PHOTOS

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Perhaps it was never Chris Du Bray's intention of launching a full-blown project — one that mutated into the quintet known as Some By Sea — but in this instance, not charting such a stringent course eventually yielded greater, more fulfilling results.

Du Bray had been in several groups since the age of 14 and really hadn't reached his full musical potential, particularly when considering the amount of time he'd invested. So, like any other enterprising musician, the guitarist/vocalist opted to hit the stage, performing solely on his terms.

Tagging himself as Some By Sea in early 2003, Du Bray began playing solo acoustic shows within his Seattle locale. When a friend joined Du Bray, Some By Sea's evolution into a band quickly gained momentum, particularly with the addition Rachel Bowman on cello and piano. In fact, in less than a year's time, the one-man show had become a full-blown group and Du Bray was finally in a band that he felt could potentially meet or exceed his expectations. The original intent of creating music on a smaller scale had actually worked its way into a venture far more developed.

Within a few months and in trio formation, Some By Sea had already started recording what would become tracks for their debut, most notably with Bowman's classical influences adding an entirely new dimension to Du Bray's songwriting. After an encounter at one of the band's shows, drummer Daniel Disparte and keyboardist/lap steel/guitarist David Bilbrey joined the effort and completed the outfit.


In January 2004, Some By Sea's debut, Get Off The Ground If You're Scared was released by the band's own label, Kringle Recordings. Generating rave reviews from a vast array of publications, the debut stamped an indelible first impression on music fans and critics alike.

After wrapping successful touring stints in support of Get Off The Ground If You're Scared, Some By Sea found themselves back in the studio a year after their debut's release, composing, demoing and eventually tracking a batch of new material. These sessions would mark the first time Some By Sea collaborated and recorded as an entire unit, which gave the quintet more of an opportunity to experiment and analyze their material. It also marked another shift in the line-up, with the inclusion of bassist Blake Johnston. "This time, we actually had a chance to write these songs and perform them as a group in our practice space and at shows," says Du Bray. "We had the chance to arrange them and try different scenarios with them." Helmed by producer David Nichols (Time To Fly, tex.) starting in March 2005, Some By Sea sporadically pieced their recordings together around the various members' schedules in Tacoma over the course of three months, completing a total of 17 songs. Five were allotted for the band's self-released EP The Saddest Christmas and the remaining dozen for their SideCho debut and sophomore album, on fire! (igloo).

For Du Bray, connecting with his new home at SideCho in the summer of 2005 was rather simple. "The spark was there just as far as getting along, talking about music, SideCho and Some By Sea," he says. "It was pretty obvious for us to go with them based on their past successes with The Pale Pacific and Sherwood."

Placing a solid team like SideCho behind the band was a key factor in the successful release plans for Some By Sea's sophomore effort. "We tried as hard as we could to get [on fire! (igloo)] put out by someone else so we could focus more on touring, playing music, and do whatever it took to promote the album," says Du Bray. The 70-minute, 12-song on fire! (igloo) found the band "taking the sound that we had before and just improving upon it," becoming more epic with certain tracks, infusing a variety of styles and genres, yet all the while maintaining their overall sense of direction. "I'm very confident that we pulled it off," Du Bray says. "The biggest goal to everyone, I think, is to make a record that if we weren't in the group, we'd actually want to sit down and listen to over and over again. It's a group of five complete music nerds and we're our own biggest critics." As for these five critics' seemingly odd choice in album title selection, Du Bray offers a rather logical response that's reflective of the band's forward-thinking idealism. "If you get fire around an igloo, it'll melt instantly. It's a tenuous thing and with the least amount of effort can just be destroyed. And I think that going into this recording and hearing the reviews that were putting us into these classifications, we felt like an igloo that was about to catch on fire. It's just one of those images that felt kind of perfect, something that hopefully can never happen and a direction that we don't want to go. We don't want to be the igloo that burns to the ground!"

Some By Sea elsewhere on the web:

MYSPACE ( http://www.myspace.com/somebysea )
OFFICIAL SITE ( http://www.somebysea.com )
PUREVOLUME ( http://www.purevolume.com/somebysea )