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Blind Man's Sun: More Is More
By Bob Makin

In 1972, The Who, Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Genesis were all turning the raw rebellion of rock 'n' roll into art. Only a decade later, MTV was born, the seed of punk rock began to blossom and art rock was given up for adoption.

I don't know how rebellious Blind Man's Sun are apart from a musical standpoint, but I do know their visionary music is the antacid for the fast food that MTV churns out. There will be no throwing these boys against the channel's wall to see if they stick. Instead, Blind Man's Sun independently have released two double discs in three years: 1995's ambitious self-titled effort and this year's vibrantly theatrical followup, "Of the Spheres."

The band was born in 1994 while its original members keyboardist/vocalist J.D. Daddis, bassist Bob White, vocalist/guitarist Marco Femino, guitarist David Chiappetta and percussionist Kevin Romanski were studying music performance and business at Syracuse University. About a year ago, drummer Darren Gage, who is pursuing a master's degree in music at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., joined Blind Man's Sun. Around the same time, the band moved to nearby East Brunswick, N.J., to be more centrally located.

Live gigs became more plentiful, the band became even tighter, but with six cerebral, eclectic composers, it became a challenge while recording "Of the Spheres" -- partly with Dan Archer of Phish fame and partly with Greg Frey of Ween fame -- to find a cohesive sound. By allowing each other to orbit a variety of musical space, they succeeded. Now comes the task of expanding a grass-roots East Coast following, while turning a deaf, dumb and blind industry onto their big batch of tunes.

Imagine if Pete Townshend, Peter Gabriel and Frank Zappa got Kurt Weil, George Gershwin and Stephen Sondheim really high and convinced them to join a rock band. Now who is going to get a band like that? A band that closes each hour-plus disc that comprises "Of the Spheres" -- the largest studio recording ever produced by an independent act -- with half-hour rock requiems.

Kids!

Kids, singing right along with the deepest of Blind Man's Sun's literary lyrics and grooving to the most far-out sections of their mind-boggling mix of jazz, calypso, techno, funk, zydeco, country, gospel, psychedelic and progressive rock and musical theatre.

Townshend once said, "The Kids Are Alright." For long a time -- most of my music journalism career actually -- I wasn't so sure. But with swing, jazz-groove and jam bands on the rise, I feel much better about the direction young people are willing to go with music, real music, not just the cookie-cutter rebellion corporate deems appropriate. Listening to Blind Man's Sun, I'm convinced that, unlike, say, government, business, media and prison labor, rock 'n' roll can be as big as it wants, as big as it needs to be. Fuck 'em if they don't get it.

I get it and that's enough for me. But that's not enough for the band, so I got with them at their rented house in East Brunswick. At the time, manager Michael Chiappetta, David's brother, was shopping a five-song EP distilled from the poppiest moments on "Of the Spheres": the hippie-spirited jam of "Juggling Om," the Rage-Against-the-Machine-on-Broadway nugget "So I'm Singin'," the zydeco stomp of "Hampton," the whimsical "Sprockets" and the Bob Marley-inspired, funky fun of "Lion." OK, so maybe the mythological epic "The Hero's Requiem" and "Indescartion," a Descartes-inspired battle between the mind, soul and heart, are a bit much for MTV, but they both could work on the theatrical stage. When was the last time a rock 'n' roll band brought that much to the table?

Why leave Syracuse? That part of the country is so fertile for the jam scene.

J.D. Daddis: We came to dislike the weather very much. We went to school there, but we're not from there. And the weather really hit us hard.

We're actually more centrally located for our touring. While that scene is very fertile in Upstate New York and New England for jam bands, if the jam band scene had never come to mass fruition, Blind Man's Sun could still exist as a unit.

Where is everybody in the band from?

Marco Femino: I'm from Boston.

Dave Chiappetta: I'm from Long Island.

Daddis: I'm from South Jersey, Medford, and I just moved to Philadelphia. And Bob and Gage are from Glen Ridge, and Kevin's from Albany.

Do the strong compositional skills of the band raise the bar of the jam band scene?

Chiappetta: I don't think any of us went to school to be in a band. It happened naturally, at least for me. I think it's fair for everybody in the band too that this 'scene' opened the door to real music in this kind of ensemble. Each one of us wanted to pursue music, whether it was orchestral music, jazz, film scoring or whatever, we never looked at our music as if we were in a rock band per se. This jam band scene opened those doors.

