HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR022- BLACK THROAT WIND, "Between White Worlds"

Black Throat Wind is likely the best band you never heard of.  Part of that may have been because they rarely ever played outside of Syracuse.  And another reason may be because they did not have much output.  And yet another reason may be due to the fact that they burned brief but bright.

But within Syracuse they were a thing.  They cultivated an intense fan base, packed rooms, and played frequently.  They were doing something musically that was hard to describe.  They spent so much time rehearsing and writing that it was tough to keep up with whatever sound they wanted to explore next.  The group began with two drummers, two guitarists, a bassist, and a singer who played piano as well.  In this formation they cut an incredibly powerful demo that got out and around a bit.  They also began playing a lot of local shows with this lineup. Seeing two drummers sync up made quite an impression and added something interesting to the already unique sound they had established.  When things didn't work out with the second drummer after some time they trimmed the lineup down to a single drummer and re-worked the songs they had to fit this.

 photos by Renee Rorer

After awhile of playing out it came time to make an album.  Some label from Massachusetts offered to release it for them, and then flaked out soon after.  It was an odd situation because, to my knowledge, they had already recorded the whole record before getting word that this operation wasn't going to follow through on their end.  The band decided to go forward with finishing their record and decided to self-release it as a digital-only release.  Personally, I thought this was criminal because a band this good deserved to have a tangible version of something they created.  However, knowing they were not a touring band, and knowing most of their fans tended to not be weird record-hoarding types like me, I thought it might be cool to do a CD (which is relatively cheap) versus an LP (which would be very costly).  I approached the band about this and they were agreeable to do it.  To make it special we worked out a plan to package this CD in an interesting way, which I hadn’t done before.  It was really time-consuming.  There was a silkscreened arigato pack (the same as the Lemuria 7” and Playing Enemy CD) that was then placed in a wrap-around cover that was sealed together with wax and hand-numbered.  It was a multiple-person job that myself, members of the band, and my wife all did via assembly line with careful hands, a silver marker, and a lighter melting wax.  We did a couple hundred of these.  

The process of completing this involved getting the blank, flat covers and the town's go-to screenprinting wizard Aaron Jenkins of both Black Arts Studio, and some band called Ed Gein, printing them up.  Next, local studio SubCat had expanded their services into CD replication and having a local place to print these up was a nice option (though, admittedly, I feel as their final product was not terribly good quality).  Finally, the barely-committed employees of the local Office Max did wonders to ensure how little they cared that I was continually stuffing loads of color copies on high-quality paper into my bag and paying for maybe 2 or 3 at a time out of 50 or 60, which accounted for the covers and inserts.  And then they were all put together using a wax seal-stamping kit that the band members procured from a nearby Michael's craft store.  We all got together one night to put them together in time for the record release show a week or so later and god damn, did it take a long time to assemble them all.

           The assembly/wax seal process.  Arts and crafts projects.

When the record release show happened I was surprised at the interest.  Nothing against anyone who came to see Black Throat Wind regularly, but it was a crowd that I had assumed just didn't purchase music.  They came to see it live, but why would they actually buy any of it?  However, I remember the night of that show they went through about 50 of these CDs we made right off the bat, which was pretty impressive for a band whose audience tended to prefer spending their money at the bar, rather than on the group.
Also, since the record was completely owned by the band I’ve never put it up on my bandcamp, so it has been largely forgotten by anyone outside of the Syracuse area who may have checked it out.  Of course, Syracuse people still talk about it with reverence and hope for a reunion some day.

At the time of “Between White Worlds” Black Throat Wind was comprised of guitarist Jon Sorber (of Oak and Bone), bassist Steve Fitzgerald (brother of Drew, who drummed in Oak and Bone), drummer Ian McNeil (who played in just about every Syracuse band at some point or another from youth crew groups to metalcore heavyweights, and a lot in-between), vocalist/keyboardist Trevor Grant, and guitarist/vocalist Logan Messina.  

This release is actually a bit out of order from the Hex catalog.  It’s the 22^nd release, but actually came out around 2012, well after HXR027.  The reason being that I had something else lined up for being HXR022 that I waited on for a long time and then it never came to fruition.  So by the time this release came along I decided to just give it the designation of the catalog number that never ended up getting used.  But since I’m doing this thing in order of catalog numbers, and not exactly time-chronological I’m getting it out of the way here.  Does that make sense?  It also came at a time when the label was not doing too much.  Things were in a bit of a lull and I had gotten preoccupied with my job, getting married, recovering from being in debt (more on that in a later article), and I let label stuff slide for a little bit.

A little later Trevor ended up leaving the band to pursue other things and they continued as a four-piece for a little while with Steve and Logan sharing the majority of the vocals, while also handling some of the keyboard parts.  They wrote a lot of new material during this time, but sadly none of it ended up getting recorded for a second LP as the band decided to call it a day.

So that’s about it of this rather unknown, yet highly underrated band.  Jon continued to write music with Mouse House afterwards and apparently has a new surf-rock kind of thing called The Salinas.  Logan had a real psychedelic groove thing called Cosmic Wail for a bit before retreating into the woods of Maine.  Steve and Ian are about-town guys and Trevor Grant plays out occasionally with a band called Inclusive Or ( though I’m unsure if they are still active).  So there you have it.  Track down this record (or just buy it from me) and catch some ridiculously good Syracuse musicians make some damn good music.

And speaking of all that...  there are still some of these crafty projects left.  If you are interested in getting a copy (because they really do look pretty dang cool and the music ain't bad either) you can swing over to the bigcartel site and score one this week for only $4.  That's cheap.  I'm pretty sure they also still have their record up on streaming platforms that they handle themselves.