Melodime

Thu. Oct 25, 2018 at 8:00pm CDT
19 and Over
Price: $15.00
19 and Over
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Price: $15.00
19 and Over
Event Description

w. The Brevet



Melodime is a Virginia-based band with influences in both country and rock that features emotionally charged anthems, piano driven hooks, and energetic guitar solos for a dynamic, organic sound.


Melodime, featuring Brad Rhodes (lead vocals, guitar), Sammy Duis (piano, organ, bass), Tyler Duis (drums), and Jon Wiley (guitar, mandolin, dobro), has performed over 100+ shows annually throughout the continental United States, sharing the stage with such well-known acts as Sam Hunt, Eli Young Band, A Thousand Horses, and Sister Hazel.


The band has also left its mark internationally with performances in Mexico, Canada, and Europe, all while founding and running a charity, ‘Now I Play Along Too,’ which provides musical instruments and lessons to underprivileged children in the DC area, Florida, Nepal, Kenya, and Haiti.


The band is quickly becoming a fan-favorite in the festival scene, playing five consecutive Rock Boat cruises, as well as Musikfest, Herndon Festival, Mile of Music, and other events. In their hometown of Northern Virginia, the group has performed at popular venues such as The State Theatre, 9:30 Club, The Hamilton, and Baltimore Soundstage.


Melodime will be rolling out their new album in 3 EP installments starting with the first single "Song of the Summer" on June 29th.





“Our band has been through an evolution these last couple years,” says The Brevet
frontman Aric Chase Damm. “We absolutely love the writing and recording process,
but somewhere along the way, our focus shifted more towards touring and performing
live, and the music we were creating just naturally started to reflect that energy. The
road more than anything helped us grow and mature into the band we’ve become.”


Nowhere is that growth and maturity more evident than LEGS, The Brevet’s explosive,
ambitious new album. Recorded at the band’s own studio in their native Orange
County, California, the collection is the five-piece’s most deeply personal and lyrically
sophisticated yet, tackling perception and identity in the digital age with both subtle
nuance and blunt force. The songs remain as cinematic as ever, full of rousing choruses
and sing-along hooks, but they carry more weight here, propelled inexorably forward
by thunderous percussion and blazing electric guitars that blend rock and roll snarl
with R&B swagger. LEGS is an album unafraid to face down the unknowable, and Damm
found himself mining his personal life more than ever before during the writing
process, taking an unflinching look inwards to examine the dark alleys and existential
dead ends that often sidetrack us in the pursuit of happiness.



“I feel like we live in this cloud of social media right now that’s so focused on
projecting and consuming that it stifles our creativity,” reflects Damm. “A lot of the
songs on this record deal with the search for something real: true relationships, true
happiness, true identity.”



The Brevet’s quest for truth, ironically, began with fiction. The band’s roots stretch
back to Damm’s college days, when he began writing scores for student films and
discovered he had a knack for crafting the kind of evocative music that yields
unforgettable on-screen moments. Those early songs led to a licensing deal that would
eventually find The Brevet’s tracks everywhere from major films like Ashby
(Paramount) and The Good Lie (Warner Bros) to TV shows like Lucifer and American
Idol. The band’s contagious energy proved an ideal fit for sports channels like the MLB
Network and ESPN’s SEC Network, and the group even landed a coveted Apple
placement. Songs from their two independent albums (2013’s ‘Battle of the Heart’ and
2017’s ‘American Novel’) racked up more than nine million streams on Spotify and
earned coverage from Paste, The LA Times, OC Weekly, Pop Matters, and more.


With all of The Brevet’s success on screen, the group—Damm, drummer David Aguiar,
guitarist John Kingsley, keyboardist Greg Burroughs, and bassist Julian Johnson—was
more than ready to get out of the studio and onto the stage. Over the course of the
last year, they hit the road for the most intense touring of their career, performing a
slew of headline shows alongside support dates with Magic Giant and festival
appearances from BottleRock to Firefly. The changes were subtle at first, but with
each run of shows, The Brevet found themselves honing in on something new and
exhilarating.


“There’s nothing like the feel and energy you get from a live show,” explains Damm,
“and there’s no more honest reaction you can get than from an audience that’s never
heard something before. We decided to start playing these new songs live before they
were out, and the crowds’ responses were just so cool and inspiring.”


One listen and it’s clear that LEGS represents a major leap for The Brevet, one that
synthesizes the raucous energy of their live show with sonic precision of their
extensive studio history. The album opens with the infectious groove of “Pretend City,”
a stirring call to arms for truth and honesty, not only with each other but with
ourselves. “What are we doing pretending?” Damm asks, his baritone voice bordering
on a growl at points in the song as he decries the superficial and performative nature
of modern life. The acerbic “All These Kids” celebrates individuality in a world of
imitation, while the slow-burning “Sweet Water” questions what happens when
everyone drinks from the same metaphorical well, and the unyielding “So Long”
eschews the materialistic in favor of a more lasting source of satisfaction.


“That song is about searching for your purpose,” explains Damm. “Whatever it is that
makes you happy—family, love, career, faith, mental health—some people find it right
away, and other people spend their whole lives looking for it.”


Throughout the album, Damm finds his most profound moments of happiness in the
experiences he’s able to share with others and the lessons he’s able to learn from
them. The tender “Gateway Drug” revels in the overwhelming love and joy brought on
by his recent marriage, while the ecstatic “Locked & Loaded” pays tribute to a late
mentor who lived every day to its fullest, and the stripped-down “Silver and Gold”
finds fulfillment in each step of the journey. Damm is perhaps at his most explicit,
though, on “All You Need To Know,” a searing rocker sung from the perspective of a
higher power as Judgment Day approaches.


“That song is a dialogue with either God or the Grim Reaper,” he explains. “He’s
asking the tough questions. Are you living out the purpose of your life? If everything
ended tomorrow, would you be proud of who you were and what you stood for?”


LEGS actually stands for “Like Every Great Story,” and the album (and its anthemic
title track) indeed contain all the elements of any memorable tale: struggle and
success, tension and release, conflict and resolution. The band faced countless
roadblocks and hurdles during the album’s year-long recording process, but their music
insists on a relentless optimism, a defiant belief in the power of positivity in the face
of darkness and doubt. Every great story has a hero, after all, and heroes never give
up, even when the going gets tough. That’s what The Brevet is all about.


“The Brevet was a rank given out largely during the Civil War,” explains Damm, who’s
traced his family’s lineage back through centuries of American history and even
discovered a relative’s journal from that bloody era. “If a general died, someone else
would need to step up and take on those responsibilities even though they wouldn’t
get paid for it. It was a selfless title that came with a lot of sacrifice, but it was one of
honor and duty. When I read about that, I felt a kinship with the attitude of our band,”
he continues. “We’re doing this because we love it. We love to create and we love to
inspire, and we could sit here and focus on all the negative things that we struggle
with in order to do that or we can choose to step up and celebrate the positive and
create our own great story.”


In that regard, The Brevet more than live up to their name, and LEGS is just the latest
chapter in a tale that only promises to get better and better.

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Venue Details
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The Mill 120 East Burlington Street
Iowa City, IA 52240