Fighting Gravity's newest release, Blue Sky & Black, is more than just another record from one of Virginia's most beloved and most enduring rock bands. It is a testament to the perseverence and commitment to their music and their craft that propels them against a sea of change toward the recognition they've never sought yet always deserved. Exploring themes of love, loss, and redemption, their third studio album reveals a stunning evolution from the horn loaded proto-pop of their early days as seminal ska outfit Boy O Boy to a lean, hard charging rock band unafraid to confront the vagaries of their youth and able to clearly assess the successes and failures that lay strewn along the path behind them. With equally tempered measures of agony and ecstasy, the 11 songs on Blue Sky & Black unapologetically highlight the musical journey Fighting Gravity has travelled.
After releasing its first record, Forever = 1 Day, in late 1996, Fighting Gravity became revered throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for their infectious melodies, airtight rhythms, and take-no-prisoners live performances. With a touring calendar that kept them on the road for more than 200 nights out of the year, the Richmond, Virginia based quintet explored virtually every inch of the American landscape as well as exotic ports-of-call from Tokyo to Honduras. After a five page feature on the band in Rolling Stone Magazine caught the eye of Mercury Records president Danny Goldberg, they signed a multi-year contract that resulted in 1999's John Alagia produced You and Everybody Else. Unfortunately for the band and it's fans, the record never saw the light of day as Mercury was dismantled in the wake of the Polygram/Universal merger literally days after its release and Fighting Gravity found themselves trapped under the wreckage.
Not to be deterred, they returned to their arduous cycle of touring and songwriting and released two highly successful live recordings, 2001's Hello Cleveland and 2002's critically acclaimed acoustic album, Under The Radar. By this time Fighting Gravity had sold more than 300,000 records on their own and performed before over a million fans worldwide. Soon the band landed a contract with Q, a division of Atlantic Records and chose long-time friend and producer Jim Ebert (Marvelous 3, Everclear, Niki Barr) to help craft the album. Although Q Records became another casualty of the swiftly consolidating music industry and it folded before the record was released, the band had tracked what was to become the foundation of Blue Sky & Black. After casting aside their management and wrestling the master reels from Q, an excruciating 18-month process that severely tested their faith in the business of making music, the band decided to take a long needed hiatus and focus on the personal lives they'd been sacrificing while on the road since their late teens.
Renewed and rested after spending the better part of a year reclaiming their passion for creating music and communicating it to their fans, Fighting Gravity and Jim Ebert returned to the studio with a fresh perspective and a simmering cauldron of new music. With the help of acclaimed engineer Scott Spelbring, the band set about to exorcise the demons of adulation and despair enmeshed beneath the cumulative effect of years in the juggernaut. The resulting 11 tracks bear witness to that catharsis. The band also decided to include a bonus cd, Paper Dragons, containing the acoustic demos which served as a sketchbook from which the songs on Blue Sky & Black were born. The collector's edition 2-disc set was released in late September, 2006, to widespread critical acclaim.
2007 looks to be a banner year for Fighting Gravity as they begin it with friends from The Dave Matthews Band, Barenaked Ladies, Guster, and O.A.R. on the IZStyle Winter Tour, a series of concerts aimed at raising awareness of alternative and renewable energy sources.
Most bands would have pulled down the tent long before Fighting Gravity. Most bands aren't made of the same stuff that compels this group of college buddies to continually demand the most from themselves both as people and artists. Most bands never give themselves the chance to compose their Blue Sky & Black.
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