Jeremy Porter
Jeremy Porter is a guitar player, singer and songwriter from Marquette, Michigan, currently living in Plymouth, Michigan. He is the founder of the Detroit-based band Jeremy Porter & The Tucos and co-founder of The Regulars, considered one of the first punk bands in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Early life
Jeremy Porter was born in 1969 in Alpena, Michigan, a small town in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, to John and Francie Porter. Jeremy has a younger sister, Kristen Porter. Jeremy started playing guitar at an early age, but became bored with the instrument and stopped playing until he was grounded for a summer for vandalizing the house of the vice principal of his junior-high school. With nothing else to pass the time, he picked up the guitar again and stuck with it.Influences
Porter's first exposure to music came from his parents' record collection as he gained an early appreciation for The Beatles and The Beach Boys, then later The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot and Fleetwood Mac. In the late 70s, like many his age, Porter discovered and latched onto Kiss before expanding into American power pop bands like The Knack and Cheap Trick. In the early 80s, he saw The Who's final concert broadcast on HBO and became enamored with their aggressive style and attack and the guitar playing of Pete Townshend. Around the same time, Porter became obsessed with heavy metal bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden and Scorpions, looking for something even edgier than The Who, but with a smaller sphere of influence that was more inclusive.Bands
The Regulars (Marquette)
In 1984, the Porters moved to Marquette, Michigan, the largest city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Though still small by population standards, Marquette offered more culture and options for a young musician, and Jeremy soon met John Burke, a drummer who shared Porter's love for The Who. The two 16-year-olds formed The Regulars with bassist Fritz Vankosky and singer Tim Demarte in early 1985. Burke immediately exposed Porter to the world of punk rock and the bands of the genre from California, Minnesota, New York and England, which Porter embraced as a more achievable music plateau than the metal bands he loved presented, and an opportunity to bond with his new friends.The Regulars played mostly punk and 1960s garage covers by bands like Ramones, Dead Kennedys, The Replacements, The Monkees and The Who, but by 1987 the members were each writing songs and the band would occasionally play their originals. The Regulars stayed together until Burke and Vankosky moved downstate to go to college in the fall of 1987, but got together in Marquette for reunion shows in 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2012. Burke would go on to form WIG and record 2 records for Island/PolyGram Records. Vankosky went into music production and engineering and would join the Psychopathic Records team and work with Insane Clown Posse and Twiztid.
Considered one of the earliest punk bands in the UP, the band's influence can still be felt today in the Marquette music scene.
Chutes and Ladders and SlugBug (Detroit)
In September 1988, Jeremy Porter moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he attended Eastern Michigan University. After two years of failing to find like-minded musicians, Porter met Brian Wimpy, Brad Hales, Dan Cervantes and William Brennan who took him in as the fifth member of their new band Chutes and Ladders. The band played regionally for two years, including a trip to Philadelphia, where they opened up for the well known bands Tar and The Unsane, but only after they agreed to tell people they were Cum Dumpster, the Detroit band originally booked for the show, who had cancelled with little notice. Porter and Brennan were the chief songwriters with Hales and Cervantes contributing occasionally. On August 12, 1991, Chutes & Ladders played with a young punk band from California called Green Day at a house party in Grosse Ile, MI, just a couple years before their breakout album Dookie!.In 1992, Jeremy Porter and Chutes and Ladders drummer Brian Wimpy formed SlugBug with Randy Barrett III and Chris Hartmann. SlugBug would become a nationally established pop punk band, releasing two EPs, two 7-inch singles and a posthumous anthology for Chicago record label Red Eye Growler Records. The band toured the Midwest and East Coast extensively before breaking up in 2000 amidst tensions between members and their desires to play in other projects. SlugBug was nominated for Album of the Year at the Detroit Music Awards in 1992 for their debut EP Strong Enough for a Man...But Made for a Woman.
