At long last
After years in the studio, local band Ethos finally release sophomore album
After years in the studio, local band Ethos finally releases a sophomore album.
It may have taken them three years to complete, but local band Ethos is finally releasing their sophomore album. But considering the changes the band went through during the recording, the album represents more than just tracks on a CD.
In 2014, Alt-rock band Ethos — Austen Earp, Nick Riggs, Tribb Robinson and Matthew Palopoli — were hoping to follow up their first album but needed money to do that. So they launched a Kickstarter campaign. The online crowdfunding platform allowed the band’s fans and supporters to donate toward the project. It yielded more than $3,000 and the new album was underway.
“We had already started writing for the new album before we got the money to start recording,” said Earp said. “We ended up having half the material when we actually got into the studio.”
That studio was Earp’s Paper Panda Studios where the entire album would be recorded and where he and his brother Weston would do all the mixing. The album was mastered by Jans Bogren at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden.
They recorded all the various pieces of the different tracks separately then brought it all together. It was a slow process. And in the middle of recording this second album, Ethos lost their guitarist.
“Matt (Palopoli) decided he needed to leave the band,” Earp said. “It wasn’t a disagreement or anything. Matt just had priorities that he needed to look after and so he had to quit the band. There are no hard feelings at all.”
But it did leave the band without a guitarist and in the midst of recording, they had to find a replacement quickly.
“Eventually we picked up Kuyper Cummings,” Robinson said. “He lives in Nashville. He learned our material and was playing with us, so he eventually became a member of the band.”
Robinson and Earp said the Palopoli to Cummings switch was surprisingly seamless and that Cummings did a great job committing himself, learning the band’s earlier material, studying Paolopoli’s style and bringing his own style to the band. So both guitarists are featured on the new album. The album, “Shade & Soil” is a 12-track experience. The piano intro into plaintive vocals on the title track is not what listeners would expect from a progressive rock band. That changes at the start of track two.
Earp wrote all the lyrics for the album and sings lead vocals on all the tracks with Cummings and Riggs providing background vocals.
Tracks 6, 7 and 8 are three movements of “The Archetype Suite” which offers a refreshing break in the middle of the album. Opening with piano, classical guitar and featuring strings by Joe and Samantha Lester of the Rome Symphony Orchestra, the suite is “one stop on your musical journey” as the band puts it. Ethos plays locally as well as at venues in Alabama and Tennessee. But with Cummings living in Nashville and the other three band members here in Rome, rehearsals can get tricky.
“It’s tough with Kuyper being out of town,” Robinson said. “But if we have a show coming up, he’ll would drive here for us to practice right before and we make it work.”
To hear a track from the album, visit online at Youtube and search “Ethos Agnosia” which is the video for the 11th track on the new album.
On June 16, Ethos will celebrate the album’s release with a show in the space above Old Havana on Broad Street. Admission is $10. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and music begins at 8 p.m. The show is recommended for those 18 and over.
Copies of “Shade & Soil” will be available to purchase at the release show as well as other band merchandise.