Navigating a career in music takes a village. Boston’s own pop-rock troubadours, Copilot, are a prime example of this. Possessing the notorious New England work ethic, they’ve been grinding away relentlessly since their formation in 2018. The sextet— composed of lead vocalist Maggie (Quealy) Hall, guitarist and vocalist Ry McDonald, vocalist Jake Machell, drummer Dylan Allwine, bassist Austin Beveridge, and lead guitarist Jack Snow— provide an authentic and powerful sonic experience that uplifts and inspires.
Through life’s twists and turns, Copilot have accelerated fast in the New England music scene, first forming while attending Vermont State University, before settling back in Boston. Maggie and Ry, high school friends and MA natives, reconnected as a duo to perform acoustic material, before later filling out the band to its current iteration.
Throughout the years, Copilot has opened for an impressive lineup of artists including OneRepublic, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Nightsweats, Ripe, and Jade Bird. Possessing a warm and enticing stage presence, each member exudes a confidence and comfortability up on the stage, and their diverse roaster allows them to easily blend into any scenario. The band describes themself as “making music that will make you have to smile” with its infectious rhythms and melodic sound.
Front of House Boston sat down with four sixths of the band ahead of their headline set at Cambridge Crossing’s summer music series. Maggie, Ry, Jack, and Dylan joined us to discuss the whirlwind year they have had and the excitement of what is to come. Copilot are driving full-throttle, and there is no slowing down any time soon.
Known around the local music scene as one of Boston’s best and most dynamic live bands, the group have amassed a devoted following. Falling in the middle of the rock and folk spectrum, their 3-LP discography spans from delicate ballads to soulful cadences. Their driving instrumentation backs a triage of ardent harmonies that ebb and flow through a myriad of soulful inflections. Whichever lane Copilot want to switch to, they do so with ease.
Half of the band attended college for music and took their skills as a former improvisational band with them into joining Copilot. “We definitely kept a lot of the improvisation that we tend to do,” said guitarist, Jack Snow. “We all went to school for jazz and stuff, so we like to keep a lot of that vocabulary when can. We try to sneak stuff in.”
This freedom of play aids Copilot’s live shows, while still providing a strong backbone to their structure and technical capability. Embedding Americana, folk and indie influences into their signature blend of retro-pop, there is a consistent fluidity in Copilot’s sound that leaves any pathway wide open.
“Pre-having Jack, we had a bit more of a rigid song structure that we kind of played through. But we played in a band where we improvised a lot and was more of a funk-fusion sort of bass where we improvised a lot, so we brought a bit more flexibility I think to be able to stretch out the stage,” added drummer Dylan Allwine.
It is this musical playground on stage where Copilot become unstoppable. After the past few years that have propelled them into bigger audiences and a slew of life changes, the one thing that has solidified Copilot in their trajectory is the thing that also makes them irreplaceable; the group’s close-knit friendship flourishes on and off stage. It adds both an intimacy and a kinetic energy to their live performances that is palpable, and drives their endeavors as a band.
Reflecting on their chemistry, Ry says, “We’re a tight-knit group. We’ve been the same group; we added Jack probably like four years ago, but we knew Jack the whole time. We knew Jake. Jake was the fifth member into the group and I’ve known Jake since he was my orientation leader at college. So we’ve known each other and it’s been us for so long and I think that’s the most important thing to us for sure. We’re excited to be doing it, and be doing it with this group of people.”
The band’s oscillating 3 lead singers— Maggie, Ry, and Jake— allow Copilot to traverse the emotional spectrum, creating a myriad of musical imprints. While trading vocal duties on each track, it is typically the member who penned the number that takes on leading it.
“There’s a few cases where the person who’s writing the song isn’t singing the song, but the majority of the time the person writing is singing,” explained Ry. “Our bass player Austin wrote ‘Bang Bang Boogie’ and Maggie and I trade verses on that. For picking harmonies out, it honestly just came very natural for the three of us. Maggie was in an a cappella group and chorus in high school. I was in a band that did harmonies in college and both my parents were in a band when I was in high school and they would harmonize, so I’ve been around it for a long time. And then Jake is just a very talented vocalist and he was in theater. He was the president of the theater club he went to.”
That is evident in Machell’s standout tracks like “Emily” and “Theme Song,” where his theatrical training bodes well in his range and tenor. Perfectly complimenting Ry’s soothing notes and Maggie’s standout chops, the warmth created between the three vocalists creates the perfect concoction.
Maggie, who attended UMass Amherst, partook in the a cappella group when she was not on the softball field. This past life lives on in their show-staple “Destiny”— a song dedicated to the player who gave Maggie a black eye with an ill-fated game-time injury. Along with Ry, who first picked up the guitar as a teenager, Copilot’s lead vocalists are as uniquely versatile as they are cohesive.
