Scranton indie pop band Black Tie Stereo changes name to Modern Ties for new original music
From a press release:
Today, Scranton indie pop band Black Tie Stereo announced that they will be starting a new project under the name Modern Ties. While the members of Modern Ties will be the same, the group has decided to form this project in an effort to differentiate their original music from their cover-based act.
Modern Ties will release a new album called “Moments/Missed Opportunities” this June. Six singles will be released leading up to the album, with one single out each month; the first is set to be released on Jan. 17. “Moments/Missed Opportunities” was recorded and produced by Marc McClusky (Weezer, Bad Religion, Motion City Soundtrack, Everclear, Ludo), who has worked on many Top 5 Billboard albums, and mastered by Chris Athens (Rick Ross, Wiz Khalifa, Nas and Damien Marley, Ciara, Pitbull, Coldplay, Erykah Badu, Weerd Science, Ben Folds Five).
Modern Ties also signed a three-year distribution deal with Symphonic Distribution, an independent music distribution and marketing company based in Tampa, Florida. Since 2006, Symphonic Distribution has worked with over 100 artists, including Waka Flocka Flame, Bassnectar, Deadmau5, Black Thought, Amon Tobin, Ozuna, and Chris Lake. With the distribution deal, they hope to reach a wider audience and grow as musicians.
The Scranton-based four-piece have been bringing their pop rock flair to the music world since 2014. Members Stephen Murphy (vocals/synth), George Pachucy (drums), Aaron Kovalich (bass), and Jesse Morvan (guitar) have been performing together since their high school days and evolving their sound ever since.
While performing as Black Tie Stereo and packing venues across Northeastern Pennsylvania, the group racked up some impressive accolades over the years, including Pop/Top 40 Act of the Year at the 2016 Steamtown Music Awards and Live Performer of the Year at the 2018 awards. Additionally, they’ve played a variety of festivals, including 92.1 Fuzz Fest in Scranton, Penn State’s THON, and Musikfest in Bethlehem, and have opened for acts such as Milky Chance, Panic! At the Disco, Weezer, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, K.Flay, and Lewis Del Mar.
Black Tie Stereo ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to produce their last EP, 2017’s “DoYou,” and record with A&R legend Mark Mazzetti in Los Angeles. In 2019, they premiered a new song, “Somebody Like You,” on NEPA Scene and more than doubled their next Kickstarter goal to work with Marc McClusky in Chicago on their upcoming release.
“We’ve been hard at work writing brand new material. We started our new writing in January and have been working full steam ahead since. We really want to become a more polished-sounding act, so we spent a great deal of time and effort learning how to craft and engineer sounds we really like. We feel we’ve been put in a box occasionally as being strictly recorded sounding ‘live,’ and we want to preserve some of that flair while adding in more highly produced technical elements,” Pachucy told NEPA Scene at the time.
“We had a conversation as a group in early January about what we wanted from this project. We decided as a group that, yes, we’ve worked very hard and we’ve done some very cool things, but none of us were satisfied. So the options were we stop now, finish the rest of our shows out, and play occasionally or double down, work twice as hard, push ourselves creatively, and put all of ourselves into a project that could make our own break,” he continued.
“We’ve spent years of our lives working on music while waiting for what some other person or entity could do for us. We decided we’re done waiting – we’re going to go after it as hard as we can. We’re going to write, we’re going to tour, we’re going to network, and we’re going to see where this takes us. We’re not getting any younger, we know that; now is the time to really go for it.”
Photo by Tristan Alex Oliveira
