efren

www.efrenmusic.com www.reverbnation.com/efrenrock www.efrenrock.blogspot.com www.youtube.com/efrenrock www.myspace.com/efrenrock Efren is a freak folk group out of the Classic City- Athens, GA. Their music is a unique confluence of Americana, Country, Rock and Folk influences. Efren began when Scott Low, the main songwriter, wrote and recorded the debut album, Thunder and Moan, in the spring of 2009. As Low reached out to friends to perform these songs, many new tracks were added to the set lists. Playing over 100 shows in the first year and a half, as well as recording and releasing a full band EP, Always Been a Bleeder, the band took the songs to stages across the Southeast. With all four members having jazz backgrounds, the music is in constant flux. However, Efren is decidedly not a jazz band; rather, they are regularly compared to such bands as Iron and Wine, Bonnie Prince Billy, The Band, Pink Floyd, and Mumford and Sons. This is modern Americana music with a hint of psychedelia and experimentation. This is North Georgia Folk music with songs about front porches, losing love, bourbon and good friends gone and still here. This is Southern Soul music. No one walks away from listening to Efren without understanding the intense emotions and hard times that have gone into creating these songs. Now with a huge catalogue of original compositions, no show is ever the same. No performance is without it's own, unique, optimistic uncertainty. On June 28th, 2011 Efren will release its first full-length, full-band album: Rise On Up and Melt. Recorded and produced by the band in their homes, the album is a very personal and hands-on experience. Efren feels this is absolutely their best effort to date; their songs and performances continue to escalate. With a solo LP and a full-band EP done, Efren decided they would undertake writing, producing, and recording a full-band LP which would span the textures of the entire group. They set up a make-shift studio in drummer, Jamie’s, farm house. Over two weekends Scott Low, Jamie Derevere, Darrin Cook, and Jonathan Brill ventured into recording a group of new songs, some stage tested and some fresh. With cicadas screaming, with fans and AC units shut off for enough quiet to capture the songs, the members sweat out Rise On Up and Melt. Efren played all thru the nights searching for just the right feel which would formulate the new LP, trying to incorporate songs ranging from quiet solo material (‘Salt to Be Free’), to epic psychedelic rockers (‘Mr. Greene’), to bluegrass stompers (‘Frogbird’). The experimentations went on through the night, while tracking ‘Mr. Greene’. This song is a calling out to Wilmot Greene, the owner of the recently burned and gutted Georgia Theatre, asking him to bring back the iconic venue. Efen poured a lot of personal emotion and turmoil into the epic tale, finding a new layer of freak folk heretofore unrecorded. After a few weeks of tweaking with the recording, as well as trashing a couple songs, the album drifted into limbo. The main songwriter, Scott Low, fell into a dark period after his marital separation. A new outlook on the album emerged. With doubting emotions and broken love, Low penned what would be the tracks to round out the album. Efren set up in Scott’s recently emptied house, finishing the rest of the tracks of the album. Though not the original intention, Rise On Up and Melt became the telling of a songwriter’s story of lost faith in love and trust. Four songs in particular encapsulate Low's fall and resurrection from a lost family. The harmonious title track ‘Rise On Up and Melt’ was the single love song ever written about Scott’s recent ex-wife. The lonely ‘Salt to Be Free’ is about experiencing the doubt as these vows promised were slowly escaping, fraying, and collapsing. The song ‘Like a Coat’ has mutated in meaning from a realization that a love and a relationship was over, into an anthem that one can alter perspective and find true love and trust. Finally, the closing song on the album, ‘Sunday Light’, was written as a new, maybe reckless love emerged. The possibility of happiness was glimpsed and a spontaneous song was born. Within 20 minutes ‘Sunday Light’ was written and recorded in a way unconventional to the rest of the album. Spontaneously recording 'Sunday Light' in two takes, the track was instantly one of the most intense and fresh songs ever recorded by Low. With preparations for many more shows, a solo album and an extremely louder, different Efren album on the horizon for late 2011, Scott Low and Efren are ready to keep making intriguing freak folk music. Music grown from the thick heat and hard clay in and around Athens, GA. "These part folk, part psychedelic jazz, pinch of bluesy rock, dash of country twang songs are the songs that fill the night sky around a bonfire in Autumn. They are the songs you hum as you clear away empty whiskey bottles and cigarette butts from the low-key gathering of friends you hosted on your porch last night. They are the songs that play when you remember that perfect first date that eventually lead to the worst breakup of your life, fond and fragile." The Silver Tongue Online by NNelms "Always Been A Bleeder is a late summer treat on a stick that suggests these boys might be ready to go toe-to-toe with simpatico artists like Iron & Wine or Matt Bauer." - My Old Kentucky BLOG "...lush harmonies that make them memorable and showcases a swagger where the band doesn't try hard to be good but still comes off as calm, cool and collected." - The Fire Note by Christopher Anthony "...shimmering, invigorating folk with psych overtones. Well worth a few minutes of your time." - Mad MackerelBooking True southern songs, backed with intense Rock. efrenrock.