Copilot’s name (omitting the hyphen in traditional spelled “Co-pilot”) stems from the long car rides in which Ry’s dad would let him ride shotgun when he was younger, playing the greats like The Kinks, The Who and Rolling Stones. One could say their journey began then.
With a wide array of sonic influences ranging from The Beatles, to Bahamas, to Simon & Garfunkel, and Lake Street Dive, Copilot amass a collection of sounds and styles that adds diversity and fuels their far-reaching ambition.
This summer, the group embark on a tour that sees them up along the East Coast. By now, they are well-seasoned in their gigging adventures, but still find the same excitement in new opportunities.
“We had a year where we played like maybe 125 gigs in the year. When we were just cutting our teeth and getting exposure,” reflects McDonald. “This is the first time where it is this many shows in a row and playing our original music and the spots, like here tonight at Cambridge Crossing, Grace Potter’s festival Grand Point North in Vermont, and Coast Fest down in Falmouth, like a lot of venues that are original venues and it’s exciting getting to cross those off.”
Earlier in the year, the band applied to U.K singer-songwriter Jade Bird’s open call for a band to take the opening slot on her tour stop in Boston. As long-time fans, they quickly submitted a cover, which instantly earned them the highly-sought gig.
“We got together in a car and just did ‘Good At It’ and honestly just hoped and prayed. I was like, ‘This would be incredible. Feels like a reach but who knows,’” reflects Maggie. “Then she got back to us a week after, and I just screamed… It was a dream come true.”
Well-versed in Bird’s music as fans, and due to the fact they have been covering her songs for years, the group was prepared when they hit the stage not once, but twice, to join her for harmonious renditions of “Good At It” and “Lottery.”
“That wasn’t planned to be on stage with her for that many songs. That was really wild,” said Maggie, in which Ry agreed. “She brought us up more times than we thought.” Later, Bird posted a TikTok praising the band to her thousands of followers.
On their current string of live shows, the group are flexing new material and adding new life into the old. “We’re just really excited to put out some new music that we’ve been writing and things that we’ve been playing for a while… “Disappointment: In the Form of Love” is so different from how we first stared playing it, and same with “Still Frame,” so I think we’re trying to capture how we are live and really bring that current. I think it’s changed so much from when we started as just the four of us,” says Maggie on the band’s current endeavors.
While their sound may not directly reflect the sounds and styles of the Northeast, as is evident in the likes of Noah Kahan or Aoife O’Donovan, Copilot incorporate their surroundings in different ways.
“It’s hard to say that the music scene in New England has influenced me a ton,” admits Ry. “I feel like I grew up in a time where so much music was so attainable, so like all this different music was inspiring me from different places.
I do think it’s a great place to start a music career. We have Berklee [College of Music] here. I think it’s a good place if you’re really willing to work and do the cover gigs. It’s like anything in Boston: if you’re willing to really grind and make it one of your top priorities, then you’ll see the benefits of it. You can’t fake anybody in Boston. I think you gotta give it your all, which we’ve been lucky to give it a lot, as much as we can.”
The group’s tenacity and dedication to their craft may be the most New England thing about them, aside from perhaps the occasional flannel and locally branded tee shirt. Rooted in groovy bass, electric guitar solos and shimmering tambourine work, the heart of Copilot’s sound is in their genre-fluid instrumentation and their strong rapport. For those who have yet to hear Copilot’s distinct sound, they say to expect “big harmonies, melodic guitar solos and some really fun rhythm sections.”
Preparing to release new recordings after their current stint on the road, the group are finding new confidence in the studio.
“Our live shows have been strong for many years now, and they’ve been getting better, but I feel like we’re kind of finding ourselves in the studio a little bit,” says Jack. “We record a lot of music that we really like, but I feel like we’re finally honing in, like this is how we can actually translate what we do into something that reflects that.”
Sharing that sentiment, Dylan effused, “I think we’ve really found a strong suit in our live show. Where some people really have success with streaming or whatever, but struggle to translate it into a live performance, it’s not that we’ve struggled to put music together, but I feel like we’re starting to meet in the middle now between a really strong live show and having it translated into [the studio].”
Reflecting Copilot’s sound from the stage into the studio is an exercise that is earmarked by one particular component. “It’s such a thing we do on stage because of the chemistry,” Snow admits.
Copilot’s genuine talent and authenticity shines on stage and in song. Uncomplicated and uninhibited, they embrace each soulful ache and the ferocity of human emotion, all packaged within the catchiest of songs. Their cohesion in sound and in spirit lives in the essence of Copilot. They do not need the hyphen in their name— their uniformity is symbolic.
Hop on in and join the ride: We’re all passengers on Copilot’s journey.
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