Greta Van Fleet released From the Fires on November 10, 2017, through Lava/Republic Records. The eight-track double EP joined the four songs from Black Smoke Rising with four new recordings. It kept “Highway Tune” in the sequence while adding original material and two covers that made the band’s folk and soul influences explicit.
The decision to carry those earlier songs forward was deliberate. Bassist and keyboardist Sam Kiszka told Glide Magazine in November 2017, “Because it’s a connected piece, it’s a continuation.” He saw the first EP as an incomplete account of what the band could do, with the new recordings filling in the spaces. Shared ideas about humanity and human behavior helped determine which songs belonged together.
Some of that material reached back to their beginnings. Sam identified “Highway Tune” as the first song Greta Van Fleet wrote as a band. “Flower Power” grew from Jake Kiszka playing a pair of chords in the garage, with Sam joining on an old Wurlitzer organ and Josh Kiszka adding the vocal. Jake also played mandolin on the recording. “Black Smoke Rising,” meanwhile, took shape in the studio while they worked on the other songs from the debut EP.
For the expansion, the group recorded four tracks at Rust Belt Studios in September 2017, returning to producers Al Sutton and Marlon Young. “Edge of Darkness” and “Talk on the Street” supplied the new original songs. Sam recalled writing those two roughly nine months before his November interview, putting newer work alongside the band’s earliest material.
The other additions were Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Fairport Convention’s “Meet on the Ledge.” The Cooke song carried particular weight for Josh. In the release announcement published by Universal Music Canada, he explained that he and Jake had considered covering it years earlier; Young’s suggestion brought it back into contention. Josh acknowledged the difficulty of singing a song rooted in experiences he hadn’t lived, but said its opposition to oppression mattered to him.
Jake described the covers as a way to represent different parts of their musical upbringing. Speaking with Antihero Magazine, he explained that Fairport Convention supplied the folk side and Cooke the soul side. “We generally like to put our own take on them,” he said. The pairing gave listeners two specific reference points for the music that had helped shape the band.
The title came from childhood camping trips. In the October 2017 release announcement, Josh recalled summers when the band’s extended families and friends gathered in the woods, playing music and telling stories around a fire. He connected those memories to older traditions of passing stories between generations, supplying the idea for both the title and the cover.
Greta Van Fleet followed the EP with their debut full-length, Anthem of the Peaceful Army, in 2018. Jake told Music Connection that touring had informed the album and that the group wanted to move beyond the first two EPs, creating greater contrast between intimate acoustic material and aggressive electric songs. Sam described their preference for keeping the studio performances simple and live sounding.
The earlier recordings continued to earn recognition. At the 2019 Grammy Awards, “Highway Tune” was nominated for Best Rock Performance, and From the Fires won Best Rock Album, giving Greta Van Fleet their first Grammy.
