Interview: Mirador’s Jake Kiszka + Chris Turpin Discuss Debut LP

“If you’d have asked me or Chris if we would have opted to do a side project — if we had a choice in the matter — it would have probably been ‘no.'”

Greta Van Fleet‘s Jake Kiszka and Ida Mae‘s Chris Turpin caught up with Loudwire Nights host Chuck Armstrong to dive into their new project together, Mirador. This conversation took place backstage at the Granada in Lawrence, Kan., on Oct. 13 and then aired on Loudwire Nights on Tuesday (Oct. 21).

You can hear the full chat in the player near the bottom of this story.

“There was enough on the table and enough responsibilities,” Kiszka continued as he opened up about what led to the creation of Mirador.

He admitted it was a culmination of his friendship with Turpin as well as the timing of being grounded in Nashville during COVID in 2020 that helped spark the idea for the new band.

“I think [Ida Mae] were putting together the record Click Click Domino at the time,” Kiszka recalled.

“We were out to dinner or something one night and [Chris was] like, ‘Would you come over and play on the record and maybe see if we’d do something.’ And I did … I’ve never had an equivalent or close to an equivalent connection to someone artistically like [my relationship with my brothers].”

Turpin was ready to affirm the unique connection he and Kiszka had.

“You get in a room with anyone to work, whether that’s a co-writer, producer, a songwriter, a collaborator — there’s always a level of sort of intensity of what’s this going to look and feel like,” Turpin shared.

“That first day, I think we had two songs and three songs the next…and that’s when we knew that there was something really a bit more fierce at play rather than, okay, this is just an afternoon co-writing session.”

That connection grew and grew — as did the amount of songs they were writing together — and it eventually led to the release of their debut self-titled record on Sept. 19, 2025.

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“There was so much that I had built up, musically and guitar-wise, that wouldn’t have necessarily translated to Greta [Van Fleet],” Kiszka said.

“I that that within the structure of Mirador, in these confines, I was going to be able to utilize a lot of that stuff.”

What Else Did Mirador’s Jake Kiszka + Chris Turpin Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• What the songwriting process was like for Mirador: “Let’s go back and get to early country blues, let’s go back to really early European folk ballads and pull up all this stuff and just see where it lands. Jake was like, ‘Yeah, great, cool.’ Whereas my wife [and Ida Mae partner] would be like, ‘Why? How much further back can we go?'”
• The connection they have to early blues and “the crossroads”: “That seems to be a theme of the early days of blues and rock and just this idea of making deals with the devil. I think there’s a lot of mysticism and ancient tribal religions that float over from Africa and influence a lot of blues and Native American music. There’s an idea that it’s always the point from these strands of mythology and belief systems and religions and ideas of primitive humanity [that serve as] the basis of what Chris and I were digging into.”
• What’s on the horizon for Greta Van Fleet: “There’s some things in the works … There’s a bit of smoke and mirrors behind the closed curtain, but I think there’s something boiling in the background. The smoke is rising.”

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below

Jake Kiszka and Chris Turpin joined Loudwire Nights on Tuesday, Oct. 21; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.