nothin Earthside Takes Flight For Europe | New Haven Independent

Earthside Takes Flight For Europe

The New Haven-based progressive rock band Earthside is gearing up for quite a year. Its epic first full-length album A Dream In Static, which the band dropped in October 2015, has been nominated for four awards from the North American Independent Rock Association. Earthside followed that with a U.S. tour and is now preparing to embark on a European tour.

And it has done all of it so far without the support of a major label. How?

It seems like the most successful bands pop up out of nowhere,” said guitarist Jamie van Dyck, though usually these big monster success stories are created by the industry. Even though the labels have less power now, they still have a good amount of power. Or money does — there are a lot of opportunities that you have to pay for to get.”

Without a label, he added, we thought: we have to create a product that is undeniable — the immediate impact of seeing it and hearing it has an awe factor.” So that Earthside could, in a sense, come roaring out of nowhere. The model was: We’re not going to put out a song. We’re just going to show up as if we have all the cheat codes.”

Earthside as a specific project emerged fully formed, however, thanks to a lot of hard work, and musical friendships that some of the band members formed as kids.

We all met each other through growing up in this area,” van Dyck said. He and Frank Sacramone, who plays keyboards in Earthside, are from Bethany. Drummer Ben Shanbrom is from New Haven. Bassist Ryan Griffin is from Hartford. Van Dyck and Sacramone met in elementary school and have been friends — and musical companions — ever since.

We really raised each other musically,” van Dyck said, instilling in each other the passion to be creative.”

That passion led, in time, to the formation of Bushwhack. When Frank and I went to form a high school band, it was clear we wanted Ben to be a part of it,” van Dyck said. Bushwhack had a several-year run in the area and notice abroad. Like so many other young bands in the area, the musicians in Bushwhack cut their teeth at the Space.

We really got to hone our craft, and try out new songs, and see what worked on an audience,” said van Dyck. That stage was really huge for us.” Toad’s also gave us a lot of opportunities before we’d proved ourselves.”

When they started Earthside four years ago, van Dyck said, Ryan was there from the get-go.” But unlike many bands, including Bushwhack, Earthside didn’t start off by gigging. We were kind of incubating it, working in our secret laboratory,” van Dyck said with a laugh.

The band’s members wrote the strongest material they could for what became A Dream in Static. Earthside, like Bushwhack, is an instrumental band, and some of the songs on the album called for vocals. Instead of getting a lead singer, Earthside hatched the idea of getting in touch with their favorite vocalists from bands they admired, sending them each a demo of a specific song and asking if they would record vocal tracks. The result was a bit of an all-star lineup of prog vocalists taking turns at the mic for Earthside’s debut record.

In the case of Lajon Witherspoon from Sevendust,” said van Dyck, to have him sing on a song that I wrote … I was wearing Sevendust T‑shirts in high school.”

Earthside embarked on its first U.S. tour — supporting Swedish band Soilwork, whose vocalist, Björn Strid, also appears on A Dream in Static — when another band, Decapitated from Poland, had to drop out.

That was proof that we could be a touring band,” van Dyck said. We felt like we needed to harness momentum and take advantage of being hot off of that. Another one like that was not just going to fall from the sky.”

So the band’s members started talking to people. David Castillo, who had produced A Dream in Static, had also worked with progressive metal band Leprous, which is phenomenal,” van Dyck said. Castillo showed the video for Earthside’s Mob Mentality” — the song that features Witherspoon — to Baard Kolstad, the drummer in Leprous. Kolstad really liked it and showed his bandmates.

We were really into their record, and they were doing a European tour,” van Dyck said. Leprous and Earthside started talking to each other. Sooner or later after that, it was them inviting us on tour. It took a little finagling and discussing, but here we are.”

Earthside will play dates across Western Europe with Leprous in April. In October, the band will be in the Netherlands for ProgPower, a progressive rock music festival.

We need to go out and spread our wings in Europe, because that’s where our kind of music seems to do best,” van Dyck said.

The European attention has, of course, spurred talks about whether Earthside should relocate.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being here,” van Dyck said. One advantage is, of course, our families…. I like Connecticut. I would like to raise a family here. At the same time, there is something psychological about going off into the world.” Sacamore does production work in Connecticut, sometimes out of Adorea Recording Studio, part of the Space complex; he has worked with Head with Wings and José Oyola). Van Dyck teaches at Neighborhood Music School. Griffin teaches music in Hartford. Shanbrom is a freelance writer.

It may be good to move somewhere else,” van Dyck said. But these are always our roots, our initial home.”

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