Denver-based progressive jam band Eminence Ensemble’s new LP, Inside Looking Out — out on March 14th — sounds like liberation, the shattering of confines imposed by modern living. It’s the dreams that dance across your eyes when looking out the window instead of the ticking clock, the hopes for what life might be that you imagined when you were young and the promise that, even if you aren’t there yet, you will be soon. In this way, the music is propulsive, the kind that forces the listener to look inside and find the light within so that it may then radiate out and cut through all the florescent lighting and banality that exists in this world. It’s intensely relatable music on an existential level that reminds you what it is to live.
303 Magazine recently spoke with the six members of Eminence Ensemble—founding members Justin Neely (guitar and vocals), Tanner Bardin (drums), Nick Baum (percussion and vocals), Zac Flynn (bass, synth and vocals), and new additions Dylan Gleit (guitar and vocals) and Wil Snyder (keyboard and synth)—about the band’s origins, the new album, the evolving state of modern jam music, and more.
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If you’ve been around the Denver jam scene in the last 10 years or so, you’ve heard the name Eminence Ensemble. They’ve played almost every venue in town, from Cervantes’ to the Fillmore, had co-headlining shows with local legends such as Cycles, opened up for jam titans like Umphrey’s McGee, and hit some of the biggest festivals in the country, like Summer Camp, Electric Forest, and more. They’ve solidified themselves as one of the most hardworking and far-reaching yet criminally underrated groups in the jam scene on a national level.
It took them a lot of years to get where they are. Eminence Ensemble was first formed in its earliest iteration in “2008 or 2009,” Bardin said. The four founding members that remain in the band actually met in high school, where they “each played in different groups and competed against each other in Battles of the Bands.” After high school, they found that the four of them would all be attending CU Boulder at the same time.
Soon after starting college, the four’s respective high school bands went their separate ways, which allowed them to begin jamming together tentatively. After overcoming some preconceived animosity resulting from those early bands competing against each other, they found they worked well together, and Eminence Ensemble was born. Each member of Eminence Ensemble comes from a unique musical background but was introduced to music at a young age. This helped them overcome those previous hard feelings and develop the trust and understanding necessary to form a band with longevity.
College treated Eminence Ensemble well. Despite their slow beginnings, they soon became a staple in the Boulder jam scene. This speaks to how Boulder serves as an incubator for up-and-coming musicians. The town today is very different than it used to be, but it has always been a place that allows young artists to meet others with similar sensibilities and provides them with opportunities to make a name for themselves. Eminence Ensemble capitalized on this and built a dedicated following of friends and new fans alike.
After college, they experienced something that many can relate to: friends moving away. They found that a large portion of people who had been coming to the shows just weren’t there anymore. Neely said, “We came back to Boulder and found that shows weren’t quite as hopping.” This forced them to work even harder to build that fanbase back up but also taught them a valuable lesson that young bands coming up today can learn from. “Hold onto that initial fanbase,” Neely said. “They’ll be the lifelong fans. Find out where they are now and stay connected because they’ll be coming out to shows whenever you tour.”
Over a decade of touring later, Eminence Ensemble continues to rise. All the long years have now culminated in their latest LP, Inside Looking Out.
It must be noted that in recent years, there’s been a slow shift in the jam scene away from the more “hippy,” Grateful Dead-inspired music towards a more progressive sound. Eminence Ensemble is one of the pioneers of this shift. While they still take cues from giants of the genre like Umphrey’s and Phish, they also take a lot of inspiration from bands like King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Dream Theater and Steely Dan, artists that have pushed the very nature of music to its limits.
Gleit believes this shift in what jam fans are paying the most attention to comes from a few factors. One is oversaturation. Especially in Denver, there are so many bands that aspire to be the next Phish or Dead. This results in a kind of muddying of the water that makes it difficult for young bands to differentiate themselves. It then influences audience preference as people crave variety, and there’s only so much love and light a person can take. “Everybody’s kind of sick of the happy-go-lucky, dancing around with the flamingos music,” Gleit said. “I think when you’re out at a show, you want to let loose, let the lead out a little bit.”
The jam scene has always celebrated individuality coupled with familiarity. “The idea that some music can be identifiable is something that the jam scene really kind of latches on to,” Gleit said. “It’s not that jam bands don’t like mainstream music, but they like to separate themselves from it.” This speaks to the idea of what happens when a genre known for existing outside the norm starts to become somewhat uniform. People start to seek variety, to look for the new. When jam music becomes oversaturated with light and “happy-go-lucky,” audiences will start to look for the darkness. “There’s always room for some darkness,” Gleit said. “Get weird, get heavy. It makes the times when your music’s a little happier and a little more fluid more worth it.”
This coupling of light and darkness pervades Inside Looking Out. The album has two distinct parts. The first half feels like a lamentation, a scream against the banality of today’s working life. It’s angry and yearning, like watching the seconds crawl by as you near the end of a shift at a job that means nothing to you beyond a paycheck. This is evident on songs such as the album opener, “Downtime,” which deals with feelings of burnout and just needing a break.
This feeling flows through the next four songs and culminates at the halfway point, “Already There,” which was released as one of three singles. On its own, without the context of the rest of the album, the song could almost be read as a breakup tune and it is, in a way. But, rather than referring to a relationship, it speaks on finally quitting that shitty job that’s been dimming that light found within. The song is joyous, like freedom, like the world finally brightening up again. It shows how dynamic of songwriters the band is, using lyrics and musicality to capture the feeling of “can’t have sunshine without the rain.” There is darkness in this world, in every person, but without it, the light wouldn’t mean so much.
The latter half of the album follows this freedom. The songs get brighter and a little more heartfelt but still have an edge not found in many in the genre. “Believe It,” which follows “Already There” and was also released as a single, is a perfect example of this. It’s about finally having the opportunity to believe in yourself, and the song culminates in this ripping tandem guitar part that feels like shattering the Earth with your own two hands.
As a whole, Inside Looking Out is an existentially relatable yet ultimately joyous album that captures modern adult life in a way few projects released recently in any genre have been able to capture. Plus, it fucking rips.
Eminence Ensemble continues to be one of the most exciting and interesting bands in the scene. Their music reminds each person who hears it of their place in this world and that change is always possible if they’re not happy with where they are. Keep looking out those windows and dreaming because, one day, this life will be what you hope it to be if it isn’t there yet.
Inside Looking Out is out now and can be streamed here!