"Playing music is so much fun, but we also take it really seriously -- my girlfriend's psychic called me a workaholic." Forming recently in the fall of 2010, friends Nick Hoge and Joe Watson who met serendipitously through a connection to a modeling agency in New York, put the awkwardness of that meeting aside and began spending weeknights toying around with acoustic tracks and coming up with a soulful, mellow set in their living rooms. But it wasn't until they picked up electric guitars and began exploring their shared love for slightly raunchier sounds that The Foreign Tides formally began.
Hoge and Watson were joined, at the end of 2010, by Andrew and Chris Tryfonos -- identical twins -- who they met randomly at a coffee joint downtown. Together, the boys have developed a sound that "mixes soulful rhythms with blues infused riffs, taking classic influences like The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Chuck Berry, and channeling it into a catalog reminiscent of a young Black Keys or Kings of Leon."
The band's background is a unique one. Hoge grew up in Brazil, London, and New York, the son of a father who was a traveling newspaper journalist. Watson, who is English, spent his early years in London, before moving to New York City after college. The Tryfonos twins are Queens natives, and bring with them a gritty, urban musical sensibility that runs in their family -- their older brother is an upcoming hip-hop/rap artist.
The boys just released their debut EP, "Animals." Recorded at Water Music Studios in Hoboken, New Jersey with engineer Sean Kelly (U2, The Walkmen, Yo La Tengo, Allman Brothers) and mixed by Justin Gerrish (Vampire Weekend, Weezer, The Pigeon Detectives) the Animals EP runs the gamut from rowdy, rhythm-lead rock and roll, to expansive anthems like "Remember Me" and closer "Stay Alive." The band has made the EP downloadable for free on their website for a limited time.
