When Life Gives You Lemons, play Byrh’s Debut Single “Tin Man”

Oct 21

Oct 21 When Life Gives You Lemons, play Byrh’s Debut Single “Tin Man”

The debut album of New Jersey indie-pop trio Byrh has traveled an odyssey farther than all but Odysseus himself. Minus a shipwreck and a menacing Cyclops, but including those Sirens sweetly singing.

The album, Bring Your Right Hand, is cohesive from start to finish. It features relentlessly catchy melodies in its vocals, harmonies, guitarwork and synth; presents credible, bewildered-at-the-state-of-things lyrics; and has a confidence in its delivery and purpose gained through a decade-long discovery process.

The first single, “Tin Man,” is out on streaming services on October 21. A music video will be released in November, and the album will have a wider release later this year.

It all began in Amsterdam, over a decade ago, at the International Community School, where New Jersey-born frontman Sam Hersey and former writing partner Ryan Lovelock first seeded the melodies that would send Byrh (pronounced “burr”) on its long path to Bring Your Right Hand.

Hersey and Lovelock met at school in Amsterdam. For Hersey, his mother was on a professor-swap between Rutgers University and its sister school the University of Utrecht, a short ride outside Amsterdam.

Thus transplanted into that city’s dense web of bright attractions, with its accessible public transit and drinking age of 16, they were empowered to wander, and did so into lots and lots of music shows and clubs. “It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” Hersey said. “I was exposed to lots of music over there.”

They played in one little battle of the bands event together in Amsterdam before finishing high school in 2009. Hersey stayed for an extra gap year before returning to New Jersey, and Lovelock returned to his native Toronto.

Fits and starts over the ensuing years sent many of their shared songs to the digital dustbin. There were immigration and work visa concerns, and a home base for Hersey and Lovelock to operate as a band never materialized.

But the melodies continued to haunt their reverie. Determined to give it one more good shot - without Lovelock this time, through no other fault than distance - Hersey turned local, into the basement scene of his alma mater Rutgers in New Brunswick.

Starting in 2018, he teamed up with bassist Christian Joyner, who was living in a New Brunswick showhouse then named the Roach Motel. Byrh has always been a trio featuring Hersey and Joyner and a throng of drummers; Tony D’Arcangelo, Byrh’s ferocious third drummer, is behind the sticks on Bring Your Right Hand but is no longer with the band.

Recorded at Mt. Moon Studios in Highland Park, New Jersey, Bring Your Right Hand includes three recast songs off Byrh’s 2018 Demos EP, each stepped up in fidelity and tempo, altogether new versions that advance the band’s melodic identity.

“Tin Man,” the debut single released on October 21, is a new release. It clocks in at 2:58 and is accompanied on video by Hersey and Joyner chasing around a malicious lemon. Lemons feature in the lyrics and album artwork as well.

“Tin Man” was the song that “really clicked for the three of us,” Hersey said. “That's why I feel it represents us, represents this album,” and why it’s out first with a video to follow.

The Tin Man is a mascot of sorts, and a real creature at that; he sits atop an office at the Monmouth Mobile Homes Park on Route 1, surveying southbound traffic, spotted by the band once on a drive into New Brunswick.

In the song, the Tin Man is down from the roof, seeking relief from ground shifting beneath his feet and from personal calamity, searching for a moment of peace. Running around with Joyner, Hersey sports a metallic glint on his cheek and in his hair.

Whether Tin Man finds that peace by the song’s conclusion is up for interpretation. But there is at least one lick of relative calm in the pacing song, when the Tin Man is in the shade, sipping lemonade, as Hersey sings in the second verse.

That brief moment is then compelled forward at a frantic pace behind Hersey’s vocal and rhythm guitar, Joyner’s bass and harmonies and D’Arcangelo’s refined drumming, all softened by Byrh’s notable melodic disposition.

“Tin Man” is the song that “defines who we are from a creative identity perspective,” Joyner said during a joint interview.

“When we perform it, ‘Tin Man’ is very raw,” he added. “It’s high energy. It packs it together.”

“It’s usually halfway through the set,” Hersey said. “We play it like 3rd or 4th, and that's kind of when we lock in.”

Byrh spent much of late 2019 and early 2020 playing their songs at “shitty, random” New Jersey bars for audiences that tended to favor cover bands than original music, making for sometimes unwilling, captive crowds. “It takes a few songs for people to get comfortable and receptive to your performance more or less,” Joyner said, and “Tin Man” is the one that pushed through those barriers.

“You can feel it in ‘Tin Man,’ the energy in the crowd,” Joyner said. “And up there we feel it too.”

But their best shows, according to Hersey, were in basements in their native New Brunswick. “Because people actually cared. You have a better, more receptive audience, a bigger audience.” New Brunswick is where Byrh will unveil Bring Your Right Hand this week at their first live shows since the pandemic.

“Tin Man” was also the most collaborative song between all three members of the band. Breaking it in with new drummer Ian Bley will be a compelling test of the new lineup. But the songwriting core of Hersey and Joyner is what stirs the drink in Byrh.

Hersey is the one who brings the initial bits forward in the writing process. He and Joyner would jam over a riff or melody in one of their rooms before letting the natural thing take over. “Christian and I have a nice counterpoint in guitar and bass and we have those melodies,” Hersey said.

“That melody in ‘Tin Man,’ that pre-chorus part, ‘Doooo, do-do-do-do-do,’” Hersey said, “Was me and Christian in a room playing acoustic, and he was on bass. And we were recording it, thankfully. And he started playing the part and we stopped and were like, wait what was that?

“We listened back and kind of figured out the rest of the melody, the second half of it to resolve it. And then we brought that into Tony and were like, this is the A part, ‘In the field…’ and then the B part melody, and then Tony kind of bridged it.

D’Arcangelo’s drumming worked out well as another counterpoint to the Ooh’s and melodies. He incorporated some hard stops to catch a breath. “Those are good cause they pull everyone back in from a driving song, you know?” Joyner said. The drumming emphasis was a major change from Byrh’s demo EP, owing to D’Arcangelo’s input.

“Exceptional drummer. Good man too,” Joyner said of his former housemate and bandmate.

It just didn’t work out, and doesn’t always. Being in a band is like being in a romantic relationship, an emotionally vulnerable partnership, they said.

“When you make music with people, it's much more about the mental and emotional dynamic than anything else, than it is technical ability or whatever,” Joyner said. “Especially when you're producing music, creating like a weird universe in a sense. You have to be with the right people, the same wavelength type of people.”

Byrh is back on the local marquee this month with two gigs, one an underground show in New Brunswick on Friday, October 22, and the other on Wednesday, October 27 at Chamber 43, the aboveground, records/coffee/vintage performance space on George Street in downtown New Brunswick.

The “Tin Man” single is out everywhere today. Stream it below or on your platform of choice! The video will follow in a few weeks. Bring Your Right Hand will hit streaming services later this year. Keep up with the band by following them on Instagram and liking them on Facebook.