Atlanta’s Little Tybee release new CD, embark on fall tour

November 23, 2009

tags: Atlanta bands, folk-pop, Little Tybee, Local Bands

By CAROLINE COX

If Little Tybee’s music were a body, the guitar strums would be the sturdy, supportive backbone, the violin would be the blood flowing through each stanza, the drums would be the faint yet purposeful heartbeats, and Brock Scott’s voice would undoubtedly be the soul.

From the skeleton of now-defunct band The Brock Scott Quartet came the five-piece Atlanta folk band Little Tybee.

Sounding like what would happen if Jack Johnson and Thom Yorke were sitting in a forest listening to Irish pop, Little Tybee have created a unique sound that has set them apart from any other band in Atlanta’s music scene.
A Savannah native, Brock graduated from SCAD Atlanta in 2008 with a Sculpture degree, but found himself reevaluating his career path.
“Halfway through college I started questioning if [sculpture] was something I really wanted to do,” he says. “I thought about what would really make me happy, and I realized that it was playing music.” This led to the formation of The Brock Scott Quartet, an Atlanta band that gained moderate notoriety among the local scene.
After a financially draining tour of the east coast and some rearranging of band members, Little Tybee was formed in the beginning of 2009. Brock plays the guitar, piano and sings, Josh Martin also plays guitar, Ryan Donald plays bass, Pat Brooks plays drums, and Ryan Gregory plays violin.
“These guys are some of the best musicians I know,” Brock gushes. “We all come from completely different music backgrounds– I listen to a lot of Irish folk, Ryan Gregory likes Middle Eastern stuff, and I’m pretty sure Ryan Donald used to listen to a lot of Primus. I think, by having all of these different influences, it definitely helps us sound more unique.”
Little Tybee recorded their first EP in Brock’s Atlanta home over just four days.
“Pat Brooks came up [from Savannah] and moved into my living room for a week, and we just started writing and recording every day,” Brock explains. “Then, Ryan, who was also in Savannah at the time, came up and added bass on some tracks for fun, and it just came together. On tracks like ‘My Luck Will Surely Change,’ you can tell that we were all writing together, but the stuff we’re coming out with now is so much stronger because we are truly cohesive now.”
That “stuff” Brock refers to is Little Tybee’s newest album, Building A Bomb, which was self-released on November 10th of this year and is being accompanied by a small batch of east coast tour dates this fall. All of the CD covers, as well as the band’s posters, were hand printed in Atlanta by artist Jason Kofke, a meticulous process which made for a unique product
“I kind of want to collaborate with as many visual artists as possible,” Brock admits. “I want to try to make a bridge between all of the arts; I think it helps create more of an experience than just the music [alone].”
Art and ambiance are clearly factors that Little Tybee consider when planning songs and shows. They’ve played everywhere from an old warehouse on a goat farm to art galleries illuminated by gigantic light installations to tiny coffee shops with a backdrop projection of Planet Earth. All of these scenarios seem to fit properly with Little Tybee’s breezy, rhapsodic music and Brock’s high-pitched, effortless vocals.
Though they are currently in talks with different labels about a record deal, Brock says that doing everything themselves– booking their own gigs, making their own connections, and producing their own material– taught them more about the industry than they could have learned otherwise.
“There’s a methodology to this business,” he notes. “We used to have to beg for shows, but now that we’ve built connections and learned what to do, we don’t even need to pay a booking agent at this point; we can just do it ourselves.”
Though school obligations and varying availabilities of Little Tybee’s members leave their future uncertain, the band intends to keep writing, recording, and taking Little Tybee as far as it can go.
“Where to next?” Brock ponders. “I think the next big thing we should do is have Little Tybee play on the actual Little Tybee. I think that would be the true experience.”