Biography
If you hang around with the guys from 1876 while they're recording you'll hear a certain word used a lot: ugly. "Make it uglier". They're more than capable of shitting out a 3-chord pop tune but they'd rather make you feel like you're being aurally assaulted. Fear, vertigo, anxiety, nausea, claustrophobia, etc. would be the desired effect. They're not bad guys but they don't feel good.
The way 1876 started explains why the word "ugly" gets thrown around a lot. Fernando Solis (vocals) and Joseph Allsop (guitar, vocs) met at a point in time when they were both falling apart and ostracized. No matter how much they both tried to fix things they ended up getting into deeper and darker places. As Fernando says "You really do succumb to the things you hate". I'd write some of what they did here but I don't want you to stop reading and not listen to the record. Somehow in the midst of this chaos they managed to get Joe's old bandmate Justin Benyo (drums) to believe they could hold it together enough to write songs and play gigs. The general idea was play as loud and as heavy as possible (they briefly debated buying a PA to amplify Justin's kit because he wasn't able to play as loud as the amps). Their influences came from the old guard (Zeppelin, the Stones, Blue Cheer, The Zombies, Motorhead) but also the now (Refused, Cursive, Converge, Radiohead, Glassjaw). They banged out an ep with all of the pitfalls that plague a fledgling band. The songs were good but they weren’t able to capture the raw energy of their live shows and the right sound from their gear. The recording process ended up being the swan song for the band. Frustration over the record, addictions and egos led to fights which led to a break up. Joe started a country band and Fernando started a singer-songwriter project with Justin on drums. It took a few years but eventually they all realized that they were kidding themselves if they thought anything else could be as good as 1876. Fernando dropped the bass duties to Josh Porter to focus on vocals. In the fall of 2012 the began work on "1876 Presents: Mother Tongue" with producer/engineer Brandon Wiard (Drunken Barn Dance, The Ultrasounds, Jack & The Bear, Coke Dick Motorcycle Awesome) at Backseat Recording (Ann Arbor, MI).
As Fernando says: Good or bad things about us, about anyone, that we try to change, hide, or lie about are the things that make up 1876.
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