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