If summer at the Jersey
Shore had a soundtrack, what would it be? Certainly not shitty techno/dubstep
house music. In fact, if that’s what you were thinking, please stop fist
pumping for a moment and strangle yourself with your skintight, neon v-neck. Good,
now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about the real Jersey Shore.
The one that spawned a vibrant and diverse surf community that continues to
flourish to this day. And more specifically, let’s talk about the local band
with a sound that sums it all up perfectly.
Brothers Steve and Dave
Fowler founded Echo Movement back in 2004 and have been spreading their
homegrown brand of reggae ever since. Their first big record, In The Ocean, featured cover art by acclaimed
Jersey surf artist Jay Alders and quickly became a hit locally. Then they took
their music to the masses with a couple of highly successful runs on Warped Tour
that earned them the respect of tour owner Kevin Lyman. In some ways, Echo
Movement’s music is exactly what you’d expect: laidback, melodic, and fun. But
they also have a few tricks up their sleeves.
They don’t fit
stereotypical notions of the Jersey Shore, and they also don’t fit the
stereotypical image of a reggae band. Echo Movement is just as likely to write
a song about weed as a song about astrophysics. In fact, they’ve done both
quite successfully. These guys live to shatter your preconceived notions, so
they took some time out of their national tour to chat with EasternSurf.com and set the record
straight about the community that built Echo Movement, the inspirations that
have set them apart, and the family bonds that have weathered it all.
ESM: To people who don’t know
any better, a reggae band from the Jersey Shore may seem like something of an
oddity. Was the community actually receptive to you guys when you first started
out?
Steve Fowler: As far as a reggae scene,
Jersey didn’t have any less of a reggae scene than anywhere else, other than
Jamaica or the reggae rock scene in California. There just wasn’t much of a
reggae scene anywhere. But we live right outside of New York City, and any kind
of music you could imagine runs through there, so we had access to a lot of
great bands. When we started playing on the Jersey Shore, there were only a
couple other reggae bands, but now there’s a bunch. Coastal communities really
dig on that vibe, so any place where you can surf, or anywhere on the ocean,
everyone seems to be really hip on the reggae vibe.
ESM: And it really seems like
some pretty prominent members of the Jersey surf community have gotten behind
you guys, including renowned surf artist Jay Alders.
Dave Fowler: Yeah, we’ve been
pretty good friends with Jay for a long time, and we asked him if he’d be
willing to work with us on the album cover art for our last album, In The Ocean.
SF: We already were almost
done writing the songs for that album by the time we went and talked to Jay, so
we gave him a sketch, and then he drew up something really fast. We got excited
because he had some cool ideas, and when it was done, it was such an epic piece
of art. We were super stoked, and so was Jay. We actually recorded “Day After
Chill” from In The Ocean at Jay’s
house while he was painting Burning Inspiration, which became the cover for the
album.
ESM: Speaking of In The Ocean, it seems like water features pretty prominently in
most of your songs. How important is the ocean for you guys as a source of
inspiration?
DF: We are water babies to
the full extent of the term. Steve and I were raised in the ocean. I would say
that made the biggest impact on us, and from there, our influences grew to
everything from the sciences, in particular astrophysics for me personally, right
down to loving relationships, and everything in between. We do tend to focus on
science-based realities, and on our next album coming up, there’s a song based
on causality, and on In The Ocean,
the last track started out with a lecture series by Stephen Hawking and went on
to move into the big bang.
ESM: Well, I guess that makes
you kind of the like the mad scientist of the group, right Dave? Tell us a
little bit more about how you incorporate science into your music.
DF: I first found out about this
thing called binaural beats a couple of years ago, and when we were coming out
with this new album, we decided to experiment with it a little bit. The process
only works with headphones, but basically, you have two different frequencies
in the headphones that are playing at the same time. One is going through the
left headphone, and one is going through the right headphone. There’s a
neurological process that results, and the effects range from euphoria to
paranoia. The low frequency range is supposed to invoke some form of pleasant
feelings, so for two of our songs, I used that. It doesn’t sound like much, in
fact it’s practically inaudible, but if you close your eyes, you will almost
certainly feel something, and it’s an experience that could be different for
each person.
ESM: Sounds like binaural
beats are just the next step in Echo Movement’s logical musical progression.
After all, you guys have practically been hypnotizing fans for years with your
energizing live performances. How has life on tour been treating you?
SF: Touring is really hard. When
you think about it, it’s like the ‘60s, when people would just get in a van and
drive across to the other side of the country and do things along the way. We
kind of feel like a group of hippies in a bus just traveling around, meeting
new people, performing, and listening to music. We’re like a band of gypsies in
this bus. Anyone who’s on the road has to have a strong touring ethic;
otherwise you’re not going to survive
ESM: Does your relationship as
brothers make things easier?
SF: I think any time you have
brothers that can coexist in an artistic project, it does nothing but benefit
the band, because you have two people that have grown up communicating with
each other, and when you bounce ideas off of someone like that, in a creative
environment, the outcome is good. It’s also great that we have people we don’t
necessarily see eye-to-eye with in the band. Most of the band members are from
north Jersey, so they were kind of foreign to beach culture when we started
working with them.
DF: Echo Movement operates as
a band of brothers, so even though Steve and I are blood siblings, all of us
are extremely close, and if we didn’t have that common understanding, then we
wouldn’t work as a cohesive unit.
ESM: So what’s next for your
big, happy family?
SF: Well, we’re in
Wrightsville Beach, NC, right now, and there’s a really nice break here. We’re
about to go down to the beach, but we have no surfboards. We’re pretty bummed
about that, but we’re gonna go for a quick dip. You know, shower in public. We
do that quite often. Like I said, we’re hippies on a bus. We take showers in
the ocean.
UPCOMING ECHO MOVEMENT
TOUR DATES:
9/17 The Belmar Pro……………………………….. Belmar, NJ
9/23 Maxwell’s……………………………………….
Hoboken, NJ
9/28 The
Firebird……………………………………. St. Louis, MO
9/29 Cervantes Other
Side………………………… Denver, CO
10/1 The Reef……………………………………….
Boise, ID
10/28 The Blockley…………………………………… Philadelphia, PA
For all
things Echo Movement, visit www.Facebook.com/EchoMovement
