THE DISC The album title sums it all up..."BLY"...a Dutch word meaning "happy". Self-produced and engineered, it was brought to mastermind John Morrical to help out with mixing. Morrical has been working for the past couple of years at Conway Studios in California engineering albums with such bands as Limp Bizkit, Christina Aguilera, and Foo Fighters (to name a few). Needless to say, this album is a quality production with a live, feel good sound... (for all of you studio musicians reading this...the drums were recorded in a 3 story cement stairwell) ...so sit down and let a couple of the ballads soothe you to sleep, get up and shake what your mamma gave you on the funk driven rockers, and basically you'll be happy go lucky like a donkey eating a waffle after you hear this piece of ace. THE BOYS Nico: Lead Vocals, guitar, Wurlitzer Scotty B: Elec. Guitar, Vocals Pablo Honey: Bass, Vocals Pappy: Drums, percussion THE STORY The sound began to evolve when front man Nico (guitars / vocals) started playing gigs in coffee shops on the West Coast of Canada where he grew up. In 1995 he packed up his guitar and a few albums of his most influential artists (U2, Sting, Dave Matthews Band, Martin Sexton) and moved to Amsterdam to help in a rehabilitation center for drug addicts and the homeless. On the side he refined his songwriting and started playing the streets, coffee shops, and bars; 3 years later he hooked up with Pappy (drums / percussion) and they started doing gigs together. After playing shows in Switzerland, England, Holland, and Canada, Nico migrated to the States to do music full-time playing venues ranging from stadiums to colleges, to homeless shelters, to youth gatherings, to a few main stage slots at East Coast music Festivals. Eventually, the momentum of success drew in Pablo Honey (bass) who brought a new paradigm of good ol' fashioned funk to the music and Scotty B. (guitars) who has camellia-like playing versatility where he can sound like Slash or David Wilcox depending on how many eggs he ate for breakfast. The band sold over 5000 albums independently and with the help of a short-lived record deal (NSI Records) NICO was able to play in front of over 40,000 people and shared the stage with many national acts including Martin Sexton, the Virginia Coalition and Jars of Clay to name a couple. Currently, Nico supports his wife and 2 kids working with youth near Hartford while the rest of the band lives in the Boston area. Meanwhile, the goal of the band is to shed the pressure of sounding like a typical mainstream band and capture the essence of a raw, bluesy, playful, jamming, spiritual experience in a live show. In other words, "reduce the junk...increase the funk".