I don't know if we can raise the bar compositionally at all, because I don't know if we really are in the scene. If you were going to break down all the elements that comprise the bands that are in the scene, we don't really hold all of them or even half of them.

Daddis: I think it's a lot bigger than the jam band scene. There's a lot of variables involved that coincidentally all came together. One is that for the most part, except for maybe Kevin, there's a lot of jack-of-all-trades, masters-of-none in this band. A lot of us could have gone any path: jazz, classical, film scoring or composition. We all fell together.

The entire world is becoming more eclectic and all the barriers are falling down in communication and religious ideas and everything else. This kind of happened to our music. We all come from such different influences. When you throw them all together, you just get a mind-boggling amount of variety and diversity. There just so happens to be this jam band scene that's brewing and continuing to snowball in the Northeast. We happen to get labeled into that scene, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it's probably the coolest thing going on in music right now as far as I'm concerned.

There's a lot of things that I respect that are a part of the scene that isn't really a big part of our music. We're not very socio-political, we're a lot more inward spiritual or life imitative. We like to explore as much of the realm of emotion in music styles as possible. That's not necessarily what the jam band scene is about. It's often very grass-rootsy. Not that promoting peace and environmentalism is something we don't believe in, it just hasn't become a focal point.

Femino: We all take from our influences. It's not, 'Hey, let's write these really crazy songs.' It's more like you write what you feel. A lot of us do relate to classic rock. We always said there's going to be a resurgence of the classic bands, like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and The Who or whatever. If that's where your influences are and what you relate to, those guys were all about writing quality music.

Chiappetta: From pretty much '80 on, music, at least popular music, has been a product of MTV. The world has really changed. Their focal point is on what sells, what doesn't and why it does. But a lot of record companies have forgotten that mega-bands can still exist, bands that are really serious about their compositions, not just fitting a formula but breaking the mold once again, creating a new scene, a new sound.

Daddis: I agree, but one of the reasons the big guys aren't taking a chance on us yet is we move so much faster, society as a whole, 25 years later. It's a lot more of a swallow-someone-up, spit-'em-out, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of routine than it was 25 years ago. At the very least if a band like us, if not us, can continue to produce passionate, quality music, then you'll always have an audience out there, however small, that will always buy it and become loyal fans, because they like to sink their teeth into it.

Someone who listens to our album might not dig it. It might not be a one-listen kind of album, but there are people out there that really want to sink their teeth into something. Those people learn to like it more and more over a long period of time.

Chiappetta: You also take into account that you've got an 18-year-old kid who was born in 1980, they have not experienced a groundbreaking band, except for Nirvana and Pearl Jam. They're pretty much the only two bands that really had that kind of magnitude, that were doing something new and album-oriented. And even both those bands are fairly one-dimensional, but they're the ones that are even close. So I think (serious composition) could work in today's world.

Two double discs in three years. How did you approach that from a songwriting, production and economic standpoint?

Femino: We have individual investors, who are comprised of family and some people who just really believe in the band.

Daddis: We decided to come together outside our little practice room and start a business with which we could sell our music. Most of us actually majored in music business not performance, so whenever we're not playing or writing, we're pretty much sitting around debating trends and reading trade magazines. We've tried to educate ourselves as much in that realm as much as we did challenging ourselves artistically. You can't be a total idealist, and I don't think anyone can say we've compromised at all artistically, but there's so many pitfalls that good bands make business-wise where they go by the wayside, whether it's signing a contract and getting shelved or signing a contract without any leverage. They just sign their careers away. We wanted to be sure we didn't do that. So we're trying to act like a small label would.

Like an Ani DiFranco situation?

Daddis: Right. Of course, we went enormously overbudget. We were freaking out: 'We need 20 grand by tomorrow. How are we going to get it?' We had to beg. We almost tripled the budget. We're very fortunate that we had 25 investors that paid for the whole thing. But this is a six-figure bill. It was not a cheap project.

Chiappetta: It was definitely a major release even for a major label.

Daddis: We're going to bring back epic rock, and you're going to see ridiculous, huge productions.

Peter Gabriel can come out of hiding.

