It was a true gem discovery when getting to know Edensong, so let us grace this with an introduction interview at ALOM. How are you doing and where in New York are you living?
Thanks so much!! I really appreciate the kind words. It’s great to chat with you. We’re doing great, finally feeling some payoff from the many years spent away in isolation! We just came off a couple wonderful shows and we’re thrilled to see the new album connecting with so many people, old and new fans alike. We’re based in New York City. I live in the middle of the city, as does TD (Towers), and the other two members live within an hour or two of the city. The long commute makes rehearsing challenging sometimes, but we make it happen for the love of music!

How and when did Edensong come into being?
Edensong actually has its roots in a progressive metal band that TD and I formed in high school (along with the drummer from our previous albums, Tony Waldman). This was probably 1997. The band was initially called Echoes of Eden, and it morphed into Edensong when we all went our separate ways for college and I carried the musical torch for a few years on my own. I formed a mostly new band line-up around that time, inspired by the wide range of music and musicians I was surrounded with at school. This line-up went on to record the debut album ‘The Fruit Fallen’, for which I actually received academic credit from the school lol. Our first show was a wild multimedia rock opera, which was a bit of a self-indulgent disaster, but we survived it and are still here making music more than 20 years later.The band has had a convoluted series of line-up changes over the years (never quite the same between releases), but ¾ of the current band knew each other in high school, so it’s safe to point back to those early Echoes of Eden years as the true beginning of Edensong (unless you want to count the Michael Jackson inspired pop songs that TD and I used to write together when we were 7 years old (hahaha).

How did you get in contact (in your youth) with music, prog and maybe metal? Who are the main inspirations or influences for the band and for you personally?
Tony (prior drummer) introduced us to Metallica and Megadeth in 7th grade. Nick (current drummer) introduced him (and indirectly me and TD) to Dream Theater the following year. We also discovered Rush around the same time. These were such hugely important influences to us growing up and finding our compositional voice in this style. I discovered the real “prog” heavy hitters like Jethro Tull and Yes, as well as more acoustic folk oriented acts like Cat Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel, by listening my way through my dad’s old record collection around the same time. We were also children of the alternative rock and grunge era, so I feel like that also makes its way into the musical soup, especially on the most recent album ‘Our Road To Dust’. Oh, and we played a lot of video games back then, so a lot of those soundtracks (especially the Final Fantasy series) probably inspire some of our more symphonic work (perhaps most noticeable on ‘Years In The Garden Of Years’).

Someone who plays flute in the band is still quite unique and reminds us automatically of Jethro Tull, but how come you made a trademark of it in Edensong? How did that idea grow?
I’m sure Jethro Tull plays a major influence in that, as I’ve been a huge fan most of my life. However, the initial idea for Edensong (after the high school Echoes of Eden days) grew from a concept of “orchestral rock”, where the flute was only one timbre in the ensemble. We also had string players in the band at the time.The flute players at the time were mostly just performing the notes that I wrote for them, and came from a more orchestral background, and the playing didn’t really resemble Tull to my ears. It wasn’t really until Barry joined the band in 2008 that the flute had such a distinct and unique presence in the music. Ironically, Barry isn’t much of a Tull fan, but comes more from a punk/metal and avant-garde classical perspective. Still, I think he blurs the lines nicely and delivers some fierce and occasionally even beautiful flute work. The band has become more and more streamlined over the years as band members leave due to other life choices and commitments, yet Barry has remained, so we are still a “flute band”. The flute has traditionally been a big part of our sound, and it may continue to be or it may not. It’s really hard for us to know what the future holds and we’re more driven by the idea of creating music that interests us at the time than a dedication to a particular “sound”, or instrument or band configuration.

In 2008 the debut album ‘The Fruit Fallen’ was released. How do you look back at this first step to fame? Was there enough feedback?
I think a lot of great early opportunities came out of this debut album. We got quite a bit of nice feedback from reviewers. It attracted the attention of our current label and some progressive rock festivals, which helped me to assemble a stable line-up of the band. Not to mention, it’s an album that sounds unlike anything else in our catalogue, so I’m glad it exists. It was certainly a helpful stepping stone to future work and I don’t think Edensong would be here today had it not been for that album.  We’ve also enjoyed revisiting some of those songs in our recent live shows.

