I'm fortunate enough to live in an area with a remarkable public radio station. A weekly show called Homegrown music, hosted by George Graham, brings the best original musicians from around this region (Northeast US) to perform at WVIA (89.9 FM). Once a month the program features two hours of live music, usually divided between two bands or musicians doing one hour performances. When George told me that Echolyn, a band from Philadelphia, would be performing on January's live show, I knew I should check them out - George is NEVER wrong).
They're a five piece ensemble, featuring Chris Busby on keyboards and vocals, Tom Hyatt on bass and midi pedals, Paul Ramsey on drums and percussion, Brett Kull on guitar and vocals, and Ray Weston doing the singing.
George had teased me - they'd just been signed to Epic, they played progressive rock and roll (names like Gentle Giant, and Happy the Man were dropped), and the last time they performed live on his program they tore the roof off the studio.
That was enough for me. I immediately made arrangements to interview a couple members, to help get the word out locally about the show. In the process, I learned they'd already released three albums on their own label (Bridge Records - now out of print), the new album would be released in late February or early March, and I'd be able to talk to Brett (Kull) and Ray (Weston).
Musicians working in the progressive genre are few and far between. I rarely hear them on the radio (even the so called alternative/college stations) and most of the bands, it seems, are from overseas. Thinking, maybe that's because progressive music is more popular in Europe than the United States, I asked them what kind of audience response they were getting. Ray disputed my theory, "There's been strong pockets down in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, out in Michigan, and we have people here in Philly and up in Canada. The people are intense. They're finding out our style of music is very refreshing to hear. I'd like to do this in the United States before we even worry about going over to Europe, although it's very alluring. We'd have a good time."
Brett added, "I agree with Ray. It always seems like the grass is greener elsewhere. It's always hard work doing this sort of thing, like "Wow man, if we play over there it's going to be easier to get some success." The thing about the United States is, it's spread out as far as the people that are potentially into what we're doing. Whereas in Europe, the density of the population and everything, it's not as spread out so maybe that's why it seems like it would be easier for the people to dig what we're doing, over there."
I figured that it must be a love of the genre that inspired them. Brett quickly straightened me out. "To be completely honest, myself and Paul are the only ones that really listen to anything like that. I really dig early Genesis, Yes, and the Gentle Giant stuff but at the same time I grew up listening to Zeppelin, the Beatles - all that. But the other guys didn't listen to anything at all like that, really."
"We figured whatever pushes our buttons, as far as songwritting, let's just do that. It comes out as being eclectic only because there's five people contributing to the music. As far as the progressive thing goes, we definitely are progressive. But our definition of it is, having no boundaries - in a sense of we'll do whatever the hell we want. Whether it's jazz, classical, a combination thereof, or rock and roll. A lot of those "progressive" bands back in the '70s killed themselves because they got into a regimented formulae, rather than doing what the true sense of the word was - breaking down barriers and just playing and exploring the potential of the music."
I had heard Brett and Chris were the main songwriters, but now it seemed like the band wrote as a whole. Brett clarified the procedure for me. "Whether it's a basic outline for a whole song or a little riff and then it builds from there, a person will - whether it'll be Chris or I - present it to the rest of the band and we'll spend the whole afternoon bashing it out, seeing what happens.
It comes down to everybody contributing. Ray will be "Man, this is something I really want to work on lyrically," so he'll take over on it. We all make tapes, take it home, try to come up with ideas, and work on the arrangement. It's cool because we all get along that way..."
I interrupted him, "You do homework? That's really rare for a band..." Brett chuckled, "Yeah, we have a blast doing that. That's the one thing I like doing the most, just workin' on new songs. It's great to have that finished product. It's like "Ahh, we're finally done!"
I figured they must produce a lot of material! Brett confirmed it, "It seems like we write all the time. When I play guitar at home I'm constantly working on new stuff. I should be practicing the old songs [we all laughed], but I know Chris is the same way. With Ray, every time I see him he's jotting things down in his note book..." Ray broke in laughing, "Not that they make any sense!"
Too much material, maybe? Brett agreed, "You know, you've got a point there. We always want to do as much as we possibly can. And the album... there's so many different things on there, it might be confusing to people. But to us, it's cool there's such a variety of things. We wrote the songs for *As The World*, how long ago?" he asked Ray. "All of them are a year old by now..." he replied.
Brett continued "Now we're finally getting a chance to play them, which is cool, but we want to start writing again. We're probably not going to get to another album for at least a year because the album will be out... March 7th is the new date and from there we'll be on tour, trying to promote the album. Guess we'll be workin' on stuff in hotel rooms. [they both laughed]"
Since I was going to see them perform before I heard their albums, I asked if the live versions were the same as the recordings or if there was room for improvisation. Brett replied, "As far as improvisation, we keep everything the way it is on the album . I mean, it's written a certain way to... get a... point across. Whew! [they both laughed] For pre-production and shit we were working on the songs for about a month trying to get 'em tight. Then we spent three months recording them. So they turn out a certain way."
"But it's amazing because you get out on the road, you start playing, and these other emotional things start happening with the songs. It's pretty cool. There are some spots where different things are happening - slightly different - but other than that, we spent a lot of time making the songs as good as possible and we really try to capture that vocally and musically."
I was also curious if their albums differed from one another. "We keep trying to go forward as far as pushing ourselves." explained Brett, "Like on this new album. We did a lot more stuff with vocals, harmony wise, which is another whole step ahead. We really pushed ourselves a lot in that direction. I know Chris wanted to use more piano on this album, we did that. There's B-3 on this album, which we wanted to use. That's about it really. We do try to do different things on every album."
Ray explained, "We had the opportunity to have more things because Sony helped foot the bill for us." Brett gave me an example, "We kind of experimented on the last three albums with strings - real string players - but this time we had a chance to use a whole ensemble, I think there was an 11 or 12 piece ensemble, which is really nice." I interrupted, to ask if they could perform those songs live. Brett warmly replied, "I'm glad you brought that up. Chris' parts... what he's doing is layering piano parts with string parts, so you don't miss it at all. We made sure the songs stand on their own in the live versions before we went to the studio versions. So by taking something away - in a minor sense - it's still going to work. There's two songs we used the whole ensemble on and they're great live. They have their own characteristics and, like I said, Chris layers his piano with some string stuff so you don't miss it at all. When we were writing this, we wanted to play these songs out."
"There is one song we don't play out, the intro to the first song on the album - *Always the Same*. Chris specifically wrote it with vocal part, accompaniment, and strings. We knew we weren't going to play it live. It's about 45 seconds long and it's cool, because you pop it on the DAT machine and come out to it. It's pretty intense."