Chiappetta: The precedent we wanted to set with the album is that if it all does roll the way we want it to, we have no intentions of fitting into a mold. We're going to keep going with it, whether it's stage production. I mean, there's no way we'll do a triple CD.

Daddis: We almost did a triple on this one. Four more songs and we could have done a nice triple.

Chiappetta: The experience that we had on this album was unbelievable. The money that we spent was only on the album. We lived in a trailer park for the summer. I slept in my car for three months.

Daddis: The band has not made a penny since we started. We don't take any money out and we work jobs on top of it. You live like a damn pauper, but you have more time to write. I've always found many artists, whether it's actors, musicians or painters, work full-time jobs to stay alive and think they're living poor. But then they put 10 hours into their craft. You should work 10 hours a week, live piss poor, and spend the rest of your time doing what you want to be doing.

Why does playing music justify living in your car for three months?

Chiappetta: It doesn't justify it, but to do what we want to do, to have a fighting chance, we had to.

Daddis: The joy, solace, satisfaction or absolute primordial need to be able to write...for myself, I couldn't live without being able to sit up all night and write and read and play.

Why work with Dan Archer? {editor's note, check out our interview with Dan Archer in this very issue}

Chiappetta: Reputation, price.

Are you happy with the record?

Daddis: Recording a record is so weird. The whole time you're going, 'Oh, I know I could do that better? But is that good enough?' We could sit there for three years and continue to do it better, but eventually you've got to call it quits.

White: We took on a huge project and three-quarters of the way through it, we realized we needed a lot more work on it.

All six of you write songs. Most bands have one or two songwriters and the rest of the band helps out. How do you get a cohesive sound instead of six different sounds?

Chiappetta: We give each person freedom to do what they want. The songwriter will come in with the completed song on their instrument. They'll give everybody the chords and a general idea of what they're going for. Then each person comes up with their part, which, of course, is their style, so each one of our songs has all those styles in it, which creates the sound. There are couple of things on the album that are rigidly written for each part but less than 1/20th.

Daddis: When you have four harmonic instruments and six players total, you don't want to step on anyone's toes or it becomes messy. Lots of times we're trying to fine lines that complement each other. A lot of work is spent on craftmanship. What makes it a Blind Man's Sun song is as much the composition as the arrangement.

What is the most common ground you have?

Fermino: There isn't any.

Daddis: We all appreciate good music. Every one of us would appreciate a phenomenal classical or jazz player, but it doesn't have to be any specific genre of music. I didn't even know who Phish was before I joined this band. I'd never been in a rock band, so I don't know any of these bands these guys like.

Femino: By the same token, I don't know that much musical theater or some of the jazz stuff that (J.D.) knows.

The keyboards are very high in the mix...

Femino: Ball hog!

Daddis: I sneak in there late at night and turn up all my volumes.

Femino: Pass the puck, pass the puck!

How does that distinguish Blind Man's Sun from other bands?

Daddis: Our goal is always to make every instrument almost flat in the mix width wise, so you can hear all the parts, especially because there's things going on together. I hope that the piano doesn't sound louder than the guitars.

It doesn't sound louder than other instruments on the record, it just sounds louder than other bands.

Daddis: I think the timbre of the piano and marimba together sort of double that. The other thing is that most bands that have a piano or keyboard player, he's like 10th on the totem pole. He's in the back even though he's got racks of keyboards and all this stuff. He's not really a big focal point in the first place.

Femino: And without pumping him (pointing to Daddis) up to much, (whispers) he is pretty good.

What are the strongest elements and influences on the band?

White: Progressive rock definitely.

Daddis: When you try to name your style in five words or less, the only way to do it is to come up with something very vague.

Chiappetta: People ask us, 'What kind of music do you guys play?' How can you answer that question?

Daddis: Most bands that are significant, how do you categorize them without just saying, 'Well, it's Pink Floyd.' Hopefully in 20 years someone can say that about us, but right now it's fairly difficult.

Who is Dan Gillette and why is 'Fare Thee Well' for him?

Femino: He was a boyhood friend who died in a tragic accident. It's not like we were the best of buddies later on in life. When he died, he wasn't my best friend in the world, but we were real good buddies as kids. He was the first real significant death in my life that I had to deal with. The song is about him, his death, the funeral, the memories and the emotions that it evoked. It also should be dedicated to his family.

What inspired 'The Hero's Requiem?'