The next years Edensong could play live at several festivals and not the least ones. Can you tell something about that?
We were very fortunate to have gotten the early opportunity to open the second (and final) edition of the wonderful 3 Rivers Progressive Rock festival in Pennsylvania, performing with IQ and Kings X, among others. I think we made some contacts there, both with fans and promoters, that helped to pave the way for other festival appearances over the years. RoSfest was a particular US highlight for us, and I still encounter folks who know us primarily from that performance. We have a longstanding relationship with the Terra Incognita festival in Quebec, which seems to have its own audience, and we loved returning recently to play there again.

Also touring came for Edensong I think? With who did you share the road/stage experiences and can you tell about these adventures?
We’ve never been much of a touring band. Having spent the majority of our 20s and early 30s making only a single album, we sort of missed the boat on being able to travel heavily and build a following in that traditional way. Now we’re in our 40s with families and young children and it’s hard to justify the extended time away. Still, we do what we can and we all love to perform, so we will occasionally head out on short tours. Typically these have centred around festival appearances, where we’ll tack on several other live dates. We’ve done a couple co-headlining tours, which were a lot of fun since we got very friendly with the other bands involved. We went through Canada and the Midwest US with Imminent Sonic Destruction in 2017 and then toured the UK in 2018 with Golden Caves from your country..

It seems that in 2011 you started working on a second album. Alone or with the band? What can you tell about the writing process of ‘Years In The Garden Of Years’?
We had a fairly stable band line-up at the time we started working on ‘Years In The Garden Of Years’, having played together at shows and festivals since 2008 and recorded an EP together. The writing process was fairly collaborative, but I think we all felt the burden of trying to craft something “perfect” this time around. The process took an immense amount of time, way more than it reasonably should have. There was a crazy degree of care and obsession that went into the production, as I was handling recording/engineering myself. I learned an immense amount during the making of that record, and am very proud of the result, but also know that I can’t subject myself or my band mates to a process like that ever again.

The making of that album was not easy indeed, but finally it turned out to be a group effort so it seems. So I guess the line-up was different from the first album. The sound or approach too? Was it a concept album?
We started the process with a concept (“time”) and a title (which came to me in a dream as the title of Dream Theater album lol).  We developed the main concept into a suite of songs very collaboratively.  I can clearly hear ideas from each of us throughout the record. We ended up parting ways with our cellist during the recording process (fortunately the immensely proficient Eric Stephenson was able to step in and record the remaining cello parts for the album in a matter of hours), but otherwise the band remained very stable during the album development.

It took a long time before we now have the third album to enjoy. What happened in the years in between 2016 and now?
I wish I could spin a crazy story about those nine years!  But, life definitely needed to take precedence over music for a while, for all of us, but for me especially. I am typically the driver of our projects, but I started out the making of this record feeling very overwhelmed by band responsibilities: the amount of time I needed to put into it vs. the reward. TD once referred to Edensong as harnessing a full grove of oranges for a single glass of juice lol. I was still exhausted by the making of the previous album and the planning of the various tours etc. I was in a place where I felt I wasn’t providing enough support to my (growing) family, in terms of time and money. I needed to place some additional effort into my career outside of Edensong, put a lot of effort into overhauling my business (audio studio), only to have the whole thing shuttered by the pandemic a year later. I took this time for a complete career shift, and have basically just had to chip steadily away at finishing this album a little bit at a time. The other guys have been in a similar place personally, and there have been six Edensong children born in the span of time it took to complete and release this album!!

What can you tell about the writing process this time?
The writing process is honestly the most collaborative it has ever been. I brought several ideas to the table (plus the album title) when we started work on this back in 2019. But those ideas comprise less than half of the album, which is unusual for this band. TD stepped up on this record in a major way, providing multiple song ideas and his own unique voice (literally and compositionally).  As a quartet, there’s just more space for each of us and there’s a tighter type of collaboration that can happen organically.