By Jeff

It’s been almost two years since I wrote the first little anecdote about our band, Nuke Plant Chickens, back in September of 2023. A lot’s happened since then, and hopefully without being tedious, I’ll tell you about it. 

When I wrote the first anecdote, we were a five piece band. Ethan on lead guitar, Max on drums, Cameron on bass, Cloee on rhythm guitar, and myself on vocals. And some time in that autumn of ’23 (I can’t quite remember when), Cloee decided she needed a break from the band to focus on her college workload. We weren’t sure if she would return.

So, in December of ’23, we brought in the (then) newest Nuke Plant Chicken: a talented rhythm guitarist named Hunter. Prior to the formation of NPCs, Ethan, Max, and Cameron had played with Hunter in a thrash metal band, so he was already quite comfortable when he joined us. He’d already built chemistry with the core of our band, and he fit like a glove. We played a number of shows with Hunter covering Cloee’s rhythm guitar parts.

Then, as luck would have it, Cloee finished her tough, fall semester at college and decided she could come back to the band. We’d missed her when she was gone, and we were happy to see her return. But Hunter didn’t have any plans to leave the band and we had no inclination to kick him out, so we had a problem: we felt that three electric guitars in one band was too much. We felt we couldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) have two rhythm guitarists at once.

It’s been over 18 months since we had the discussion and I can’t remember exactly how it went down, but our unorthodox solution was to invite Cloee back as the second bass guitarist. That’s right; we felt that three guitarists was too much, but two basses sounded like a great idea. And we’ve done that ever since. We not only have lead and rhythm guitarists in Ethan and Hunter, but also lead and rhythm bass guitarists in Cloee and Cameron. 

Cameron handles the low-end, bottom-string bass lines, as he has reliably done at every gig we’ve ever done since 2022. And Cloee (though she’s joked about being “demoted to bass”) has the freedom and tenacity of a lead guitarist, while also contributing to the enormous low-end of our sound. It’s changed the way we write songs, too. All our newest songs written with this band configuration, songs like “Vegas Nerve” and “I Can Change You,” have allowed Cameron and Cloee to come up with their own bass parts. And they’re so good together. They listen to each other and they watch each other and they can dance around each other like fighters in the ring. The interplay between their two bass parts has given our songs so much depth and character, and the two of them just fucking rip.

We’ve played in that configuration since early 2024, and been told by dozens of people since then that we’re the first and only group they’ve ever seen with two bass guitarists. I’m proud of that. At least to bar-flies in the suburbs, we’re breaking new ground and offering them something they’ve never seen before.

Hunter, meanwhile, knows Ethan very well as a guitar player, and together they’ve created a guitar dynamic that is second to none in my opinion. Hunter can imitate anything Ethan does verbatim, and vice versa. It’s like they can read each other’s minds. Hunter is a skilled, intuitive rhythm player who can fill out the beefy mid-section of the band, but he also shines when he takes leads and solos on certain songs. Those songs, like “Jotnar” and “Hubris Pipe,” also happen to be fan favorites in our repertoire. Ethan, Max, and I haven’t had to change what we do very much in this new configuration. We just continue to kick ass in whatever way we can.

Now, I won’t give you a complete story on every gig since December of 2023. They’re not all that interesting. But some of the highlights would include the following.

We’ve played twice on the mainstage at Kenosha’s Taste of Wisconsin Festival. In 2024, we played at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but this year, we moved up to primetime: 8 o’clock. And we played for hundreds of people, if not a thousand. It was definitely the largest crowd we’d ever seen, and I don’t think we ever sounded better either. The drums boomed and the basses danced and the guitars sang and they put a shit-ton of reverb on my mic. It sounded like Heaven.

We were invited to play at Bitter Jester Music Festival in the Chicago suburbs, June of ’24. Though the festival had a competition element to it, with bands advancing to the next round by judges’ decision, we were not invited to compete. I believe they called us “an exhibition band.” We were only invited to play for one special performance and then go home. Still, they had the judges record little tapes of themselves giving feedback while they watched us perform. The judges, as I remember, were some of the first people to comment on our two-bass arrangements. They were not as complimentary as the bar-flies, but we had fun.

During Summer of 2025, we’ve played three shows for friends’ parties. One of them, we were hired to play a private graduation party, and the other two were played out of garages, mostly for friends and neighbors. Not only are they very fun and low stakes, they’ve also been some of our finest performances for some of our most responsive crowds. We hope to arrange more of those grassroots, free-admission type shows. As many as we can, as a matter of fact. Kenosha, Milwaukee, Chicago… if you want a young, energetic band to perform at your house show or block party, we’d be more than happy to be that band.

We’ve also had multiple shows each at Rustic Road Brewing Company in Kenosha, the Lake Andrea Beer Garden in Kenosha, McAuliffe’s Pub in Racine, the CD Warehouse in Kenosha for their annual Record Store Day, and the Kenosha Harbor Oktoberfest. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but these are repeat headlining shows, folks. These venues have been very good to us, and invited us back time after time.

Our most recent show, at the Social Club in the town of West Chicago, was a blast. With a wonderful Wisconsin-based band called Half Holiday and a talented group from Chicago called David’s House, we finally rocked the Chicago suburbs for the first time. We also, due to Hunter having some scheduling conflicts, introduced the newest member of our group: a skillful guitarist, Evan. He’s not totally new to the sphere of the band, as we’ve known him for years and starting in ’25 he’s been at our shows running the visual components projected behind us onstage. Evan’s psychedelic montages have already given our shows a new atmosphere, and now he’s gotten onstage with us to fill Hunter’s shoes. He’s just a delight.

So, yeah. I don’t think I’m very good at writing these promotional materials. I get bogged down telling you all the fun details when I should just be telling you that Nuke Plant Chickens is a band with two guitars, two bass guitars, and a badass drummer that you should definitely see live and stream online. And we’re playing a show in Milwaukee, WI, at the Falcon Bowl on August 30th. We’re hoping to continue booking gigs in Milwaukee and Chicago, and keep expanding from there. We’re young, we’re excited, and we have no plans to quit.

Maybe we’ll see you around.