BOBBY "BLUE" BLAND

Bobby first attempted to make contact with Tom Greenberg at college, but no one really noticed Bobby until everyone had already graduated. There was a period (though nobody knows for how long) when a mysterious spirit routinely visited Tom in his room at Bennington College. When Tom finally did meet Bobby face to face in Spring of 2010, Bobby became nervous and got sick all over his little brown tap shoes and turned into a mist. He was naught but vapor for a whole month, but soon after that, they fell in together; Tom making tunes to accompany Bobby’s sad dances. Bobby (a name the members of this band eventually settled on, but can't remember why) kept visiting and whispering into Greenberg's ears, but without a clear direction of what his grand plans might be. After a few shows put on for the local ghouls down at the rotary club, it was clear Bobby had talent, and Tom started making plans for a BIG SHOW. A group was to be assembled. He got together a few of his college buds that he knew played music. Martin Zimmermann was on the cans, accompanied by his longtime bandmate and kindred wanderer Paolo Menuez on thweedles. Roby Moulton was assigned to play wisps and Molly Sarle (of Mountain Man) contributed her serene vocal mistyflips, all at the request of Bobby himself. The resulting sound was a swollen lump of blooming, techni-color spores cast adrift on a warm bed of foam. And it was delicious. Unfortunately, this was all a bit too much for Bobby. Everything happened so fast. On the first night of the BIG SHOW, he once again got worked up and became sick. To make matters worse, the musicians were obscured by a veil of sights projected on a scrim, so the sound-man couldn't see who was playing what, making for a very challenging live mix. Overwhelmed by the chaos of it all, and further confused by the brilliant concoction of smells curated by their friend Ben Taft, Bobby fled the stage as a mist. Despite Bobby’s sudden and unexpected departure, the band soldiered on with the performance. The crowd was hurt and angry at first (why had their beloved, lethargic, dancing wunderkind abandoned them?), but the heaving waves of sonorous tones soon spilled into their restless hearts. The recordings from the show caught the ear of Tim Putnam, who quickly signed the group to his label, Partisan Records. Hot off the success of the BIG SHOW, the group decided to shack up together. They found a suitable home in western Massachusetts in the town of Montague; a ‘ranch’ style house nestled between a giant gravel pit and a wilderness preserve complete with a filled-in pool and busted sauna. In the crucible of isolation, and in preparation for their recording debut, the blooming lump of spores that they had cultivated for the BIG SHOW blossomed even further. Longing for deeper frequencies, the band scouted the talents of Julian Labat to cover low-end, who took to the band's sound "like a frog in a man-made pond." The music was going well, but a name for the group still eluded them. For many months they struggled with this, but in the end decided to name it after their missing front man, Bobby, still assumed to be lurking as a dark mist within the music. As time passed and the debut album release loomed, the Bobby band went on the road. Molly, in her desire to finish her undergraduate degree, bowed out of touring. Who, the band wondered, could replace her sonorous plush pillow of a voice? At Bobby's request again (who showed up out of nowhere when he heard that Molly was leaving), Mountain Man member Amelia Meath rose to the challenge. After Bobby's trip out to SXSW and 2 national tours, Feist caught wind of the vocal talents of the Mountain Man girls and requested their presence in her new band. Bobby, himself a secret fan of Feist, encouraged the girls to accept this bittersweet once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and so Mountain Man officially left the troupe of Bobby-files. But now what? Big changes. Roby and Julian also left the band, to pursue their respective visions in opposite corners of the east coast, and the Mountain Man girls were committed to the Feist tour bus. For a brief period, Greenberg, Zimmermann and Menuez were the only devoted followers left. Bobby wanted more members, and Bobby got what he wanted. He recalled, from many moons in the past during his nightly visits to Vermont, hearing another vocally gifted member of the Bennington Community. Maia Friedman was scouted from the depths of Brooklyn to come back up north to the woods to sing Bobby's favorite songs and even come up with some new ones. Friedman and Bobby instantly hit it off, and after only one rehearsal she was welcomed into the band as a core and permanent member. 2 more tours followed, and after brief hiatus, BOBBY is now working on a second album.