CHARLOTTE, N.C. —
Late at night, Michael Susong finishes his latest tweaks to a song. He puts it in a Dropbox folder and heads to bed. First thing in the morning, Matt Susong wakes up and sees a new addition to the folder and jumps right in, excited to continue the process of making music with his brother.
“It was like Christmas morning kind of thing, where you come back -- because we were working different schedules -- and I would come back and be like, ‘Oh, is it in there? Oh, there's something new!’ and see what he did,” Matt Susong said. “It would push me to do something else. And that was like the first time I think in my entire musical life that it really happened like that.”
Matt and Michael Susong have both loved playing music for years, a love that was partially instilled by the love their father had for music. But in recent years, that love of music has taken a new shape. The two have played music separately and have at times helped one another with projects or ideas, but now they are directly working together – from a distance.
Michael Susong lives in Winston-Salem, and Matt Susong in Charlotte. To make music together without constant road trips, the two send files back and forth, adding elements and edits to the tracks each time.
“The distance feels less now than it did before, even though it's still there,” Michael Susong said. “We just have like found this way to conquer it through collaboration, and Dropbox and music.”
Both brothers reflected on the ways their dad’s involvement in music became a part of their own lives. Matt Susong said some of his earliest memories include singing with his dad around the house. Their dad always encouraged their musical endeavors and was one of their biggest supporters.
Matt Susong said even in the difficult months when their dad had cancer, their shared love of music shined through. He remembered his dad, while feeling the impacts of his medication, making a point to tell a nurse that he and his son were both “really good singers.”
“He wasn't a bragger,” Matt Susong remembered. “He wasn't, but he knew he was good in that kind of way. And that was - I will never forget him saying that."
They lost their dad to cancer in 2017.
As part of an effort to keep him alive through music, Matt Susong said the first time the brothers wrote a song together was also in 2017. They then started working together in earnest in 2021 during the pandemic. This past year, their newest project came to life. Matt Susong started writing the songs last fall, but most of the creation of the EP took place in February of this year as part of the RPM Challenge. Matt Susong said at the end of the month, Michael wished they had more time to work on it.
“I was like, it's an arbitrary deadline -- you don't have to do anything,” Matt Susong said. “So we just said, alright, well, we believe in the songs. We think they're good. Let's keep working on it and just see kind of what happens.”
When they finished their EP “we are in this together" under the band name "susong," the brothers decided they wanted to increase access to the songs and put them on Spotify and Apple Music.
Michael Susong said he hopes people enjoy “we are in this together” and that it gets stuck in people’s heads. But he also hopes it will impact some the way it impacted the two brothers.
“I hope that it sparks like a new conversation with somebody or a chance to think, ‘Where can I find common ground with one of these people in my life and rebuild that relationship and reconnect?’” Michael Susong said.
When asked if they believed their dad would like the new EP, both Matt and Michael Susong agreed.
“He would have been very proud of this record,” Matt Susong said. “And the fact that we collaborated on it so closely, that it features our strengths together. And that it's pretty personal.”
They each bring their own musical skills, style interests and personalities to the music, which they believe is part of why it works.
“We're different, we're very different,” Michael Susong said. “But music is kind of this rallying point for us. And then in those conversations about like music, we inevitably talk about our lives and our families and our jobs. And it's just brought us -- we're basically best friends now. And we've always, always been good, good brothers and good friends, but it's really elevated the relationship.”
It’s a full circle moment for the brothers, releasing music from a project that brought them closer together despite tough times. Adding to that full circle moment, Matt Susong notes his own children have a budding love for music as well.
Contact Emma Korynta at ekorynta@wcnc.com.