Clashback
Porter and Hartmann formed Clashback in 2000. Described as "A celebration of the music of The Clash" rather than a tribute band, because the members did not try to look, act, or sound like The Clash, but rather, a Midwest bar band playing all Clash songs. Clashback played regularly for four years and continues to perform occasionally today. Clashback was never intended to be more than a side project for Porter, but it was his primary focus and outlet between the breakup of SlugBug and the formation of The OffRamps.The OffRamps
In 2002, Jeremy Porter recruited bassist Jason Bowes and drummer Mike Popovich and formed The OffRamps, a power pop band. The OffRamps recorded two albums for Ann Arbor, Michigan's Deluxe Records, Hate It When You’re Right and Split The Difference before breaking up in December 2008 after member's commitments to other projects made working together difficult. In their eight years, The OffRamps played extensively across Michigan and Ohio. Popovich would move on to join Bloodshot recording artist Whitey Morgan and the 78s and later Ann Arbor-based Blue Snaggletooth, and Bowes would remain on bass for Porter's next two bands: Fidrych, and The Tucos.Solo Acoustic
Party of One (2010)
As The OffRamps were breaking up, Jeremy Porter started playing solo-acoustic shows, pulling material from the catalogs of his previous bands and working on the material that would become Party Of One, Party of One was a Regulars reunion of sorts, co-produced and mixed by Fritz Vankosky, with his bass playing on some tracks. John Burke played drums on several tracks and Tim Demarte co-produced a session with Marquette-based vocalist Jenna Gueke for the track "Last Time I Saw You Happy". Also appearing on the record were Randy Barrett III, original SlubBug guitarist, who co-wrote the song "Out Inside" and contributed backing vocals, Ken Haas from Reverend Guitars, and Be Hussey who played bass and engineered Burke's drum sessions at Comp'ny Recording Studio in Los Angeles, California. For the first time since SlugBug, Jeremy toured extensively in support of the record, hitting several major markets in the United States including New York City, Nashville Chicago St. Louis, Minneapolis, and for the first time, Canada, playing shows in Toronto, Montreal, and Wakefield, Quebec.For the next decade or so Jeremy played the occasional solo set but focused mostly on his work with The Tucos. In 2018 he contributed a cover of Steve Earle's "Christmas in Washington" to the annual Bermuda Snohawk Christmas compilation CD.
1987 EP (2019)
In 2019 Jeremy released the 1987 EP on GTG Records – 4 new acoustic-based songs recorded in his basement and mixed by Tucos bandmate Gabriel Doman. He did a few shows supporting the release in 2019 (including headlining a small festival on a goat farm. In 2021, as the music business slowly emerged from the Covid 19 pandemic, Jeremy played a private party in Ypsilanti, MI with Ben Nichols of Lucero and Shane Sweeney of Two Cow Garage and some solo-acoustic dates in the Midwest before teaming with Lansing's The Wild Honey Collective for a tour out to the east coast and back. Porter opened the shows and took a support role on lap steel guitar, mandolin, and guitar with The Wild Honey Collective. Jeremy would play lap-steel on The Wild Honey Collectives second album Volume 2 on the Buck Owens' track "There Goes My Love," a staple of the live set on that tour.Dynamite Alley (2024-2025)
In September, 2024, Jeremy released Dynamite Alley, his first full-length solo album since Party of One in 2010. The album featured contributions from GTG Records Labelmates The Wild Honey Collective, Drive-By Truckers’ keyboardist Jay Gonzales, The Regulars bassist Fritz Van Kosky, and several other collaborators. The release show was held at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan, featuring the debut of The Jeremy Porter Band, with Van Kosky on bass and Dynamite Alley drummer David Below, as well as special guests Jake O’Riley on upright bass and Noreen Porter on castanets.Jeremy played over 80 shows supporting Dynamite Alley, his busiest campaign to date, hitting most of the US and 3 Canadian Provinces. The tour took Jeremy to several new markets including Seattle, Washington, where he was joined on stage by Joe Reineke from Alien Crime Syndicate and The Meices..
In July, 2025 Jeremy Played BüddiesFEST in Tillsonburg, Ontario where, in addition to his own set, he joined ex-Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton and Jon Snodgrass for a set of Hüsker Dü songs. He also joined Ex-Doughboys Brock Pytel’s Vancouver-based band The SLIP~ons on stage, singing backups on their song “Greystone” about the legendary `80s Detroit punk club. Jeremy was joined by current The Wild Honey Collective/ex-Cheap Girls guitarist Adam Aymour on pedal steel a short, regional BüddiesFest warm-up run with ex-ALL singer Chad Price Peace Coalition. In November, 2025, Jeremy teamed up again with The Wild Honey Collective for a run down to Florida and back, called the “Together + Separate Southeast USA Tour Fall 2025.”
On December 1, 2024, Jeremy released “Colorado Christmas,” a cover of a Nitty Ditty Dirt Band song, as a holiday single on GTG Records. The song was recorded during the Dynamite Alley sessions and the sound and artwork was inline with that project.