On a working farm, the power take-off is the spinning shaft that transfers an engine’s muscle from the tractor to whatever needs driving. It can be considered the power transferred from one machine to another so the work gets done. It’s hard to imagine a better name for a Wisconsin rock band built around a father handing everything he knows to his son, night after night, from the front of the stage to the drum riser behind him. Frontman Scott Theis is a fourth-generation farmer and lifelong musician who spent decades behind the kit in touring bands before the pandemic pushed him and his teenage son Ayden into the family basement with nothing but time and a shared obsession with music. Scott stepped up to the mic, Ayden took over the drums, and Power Take Off was born. Five years and thousands of highway miles later, the band’s new single “Cornfields at Midnight” debuted on August 18th on all streaming platforms via ANRGIRL/Betachain, distributed through FUGA/Universal.
“Power Take Off is truly a bunch of Midwestern farm boys telling our stories through high-energy rock and roll music,” Scott says. “For the most part, all Power Take Off songs originate from slow country ballads that I write on a piano. Ayden and the rest of the boys give the music the Power Take Off sound.”
That sound, rounded out by guitarists Ethan “Hank” Schluter and Mike “Cowboy” Delp and bassist Jakob “JR” Ripp, lives somewhere between a sound that’s evocative of late ’90s/early 2000s rock, with a modern edge of pop-punk urgency.
The engine at the center of the whole operation is the relationship between a father and son finding and creating harmony, and developing art that can be a fruitful harvest. An apt meta journey from farm to stage. Beyond the fact that Scott is fronting a band with his kid in it, he’s running a rolling apprenticeship, teaching Ayden showmanship, the realities of the road, and the business of music the only way it can really be taught, which is by living it together. For the Theis family, the school of rock and the school of life share a classroom. Every long drive, load-in, and late-night payout is a lesson in work ethic, patience, and how to treat people, the same things Scott learned on the farm and is now passing down from behind a microphone instead of a tractor wheel.
“Being a lead singer and having your 19-year-old kid pounding the crap out of the drum kit behind you, giving the music life, making it breathe, is such a proud, honored, dream-come-true kind of moment for a father,” Scott says.
Ayden, for his part, is simultaneously enjoying the ride, while also becoming a formidable drummer and a creative force in his own right, and he knows exactly what he’s getting out of the arrangement. “I just love the time with my dad. He has been one of my biggest influences as a musician and a person,” he says. “I also really enjoy meeting new people wherever we go. We’ve met so many cool people and so many new friends and fans who have been so supportive of me and Power Take Off.”
“Cornfields at Midnight” finds a great deal of inspiration from the current zeitgeist that the Theis family is watching happen in real time. The farmland they come from is shrinking as cities push outward, subdivisions and strip malls creeping into acreage that fed families for generations. As Joni Mitchell once sang in “Big Yellow Taxi,” about paving paradise to put up a parking lot, the song pulls a similar thread. And while it isn’t necessarily a protest anthem, or a piece of nostalgia bait, it’s a catchy mirror. The song reflects what’s happening to a critical industry across America and allows the listener to sit with it, the past meeting the present at the edge of a field that might not be a field much longer. Where there were once rows of corn under a harvest moon, there are now cul-de-sacs and chain stores glowing at the edge of town, Black Friday crowds trampling one another for the next great deal, with minimal awareness of the bigger ordeal we will all face one day if we don’t stop and notice the patterns cropping up.
The restraint within their messaging gives the music a lot of texture, and the anthemic, dance-worthy hook also makes it a fun song to sing along to in the car or to blast during a night out with friends. And, while plenty of bands write about where they’re from, Power Take Off writes from inside a way of life that’s disappearing an acre at a time, so gradually most people never think to look, and they do it with the volume up and the family intact, and an awareness of some of the most important tenets to hold to in the face of great change—art, connection, and good old rock and roll.
“Cornfields at Midnight” is streaming now on all platforms.
Holly Hutchison Weinman, founder of AnRGirl, is a music‑artist–focused executive with more than 35 years in the entertainment industry and a proven record of identifying successful talent early, including Skid Row, Deftones, Alanis Morissette, Blink-182, Slipknot, Muse, Saliva, Bosson, and Vega 4. Through AnRGirl, she connects independent artists with top‑tier producers, songwriters, strategic opportunities, and reliable promotion—resulting in professionally produced recordings, credible industry chart placements, Editorial Spotify playlisting, and major‑label deals. Her A‑level repertoire and deal‑making expertise was shaped through A&R executive roles at Atlantic Records (a Time Warner Company) and Capitol Records/EMI, guided by mentorship from successful industry leaders in New York City and Los Angeles.
