New release, new plans for young Sonoma band
Sarah Ford | The Sun
The Sonoma-based rock band Aquamarine has just released “Bluesberry Jam,” their third EP of professionally recorded original songs. The members are only in their late teens and early 20s, but it sometimes seems like they’ve been playing together for a lifetime. And in a way that’s true.
Band members Aaron Marcus-Willers and Tyler Meloan, both 18, and 2017 graduates of Sonoma Valley High School, have been best friends since preschool. They started experimenting musically at Sonoma Charter School talent shows, and at the Rhoten’s Performing Arts Camps, on keyboards, guitar, drums, ukulele, and bass.
After a summer “School of Rock” camp at Sarah Duran’s Sonoma Academy of Dance in 2008, they began taking things seriously—soon teaming up with Ryan Abshear on rhythm guitar, and Ben Koler on bass. Marcus-Willers settled in as lead guitarist and primary vocalist, and Meloan took to the drums.
In 2012, the rock quartet won the Sonoma County Fair’s Teen Battle of the Bands when they were just 13, and soon rose through the ranks of Sonoma performance venues—including July 4 parades, Farmers Markets, the Vintage Festival, and a gig at Burgers and Vine.
More recently they headlined at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, and played the DNA Lounge’s main-stage for the finals of the 2016 San Francisco Battle of the Bands, drawing a large crowd that included many Sonoma Valley High School classmates.
Along the way, the group’s music evolved, and their name changed from Traffic Jam, to Heroes Turn Human, and most recently to Aquamarine. They started out inspired by classic rock bands like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and Pink Floyd. Then in their early teen years they branched out into the Pop-Punk of their generation, writing and recording two EPs of music in that vein.
Now, as they prepare to scatter on their post-high school paths, the band has brought all their original influences back home on Bluesberry Jam. “We had explored all the other genres we wanted to explore,” said Meloan. “And it seemed like a natural full-circle. People often go back to the kind of music that got them interested in the first place.”
With this record, they wanted to channel the in-studio experimentation of ‘60s bands like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and The Band, and so chose Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, known for vintage instruments like Hammond Organs and Wurlitzers.
“Our current styles are more reflective of the kind of music that we grew up listening to,” said Marcus-Willers.
Last year, Abshear left the band for college out of state. But Koler, Marcus-Willers, and Meloan have continued on, experimenting and branching out with this new batch of original songs — Marcus-Willers on lead vocals, while playing acoustic and electric guitar, upright piano, and melodica; Meloan playing drums, electric piano, organ, and ukulele, while providing harmony vocals; and Koler holding it all together on the bass, while also providing harmony vocals.
The new songs channel dreamy poetic elements of Pink Floyd, hard-driving rock jams, and the wistful acoustic folk of early Bob Dylan.
What the future holds for the group remains to be seen. Marcus-Willers will be spending next year in China, while Koler and Meloan will be attending Santa Rosa JC. After a nearly decade-long journey together, theirs is a musical bond that will be hard to break.
As Koler put it, “I don’t think that any of us ever viewed it as just a hobby. For me, at some level, it’s something to keep me sane. I wouldn’t call it a hobby, but an important part of life.”
Marcus-Willers concurred. “When I come back over summer and breaks, I definitely want to play with these guys—whenever we get a chance. I think we have a lot of chemistry as a band. I think that’s something special that’s formed over the near-decade that we’ve been playing together.”
To hear Aquamarine’s “Bluesberry Jam,” go to: https://aquamarineband.bandcamp.com/releases
