See You At See Water

I want you to envision a plate of nachos. Real fresh and warm, the top layer blanketed in gooey cheese and slightly glimmering with damp grease.

Now hone in on that one nacho - you know the one - it stands apart from the rest, expertly fused to the surrounding chips, looking like it was crafted with the utmost intentionality. See Water is that chip - the ooey, gooey, fiesta that is that cheddar-covered, triangular tortilla delight.

Reggae for a cheesy base, adorned with punk for jalapeños, dipped into funky salsa jam and chased with a sip of rock ‘n’ roll. You’ve downed two Coronas waiting for the nachos to arrive and now that they’re here… what a treat.

You would be ill advised to miss feasting on this yummy musical entree, which will be spicing up the Music Farm stage on Friday, February 24th. The show, benefiting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, will host performances by Whitehall, TreeHouse, Of Good Nature, and the See Water boys themselves.

After a lengthy, arduous, uphill (yet incredibly rewarding, educational, and fun) recording process, with starts and start-overs, See Water is ready to release unto us Hit the Moon: their masterful, 78 minute long record - sixteen songs in duration and featuring deliberate, flowing transitions between each track.

Despite the general preconception, See Water is not your run’a’the mill reggae band. These boys are party personified: a reggae rock band that is much more than a reggae rock band, ‘specially when the sun goes down and they turn up the funk.

See Water, composed of Riley, Sam, Patrick, and JR, have been together for three years and have spent about half of that time in the studio. But -praise be- after a year and a half, Hit the Moon will be available to the public and the band’s focus will shift from recording in the studio to writing new songs and playing live shows.

So what’s to be expected at this album release party? This event, which will usher these young men into an era of full-fledged performance, will be a true, full Hit the Moon album experience. With keyboards, a horn section, and additional singers, we will hear the album, note for note, as it sounds on the record.

Inspired by a variety of genres, from punk to metal, from bluegrass to pop, See Water looks to challenge themselves with each track. “How can we make this as interesting as possible while still making it sound like the same song? We try to branch out from [reggae] and still use those influences while bringing in other genres and seeing what we can incorporate.”

A signature See Water move is to zap their listener with a genre twist - a squeeze of ska or a heavy, zesty riff garnishing a fast, punk confection. “We kind of do a little bit of everything, that’s the way we like to do it.”

Riley, See Water’s primary songwriter, describes his ideal writing process as fluid: “when everything kind of comes at the same time… it feels like you’re just pulling something out of the air and putting it down.”

After plucking bones from the sky, Riley presents a skeleton to the guys, who know exactly what to do to flesh out the song. JR says it’s “really cool when you bring something to the table and you have sort of a focus for it, and by the time you’re finished writing the song you realize that focus has completely shifted.”

A goal for Hit the Moon was to not sound over-produced. “We wanted it to sound more or less how we sound live. The only thing that’s really different is having horns and keyboards... but that’s something that down the line we’re going to have full time.”

Recording this LP was the most significant recording project that any of the guys have ever undertaken and they took the opportunity to fully experiment, often working on something for hours then totally scrapping it, and taking the time to screw around and enjoy the artistic process.

After finding out the hard way that Sam is not a fan of clear drum heads, the band re-record 14 songs, which set them back a week right from the beginning but proved to be liberating. The band threw caution to the wind, ditched the ol’ notepad and any semblance of an organized recording process, said fuck it, and created an authentic final product.

"We knew it was going to be a beast. We were in way over our heads at first but we figured it out and now that it’s getting out there, we’re super proud.”

Incorporating storytelling and wordplay into their songs, See Water’s tracks meld meaning with an all-around fun, party atmosphere. They hope that Hit the Moon, in all of its cross-genre glory, will depict the complexity of their sound outside of a reggae cliche and will “shine light on other genres in Charleston” on a larger scale.

Though they are excited that after 18 months Hit the Moon is complete, See Water is still looking forward to recording more in the near future. “We’re happy that it’s done with but not to the point that we don’t want to get right back in there. We’re writing new songs already and thinking about the next studio project.” See Water’s next album will be even more on the rock and roll side of things, a bit heavier, with more hip-hop flare and less upstroke.

Physical copies of Hit the Moon will be available Friday night at the Farm, along with new shirts, snapbacks, and mo0o0o0ore.

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