Daddis: It's the life of a hero. In this case...me. I've gotten really into mythology, taking themes that exist in mythologies all over the world, but making it today. A lot of our religions are becoming dated, because they're based on scientific facts of 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. You see a lot of people getting sick with religion and not really believing anymore, myself included. I'm not a strongly religious person except for in my own rite. So I took the idea of the life of the hero -- and all heroes in life whether it's Jesus or the Buddha or John Lennon or anyone in this room -- is the idea of being born, then leaving home to find this vision, to realize this quest. Then along the way, having a training period where you're reborn and you go on this journey and hopefully you find the answers -- (like) the pursuit of the holy grail -- and then ultimately finding rapture.

So how does that pertain to my life? Spiritually, I'm probably closer to the fourth tune in it, but intellectually, I know what should happen, so I was able to write the whole thing.

What does 'Indescartion' mean?

Chiappetta: That's a word I made up. That's a term I came up with for myself when I'm writing. I'm 'Indescartion,' in that state. Descartes, the artist, did a lot of mind-body dualism that was the basis for a lot of his art. He had a lot of internal conflict of whether he should produce his art from his mind or heart. I have that a lot with music. There's so many times where I'll be writing something, and I'll think, 'Ah, it's too intellectual' or 'I like it, but it's too heartfelt, and it just doesn't have enough musical character to it.' So there's a constant battle going on. Actually, writing the song got me past that compositionally, I think.

It starts off with mind music, some very intellectual music. The soul intervenes by saying, 'That was cool, but it didn't have any feeling to it.' Then the heart chimes in and it's heart music. And that section just doesn't have the oomph that the mind section had. Then they fight each other musically, which is what I go through in writing. Then the soul intervenes again and the two work together for part VI, 'The Resolution.'

'Indescartion' and 'The Hero's Requiem' could be produced on the theatrical stage. They could be your 'Tommy' or 'Quadrophenia,' yet they're just part of a record. Now rock 'n' roll always has been more about rebellion than great art. There isn't much rebellion in your music from a societal standpoint, but there is great art. To what extent is that rebellion?

Daddis: We're still artists at heart even though we acknowledge the business aspect. There's a certain F.U. to anyone who isn't going to allow us to fit into a format. If Blind Man's Sun couldn't exist long-term with some degree of acknowledgement, people enjoying our music, that would be a shame.

When we started, we all came from two different music worlds. The one of academia, all our teachers, who are very intellectually based, often very pretentious and lacking a degree of passion; boring-ass, dry people. Then some other people we knew could just sit in a practice room and pull out whatever comes to their mind. They don't know anything about what they're doing. Like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, they don't have any scientific musical knowledge, but they're real passionate guys who just search and search and search until they find what they want. Art is the culmination of the two: the ineffable passion and intent, but learning this craft to be able to execute that as well as possible. That's always the goal of the artist.

We would do this regardless of whether we fit onto MTV. We watch MTV all the time. There are good bands on MTV, but we do this whether we fit into that format.

Chiappetta: We're musicians adhering to no other form of music than our own.

Why is the first disc the Sun and the second disc the Moon?

Chiappetta: There is no real connection with the music or lyrics on the CD, other than in a purely mystical sense. Rather, it is intended to perpetuate the galactic/planetary theme that underlies the album and that underlies the band's name. I think the driving force behind the Sun and the Moon, the planetary theme, the double CDs, 'Of the Spheres' being the longest independent studio CD of all time and the band's name all stem from our long-term objective to make Blind Man's Sun's music and performances theatrically immense. You know, bigger is better!

What has been the most negative feedback to your epic approach?

Femino: Our album does delve into a tone of different styles, so a lot of times maybe even family looking from a business angle will say, 'You know, Marco, I really want you to eat.' They might say, 'Can't you write shorter, poppier tunes?' That might be a negative thing in that we've made it our goal to really explore and write longer, more involved pieces.

Daddis: The first album we just wanted to record. We didn't really care about the comments, because the point was to have some fun. This time we explored short songs, some that come close to fitting to the format of radio music, but more from a standpoint of, hey, there is an art form to writing a short song. It is a legitimate art form, and there are half a dozen of those. Commercially, we hope that a label can come along or a radio station and say 'Juggling Om' is a good short song and still well written and original.

