Rye Coalition

If there's one thing that's interesting about New Jersey's Rye Coalition, it's that they're a dysfunctional family, a tight fitting cable-knit sweater of emotions. Rye Coalition comes from their daddy. They live only for the beat, inhaling smoke, contracting fever, and continually producing quality albums. Who would've guessed that seven years after their inception RC would be opening for legends The Fall at the Knitting Factory?

Seven years ago, Rye Coalition lamented of dwindling, sweet love affairs, seeing tomorrow, and never saying goodbye. Seven years later -- today -- Rye Coalition takes a more shallow approach to love in exchange for the pseudo-brave, grab-life-by-the-balls approach.

In the year 2001 Rye Coalition have come full circle as human beings in their relationships to each other, those in their lives, and the music they create. They are ready to bring the rock to the people. For the first time since 1995, Rye Coalition consists of its original quintet line-up, "The Hard Luck Five": the line-up that broke those bastards with such jackrabbit-catchy tunes as "Baby Put Out Old Flames" and "Romancing The Italian Horn." Rye Coalition began as part of some white-bred punk, hard-core, metal, emo, independent rock, college wierdo-fest. At an average age of seventeen after one summer of touring on a five-song demo in 1994, Rye Coalition recorded two seven inches and a split twelve inch with Karp featuring White Jesus of 114th Street, called by some the greatest emo record of all time.

The irony of it all was that Rye Coalition felt like a bunch of fucking lepers who didn't know, care, or want to find out what emo was. The truth was, Rye Coalition loved to make music together, loved their friends, and enjoyed meeting interesting people on the road with whom to talk and exchange ideas and emotions. Their parents were a bunch of divorced music lovers who loved their kids but…had some interesting things going on, to say the least. Rye Coalition were brought up on hamburgers, cigarettes, Budwieser, and rock n' roll. They live life to learn. Their only goal is to become better musicians and write songs that give people enjoyment. Rye Coalition have no regard for politics, vegans, straight-edge, or emo and this causes the majority of the people they play for to turn their noses up or dismiss Rye as a bunch of scumbags without ever knowing them as real human beings. For the minority of fans that love to rock regardless of anything, Rye Coalition have always been more than grateful. And the people that actually get to know these five guys usually admit that they're as nice as they come. At the time of Rye's inception, New Jersey bands like Merel, Rorschach, Born Against, and Native Nod were playing at ABC No Rio and managed to gain some national acclaim. These were before the days of magical commercial engineering like At The Drive In on David Letterman or The Strokes on a bill with Ozzy.

In 1996, during the college years, Rye Coalition recorded its first full-length without H.J. Wiley V, one of the group's guitar players. Hee Saw Dhuh Kaet was the record and it captured an exciting and inventive direction for Rye. It was the first time they tried their hands at the big rock studio. The songs were good but they surely weren't bright-eyed, headless numbers about love lost with hope for a better tomorrow. Song structures adhered more to musical precision, and lyrical subject matter examined the chaos of the soul -- the forked cobra tongue realization that people are imperfect, ridiculous, clown-like beings who live by mistakes. The only things that really matter are what the individual truly values. For Rye Coalition, that means the people they love, artistic contribution, imagination, productivity, non-conformity, and musicianship. On Hee Saw Dhuh Kaet Rye achieved this with poignant, off-kilter lyrical images, skronky angular song structures, and the slightly unabashed display of a classic rock sweet tooth.

After another line-up change, replacing J. A. Morey with drummer G.J. Leto, moving D.A. Leto to bass, Rye Coalition turned a sweet tooth for classic rock into an obsession-like homage that commenced in a piano-led coda replete with strings, acoustic guitars, and Rye's first attempt at a classic rock march (a staple of any true rock outfit). Aptly titled "Through the Years," it featured J.Gonnelli's father, J. Forsdahl, on piano. With two brothers, a father, a son, and one very close friend, it was clear that at its best being in Rye Coalition meant creating ugly music with your family. If the world still exists, check the Nick Gilder tribute section at Douche Bag's Vinyl in thirty years and you'll find this insane-a-thon, The Lipstick Game, recorded in 1998 by four interesting fellows with a penchant for who the hell knows what.

Seven years after it all began, after a disjointed chain of events and lifestyle changes, Rye Coalition are once again "The Hard Luck Five"… and they put together a brilliant testament of their original ethos to prove it. The record is called On Top and the songs speak in strange pictures; beautiful women too hot to cool down, smoking pocket books, getting the stank off your hang-low, goin' out to have a good time, alright!, the kids, jailbirds, indentured servants, city streets, old ladies, filthy men, balls and chains, gigalettes and gold chains, empty-headed rock critics, and the roots of rock n' roll. As 2001 winds down to a mindfuckingly bizarre close, Rye Coalition have realized that it is more important to bring the rock to the people with the ones they love than to give their money to The Man. Rye Coalition's third full length, On Top, is a gesture of five close friends trying to keep hope alive. It's an island of laughter in a sea of confusion and madness. Hopefully you don't miss the point.