Our Story

While Autopilots are a new band and have only been at it a few years, their individual and collective histories as musicians go back many years and many bands, primarily up and down the East Coast but also as far west as New Mexico. They’re an intense bunch on the subject of music, starting with singer/guitarist and primary songwriter Matt Lee, who explains the failure of one of his early bands by saying, “We cared too much.”

It took a while, but in Autopilots he found a group of like-minded players with the right balance and mindset to thrive. The work is evident on “Passenger,” Autopilots’ debut full-length studio album. Guitarist George Patrick, who serves as Lee’s primary songwriting foil and co-pilot, says the album is about “the ride we are all on as we experience life,”

Patrick came up in the Chicago indie-rock scene of the early 2000s with a band called Magnus, before landing in Raleigh and connecting with Lee. With bassist Karl Amelchenko (who previously played in bands in New Jersey and Wilmington), those three played together in different combinations for a number of years before formalizing as Autopilots in 2023, taking their name from the fact that aviation runs through all their family histories. Dawson Roark, a longtime veteran of various bands around the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill Triangle, signed on as drummer, with Molly Lee completing the quintet as backup vocalist. Serious regular gigging commenced at the beginning of 2025. “I’ve always found that what gets you going is booking a show,” says Matt Lee. “Give yourself a deadline.”

Once the band was up and running, new songs began to flow. The group’s material is very much a group effort, but songs tend to begin with Matt bringing in the basic kernel of a tune for Patrick and the rhythm section to flesh out the arrangements.

“After Matt and George have the basics of a song worked out, Dawson and I add what we can to make it more of a rock song,” says Amelchenko. “I see my role as to make things a little more weird, find a space where I can make some noise. That’s easy to do with Matt’s songs because he writes really good stuff.”

A dozen of those songs came to be on “Passenger,” which Autopilots recorded at Raleigh’s Osceola Recording Studios with Dick Hodgin – “the Chopin of Pro Tools, a master chef, a wizard,” in Roark’s estimation – co-producing alongside the band. The album shows a lot of depth and range, as classic rock with wide open sonic spaces and the occasional folk embellishment.

“Passenger” highlights include “That Time We Did The Thing That Kept Us In It,” which opens the album and builds up to an anthemic statement of purpose; the self-titled “Autopilots,” a driving up-tempo song that wrestles with weighty philosophical concepts of free will; and the murmur-to-a-howl closing track “Spider Lilly.”

Matt Lee cites “On the Shores of Haugesund” as a song that shows how much his songs can change once the rest of the band weighs in with input. An immigrant’s song rooted in Molly Lee’s family history in their native Norway, its original version had more of a folksy pastoral feel with fiddles.            

“It was written almost like an Irish folk song,” says Matt Lee. “But then the band’s sound kept evolving to where that just did not feel right. So we recast it. I love that kind of ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ process of record-making, where Jeff Tweedy comes in with something and then he and Wilco break it down and build it back differently.”            

One thing Autopilots insist is a certainty is that “Passenger” won’t be the last record they make, and they’re already looking forward to the future. Amelchenko says he’s “excited to see how Autopilots evolve as we continue to play with one another,” and they’ll keep on being an organic rock band that plays live without resorting to gimmicks, special effects or artificial intelligence.

“Right now, with so many of us feeling the effects of AI in our lives, I’m even more drawn to human-to-human connection and authentic artistic expression,” says Molly Lee. “I feel lucky to be part of a group that values real, raw human voices and the chance to connect with others through music.” Indeed, authentic connection is the thing they value above all else.

“Every act of creation – music, photography, theatre, dance, whatever – is an effort to connect,” says Matt Lee. “I feel that so acutely with live music. Feeling so disconnected now brought us all back to trying to create something again. ‘Passenger’ is the line we’re throwing out to see who else might need that right now. The process of writing music can make you feel vulnerable, which you need to embrace to make something that feels authentic. That takes a group of closely bonded people who know they can trust each other to make something that matters. I feel lucky to have had that making this record.”