You're now drawing at least 200 people in markets mainly in the Northeast. Should you start drawing 500-plus in all of them, you're going to become pretty hard for the labels to ignore. How will you deal with an industry that turned its back on art rock?

Daddis: For the most part, we wouldn't fit into most major labels' equation. It would take a really open-minded guy. As we all know, you could be a really open-minded guy and not be a top dog and take it to radio and get screwed. So we know that we have to be very careful with our next step. If the next step is to find someone to support us in terms of a record label, we want someone who obviously is extremely passionate about what we're doing and is willing to let us explore ourselves artistically without getting overly involved. It's going be a relationship. We want them to be a part of it. They've done this longer than we have in terms of the business stuff, but if I had to guess, it would probably be more of an indie/major relationship.

Femino: We're hoping that we can let go of our day jobs. That's the next step.

Chiappetta: Mike did some research of DJ profiles on the Internet and some of them are like, 'Where are all the bands?' So we're going to send the EP to them.

In the second section of 'The Hero's Requiem,' J.D. tries to relieve his parents' fears about him being a starving artist, yet the subsequent journey is rather frightening. What gives you the confidence that your vision will see you through?

Femino: There's times onstage when I've said, 'Well, if it all ended tomorrow, I had this moment.' We experience these really crazy, ridiculous highs, whether it's onstage or whether you just wrote something that you find to be particularly touching. It's this complete duality where you're onstage in front of 500 people -- it's the most incredible feeling -- and then you go back to your day job or whatever and it's such a drag. It balances out...Like the first time you look around and, holy shit, everyone's singing our words. And, like, you finish a jam and the whole crowd is uproarious and you step back for a second and have a moment to yourself on the stage. It's surreal. You can't believe that you're onstage, that this is happening and that you're a part of it.

Chiappetta: Even just two people with the smiles that are on their faces and the energy that's coming from their bodies when they're dancing their brains out from the sounds that we're creating. We're providing these emotions. It's incredible to see it actually happening.

Daddis: I actually wrote that song two years ago, so we were far less commercially significant at that point, and I wasn't really liking the crowds, because they just wanted to get drunk and listen to Phish covers (laughs). The idea of the life of the hero is something you should be able to project your own quest onto. I try to do that the whole time. It sounds like there's all these wizards and forests and its demonic and scary, but the idea is that there's a second meaning and it's all allegorical with what was going on in my life at the same time. I had this unbelievable yearning for something. I didn't know what it was. I just knew I had to shed a lot of baggage. I had to leave home spiritually. I had already left home physically. The second half of the tune, which has to do with an old girlfriend, I had to leave her for the same reasons. She represented an aspect of home and security as well.

Now at that time, I didn't know about the life of the hero and the adventure. I was just writing this song. It just so happens that my relationship with my parents wasn't that good, but I was finding so much solace in sitting up all night and writing for myself. That's where I knew I was hooked. I was always learning the academic world of music, and all of sudden, I was finding this crazy passion and intent in music. I was just blown away. Whether I was going to starve the rest of my life or not, this was it. So it was, 'Mom, Dad, love you. I'll be back someday, but I gotta go in this other world for a little while, because I've found something that I definitely can't live without. And thank you for getting me started in music, because I'd be pretty screwed up if you hadn't.' Now I have this way to communicate with myself and with others. Whether if anyone wants to listen or not, it's up to them.

I've learned to find that same sense of bliss and communication through playing as well, through improvisation. The ability to learn anything so you can throw it all out and use it as a form of communication that transcends speaking, it's pretty awesome. I do it for myself. Playing onstage, I get the same thrill that they're talking about. But if there was no one there singing the tunes, I'd be pretty damn jaded, but I'd still be up at 4 in the morning, like I was last night, staring at a wall, writing tunes for myself.

White: People enjoy the show immensely. Every one of our markets has 200 people who come to our shows. I usually don't look up, but it's amazing to think that all those people are out there.

It's funny. We all have our day jobs. You can't explain to people, 'I'm in a rock band.' Immediately they think, 'OK, Matchbox 20, some sort of Grateful Dead cover band.' It's hard to make people understand that you're doing this for yourself and that the type of music you're playing is above and beyond what most people have heard. You're obtaining a goal that's larger.

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Blind Man's Sun will be playing Jan. 30 at Wetlands in New York City. For info, visit www.blindmansun.com