A great musician and an old friend of mine, Mike Faryna, had a line in a song he wrote that always stuck with me – “music breeds music and that’s what I’m doing”. I talked to him about it at one point and in short, he said that the line is something undeniable and something we’ve all experienced. Music influences. Music touches almost everything, leaves it mark and probably most of all, on other musicians. Musicians grow by absorbing the influence of other people’s music and other inspirations and Mike’s line meant, it was influenced by music and he creates music to spawn new music. Its pretty organic sounding when you put it like that. This edition of Tunesday Tuesday shows how one band had a cascading influence in the forming of three total bands, one of which is right in our backyard.
There are people out there that may have missed the era of The Receiving End of Sirens. As a lover of albums and not listening to singles or mixes, their sound and genre variations of driving rock, post-hardcore and ambient, almost choral or choir-like incorporation, really spoke to me with the way they pieced together an amazing concept album, “Between the Heart and the Synapse”. Below is probably their most well-known song off that album, “Planning a Prison Break”.
Before the entering the studio to record their second album, “The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi”, the band lost a prominent member – keys, guitarist and vocalist, Casey. As a fan, I expressed concern about the band to a friend of mine, who’s band’s album was being produced by the same producer as TREOS’ new album, Matt Squire. Through the grapevine, I was told Squire stated something along the lines of, “Receiving End will be fine. Casey was extremely talented, but far from the only talented member in the band.” That was all I needed to hear to calm my nerves. Squire was right. Here’s “Smoke and Mirrors” off of the second TREOS album, “The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi”.
In the vein of music breeding music, the story doesn’t end there. Casey had always kept a side project, which was really more of a home for the music he was writing that didn’t fit the post-hardcore style of TREOS. The side project came to be known as, The Dear Hunter. The Dear Hunter teeters heavily into that big band sound and contains song structure comparable to that of the songs and score of a musical. In fact, the first three album titles start with Act I, Act II, and Act III, very representative of the sequencing of musicals. When Casey left TREOS, The Dear Hunter became his full-time music pursuit. Although its not one of their singles, I am choosing the song below because it steers this story to hitting home in Pittsburgh. From the album, Act II: The Meaning of, and All Things Regarding Ms. Leading, check out “Red Hands”.
“Red Hands” from The Dear Hunter has always been one of my favorite songs from their albums. Via my family, I grew up on musicals, so this genre really has strong personal channel into me. Their style is an acquired taste if you’re not a natural enthusiast of theater and musicals. A good friend of mine from college, made a post on facebook and/or twitter about how much he loved the song “Red Hands”. Of course, I had to add my two cents and enthusiastically agree so we could start a fanboy-style rant about the song and the band. Months later, I received the news that his band at the time had split up and the vast majority of the members were taking it pretty hard. With music very much still coursing through their veins, he and a few of his old band-mates rejoined with some new faces on board, and formed a new band under the name (unsurprisingly to me), Red Hands. As they are currently in the studio, recording as we speak, new music is 100% on the way. Below is an early demo of theirs, “The Waves Won’t Destroy Themselves” by Red Hands.
So Mike Faryna was right. Clearly music influences and there’s no telling how much it will branch out nor the extent of its longevity. This story’s sequence starts with the original formation of The Receiving End of Sirens in 2003 and runs all the way up to present day. Only even mentioning a fraction of all things related to this story, it still spans through the better part of the last decade. There’s no doubt in my mind, the speed of its influence is nowhere close to diminishing any time soon. If anything, it’s still picking up speed.
Rock on.
