Giving a band its voice

Local leads metal group.

By: Leon Tovey
   JAMESBURG — Mike Newton is a chip off the old block — sort of.
   Mr. Newton, a 25-year-old graduate of Monroe High School and borough resident, grew up in a house filled with music; his father, Gregory, is a trained classical singer and his mother sang in what he describes a "jazzy, Fleetwood-Mac-y kind of thing" when he was a child.
   "So yeah, my parents are definitely what got me into music — especially my mom, her record collection," Mr. Newton says.
   But getting him into music and having a lasting impact on what kind of music he would make are apparently two very different things. There4, the area prog-metal band Mr. Newton fronts, is a far cry from the opera and classical choral music — and even the jazzy, Fleetwood-Mac-y kind of thing — that Mr. Newton grew up with.
   "It’s not something you go and cringe at," the elder Mr. Newton says with a wry chuckle when speaking about his son’s band. "I find their sound to be far more tuneful than a lot of the music in that genre."
   And while the band’s tunefulness cannot be attributed exclusively to its singer, Mr. Newton’s contribution to the band’s sound is incontrovertible.
   The band’s formidable rhythm section — guitarists Joe Bresnick and Marty Jones, bassist Moshe Atzbi and drummer Jeremy Pace — grind away at the bottom end while keyboard player, Nick Tomasino, floats around in a pool of higher-pitched ambiance. Mr. Newton, a solid tenor, fills the mid-range hole and carries the melodies of most of the songs.
   "When Mike showed up, we got a real voice," guitarist Joe Bresnick says.
   There4 was formed as the brainchild of Mr. Atzbi and Mr. Pace, a pair of self-described New York/New Jersey "floaters" who had been playing together for the better part of a decade.
   "We had a band called Sun Tzu and another band which, for your paper, should probably remain nameless," Mr. Atzbi says. "Nothing we were doing was really grabbing us as like, the band."
   The pair hooked up with Mr. Bresnick, who was brought in as a second guitarist in another band they were playing with in 1999 and There4 ("We just liked the sound of it — it’s nebulous and weird," Mr. Atzbi says of the name) was born.
   Initially, Mr. Atzbi and Mr. Bresnick handled vocals, but they felt they needed a better singer, which they found in the person of Mr. Newton on Halloween night, 2000.
   "A lot of people who are in a band are like, ‘I’m with these guys 24-7 and they’re my best buddies,’" Mr. Newton says. "I don’t know if I could work with that."
   Mr. Newton’s five bandmates (Mr. Jones joined the band in 2002 and Mr. Tomasino in 2003) share a rental house just outside of Milltown. In the summer, the group puts on house parties — featuring themselves and their friends as the entertainment — on the 6 ½ acres the house sits on.
   But Mr. Newton, who married his longtime girlfriend Jeannie in 2003, doesn’t live with the rest of the band. He says he and his bandmates need distance to maintain their musical relationship.
   "Lyrically, the other guys are kind of editors," Mr. Newton says. "They’ll give me advice on working words into a melody, maybe changing a melody so it fits better, tell me when something’s just not working.
   "And by the same token, I have no problem telling them that something — sonically — just isn’t any good."
   That distance works well for the band, helping its members to merge disparate influences into a coherent package without stepping on each other’s toes. Mr. Newton cites Goth-pop pioneers Depeche Mode as an influence. Mr. Bresnick talks a lot about thrash-metal ensemble Slipknot.
   In an unlikely fete of musical hybridization, the band blends its influences together into a seamless whole on its self-released, eponymous, five-song EP, which the band sells at shows and on its Web site, www.there4.com.
   While the group uses its Web site to great effect — offering audio samples, merchandise that can be purchased through PayPal and a schedule of upcoming performances — Mr. Atzbi says the band members are not die-hard do-it-yourselfers.
   "It is a viable option," he says of the Internet approach to marketing and sales, which some in the music industry have touted as the key to changing the industry.
   "Nobody’s going to put (record companies) out of business any time soon by that approach," Mr. Atzbi says. "For better or for worse, labels have connections to other industries that make them better able to make a band successful."
   Mr. Atzbi says There4 is like most bands in that its members don’t have the time or energy to devote to the business end of things while still focusing on their music. Given the amount of money the bandmates have invested over the years, they would like to see some return in the form of major label support.
   To that end, Mr. Newton says, the band has been shopping its EP and some of its other demos to labels in New York and Atlanta.
   But as his father observes, success as a musician can be difficult to attain.
   "Luck is a big part of it," says the elder Mr. Newton, who decided to cut his own career as an opera singer short when it became apparent to him that it was taking too much time from his family. "In the end, it can often come down to a choice about how much work and time you want to commit to doing it at the expense of other things."
   For his part, Mike Newton says he’s happy to continue working at it.
   "It doesn’t always happen the way you want it to," he admits. "But we’re lucky to live in an area with some fairly good clubs and a supportive scene.
   "And I do believe that we have a lot that other bands don’t."
   There4 will perform at the Court Tavern in New Brunswick on May 22.