Presented By
Crossroads

The Family Crest / Gentle Temper

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Event Dates
Red Room at Cafe 939
939 Boylston Street
Boston
Massachusetts
02115
United States

From the outset, Liam McCormick, the mastermind behind the Family Crest, knew that Beneath the Brine was an audacious project. But so was the Family Crest itself. The brainchild of McCormick, the Family Crest was started as a recording project in 2009 with cofounder John Seeterlin (bass). “We were in another band and had become disillusioned about what that band had become about,” explains McCormick, “Everyone wanted to be rock stars at the expense of the music. John and I were actually planning on leaving music at that point because we wanted something that in 10 years we could be proud of.” 

Instead of leaving music, they set out to reinvent how it could be created, starting the Family Crest. “We always liked making music with people—getting a bunch of people together and singing. So we put ads everywhere,” says McCormick, “We posted on Craigslist and emailed old friends from school.” The outcome was greater than the original duo imagined, with 80 people credited on the first recording the band produced. “We’ve worked with a lot of conservatory students as well as people who just sing in the shower,” McCormick adds, “It became a lot about giving these people a chance to express themselves without being locked into a commitment.” 

Gentle Temper is a crooked porch-folk duo made up of Marion Earley and Ryan "RyMy" Meier, hailing from the bayous of Allston, Massachusetts. Earley and Meier met while attending Berklee and began writing and playing together in their fourth year. Their sound swims down the quiet parts of the Snake River driven by influences from early Kings of Leon, Coldplay, and Shakey Graves.