MUSIC

Warehouse Live presents Fair To Midland.  With Periphery, Scale The Summit, Thelastplaceyoulook, Hindsight.

Depending on who’s counting, there are anywhere from 100 to n-frigging-thousand subgenres of rock music a band can slide into for easy categorization. And depending on where you drop the laser on Fair to Midland’s Serjical Strike debut album, Fables From a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times is True, at least half of those subgenres are being reinvented at once. But to call this Dallas quintet (who, ironically, get their name from an old Texan play on the phrase “fair to middling”) merely eclectic is to sell them way short. No, Fair to Midland are masters of fusing those subgenres into something that’s cohesive, intensely focused, and in a bold new category all its own.

Since the release of Fables From A Mayfly, the band has toured extensively throughout the world. They have shared the stage with many of today’s important bands, such as the Smashing Pumpkins, Flyleaf, Chevelle, Dir en Grey, Alice In Chains, and Serj Tankian throughout the U.S. & Europe. The band has made high profile appearances at music festivals around the world such as Coachella, Bamboozle, Download Festival, Rock AM Ring and Rock IM Ring Festival in Germany. Since 2007 the band has also embarked on multiple headlining tours through the U.S. and Europe.

The aforementioned experience with the art-rock super-producer (Tool, Muse, Peter Gabriel), found Fair to Midland stretching out far into the aggression and atmospherics at their core while taking their inherent gift for melody to new levels. Tracks such as “Kyla Cries Cologne,” “April Fools and Eggmen,” and the gripping first single, “Dance of the Manatee” (which was in the top 20 at the Active Rock Charts while also breaking into the Alternative Radio charts), showcase Fair to Midland’s flair for combining progged-out virtuosity with lead-heavy riffs, dynamic tidal waves, and frontman Darroh Sudderth’s operatic vocals. Even when the volume lets up—as in the softer, spacier folds of “The Wife, The Kids, and the White Picket Fence” and “Say When”—Fair to Midland create sonic tidal waves big enough to level arenas. As the Dallas Morning News described it, “Fair to Midland not only delivers heady, poetic, powerful and often fascinating hard music; they deliver it live with the gumption of a marauding pack of tribal warriors.”

Currently Fair To Midland are writing and recording their follow up album to Fables From A Mayfly. This yet untitled album is still in its infancy, but all indications are that it will usher a new crop of fans while their established fanbase will be pleased with what they hear. The band has enlisted the heavy-hitting producer, Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Coheed and Cambria), to man the board for this next offering. In the three years since Fables… has come out the band have shared experiences that have made them grow as people and artists. Those experiences coupled with the knowledge gained from recording Fables From A Mayfly has the band poised to break through in the coming year.

Founded in 1998 in the quiet farm town of Sulphur Springs, Texas, Fair to Midland quickly became one of the Lone Star State’s fastest-rising musical forces, earning critical acclaim for their first two independent releases, 2001’s The Carbon Copy Silver Lining EP and the 2004 album inter.funda.stifle, despite being completely under-the-radar. But with a growing buzz and a trail of blown minds behind them, Fair to Midland naturally found themselves looking for a label that could respect their DIY roots, while giving them the means to take their sound to the grand new level it demanded. Enter System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian, who, after being blown away by one of the band’s live performances in April of 2006, signed Fair to Midland to his Serjical Strike label and that Fall released the band’s first “official” recording: The Drawn and Quartered E.P. “It’s not often that one comes across bands that are truly original, poetic, progressive, artsy and memorable, compounded by a killer live performance,” Tankian says of his protégés. “Fair to Midland is such a band.”

FAIR TO MIDLAND is:
Brett Stowers: Drums
Cliff Campbell: Guitar
Darroh Sudderth: Vocals
Matt Langley: Keys/Electronics
Jon Dicken: Bass