The Dover Experimental rock band is set to release "The Velvet Morning" EP, featuring Internet success "What Is Real," at the Barley Pub

A mere three days after uploading their new single “What Is Real” onto the Internet music mecca Garageband.com at the end of May, the one-year-old Dover alternative rock band Sixth Root plucked top honors in the Modern Rock category in no less than five different classes: “Best Guitars,” “Best Drums,” “Best Bass,” “Best Production” and “Grooviest Rhythm.”

A second bombing run occurred the following week, with repeat victories in the “Drums” and “Production” polls, as well as more creative nods such as “Most Original” and “Rocking Track.” As if the trophy case weren’t full enough, the group topped off their landslide Garageband.com debut with “Track of the Day” honors for June 5.

How does a band achieve such a commanding sound? “(By) actually finishing the song!” Sixth Root bassist Greg Glasson jokes. 

“What Is Real” will officially be released Saturday, June 24, as part of the band’s eponymous EP celebratory release show at The Barley Pub in Dover.

Despite how easy Glasson and his comrades make it sound, it’s not as simple as merely finishing a song. The band weaves together metallic, effect-laced riffs and time signatures outside the common 4/4 (“What Is Real” has a section of 13/8) with an epic, space-driven sonic picture reminiscent of Muse and U2, and a few odds and ends thrown in for good measure. Upon further conversation, it’s apparent that what makes the song so atmospheric is not a big chorus, hook or other gimmick, but rather a sprinkling of each member’s unique personality amid the sonic fray.

“‘What Is Real’ is a good example of that,” Glasson says, referring to the band’s collective songwriting process. “I think Nick, who writes a lot of the songs, brought in the original riff, but Russ changed it, Jim played with it, etc. Before you know, the whole thing just sort of takes shape.”

The band’s name is derived from Dover’s Sixth Street, where each of the musicians more or less lived at one point. But with the MySpace phenomenon in full swing, bands are able to bypass geographical boundaries, turning to Internet forum communities for access to instant exposure, criticism and a potential new fan base—all essentially for free. The popular Garageband.com is more or less the standard among such sites, a digital beehive of charts, ratings, profiles, street teams and tour schedules for thousands of bands in every imaginable category. From blues to reggae, heavy metal to fusion, any given band can immediately find a place to mesh, post mp3s of original material, be reviewed, and essentially forward their own musical agenda upon subscribing to the site, which is free.

What’s more, the charting system is also designed to be as fool-proof as possible. As the band noted in a press release on June 6, “The majority of the voting is done by musicians and is taken very seriously…. Unlike MySpace, the votes cannot be manipulated by the band or friends. Songs are randomly sent to reviewers and rated based on the song’s relevance to its genre.”

Although you probably won’t hear it played back to back with the hookiest-of-the-hooky modern rock, “What Is Real” is definitely recognizable material and seems to have hit a nerve with the genre’s audience. Which, oddly enough, seems to be less than a top priority with the band.

“When we set out to write a song, we don’t go for a hook,” says Glasson, adorned in a plain white shirt with a baseball cap pulled low. Sitting down with Glasson, guitarist Russ Graham and tattoo-adorned vocalist Paul Henderson in a local coffeehouse (drummer Jim Rudolf and guitarist Nick Phaneuf were otherwise engaged), they all readily agree that, while a given song idea may come from one band member, it spends time in everyone’s hands and morphs accordingly. Often the final result is something far from the original concept. “It may sound like a cliché,” Glasson elaborates, “but we sound like us; we have our own sound.” Informed by the varied list of influences mentioned in their online profiles, which range from Peter Gabriel to Muse to Coltrane, the sound they create is, in many ways, original.

Case in point is Henderson’s vocal style. Formerly of a softer-side acoustic duo, Sixth Root’s lead singer can be best described as a sixth instrument; he doesn’t rise above or dominate the band, but rather mirrors and gets inside of it, fluidly riding the band’s signature ever-shifting dynamics. While resting firmly in a melodic metal vein, Henderson’s performance on “What Is Real” achieves an almost mechanical quality one moment and a soft croon the next. Two parts song and one part straight speech, his voice is as hard to categorize as the band’s overall sound.

The sheen surrounding Henderson’s lyrics is created with a variety of effects and loops, such as reverse delay and echo, whammy pedals and flangers, many of which are triggered onstage by Henderson. Upon a first listen, it is easy to assume (as this writer did) that such processing was a result of in-studio tweaking, which is often times notoriously difficult to reproduce live. According to Graham, however, the process was reversed. “Everything you hear on the record came from our live set,” he says.

Produced by Maurice Labrie, “What Is Real” and the additional tracks that comprise the new EP started, as many premiere recordings do, as a simple demo: something to offer bar and club owners as a way to land more gigs. The biggest challenge was finding someone to help them capture what they wanted to do.

“It’s hard to critique in that environment and know when (it’s) not good enough,” Graham says, scratching at his spikes of black hair. Henderson agrees. “You’ve gotta have someone who’s not invested,” he says, “who’s not afraid to say, ‘Hey man, your tone sucks, it’s just not working.’”

Sixth Root will return to the studio this summer, this time with Josh Harris (who has remixed albums by Korn and The Killers) in charge, along with Labrie. Glasson, Henderson and Graham all agree that the next recording will be about pushing themselves. If they continue to fare as well as they have so far, the unique Sixth Root sound may soon become everyone’s.

Sixth Root CD release
with The Velvet Morning
Saturday, June 24 at 9:30pm
Barley Pub, Dover
603-742-4226, ww.barleypub.com
www.garageband.com/artist/sixthroot1
www.myspace.com/sixthroot