Bailey expands sound with 'Down to The Wire'

Ryan Bailey and Cumberland Belle released their first five-song EP, "Down to the Wire," last month.

This ensemble musical endeavor is a bit of a departure for Bailey, who typically takes care of business with his singer-songwriter solo act. Bailey started booking shows for a full band about a year and a half ago, and his friends helped him flesh out the sound for live gigs.

"When I started booking some stuff for a full band, I just got my friends to play with me," Bailey said. "They were as good as anybody else out there, and I liked hanging out with them, and that's more important than being a good player, in my eyes."

"Down to the Wire" was recorded at Charleston Sound with engineer Jeff Hodges, a longtime friend of Bailey. The five songs are straight to the point, relying on the barebones instrumentation and Bailey's soulful voice, which is nice to hear in a modern music industry that is prone to overproduction. The tracks were recorded live, which gives the music an honest quality.

"We felt that it captured the feel of the band playing together," Bailey said.

The songs from the EP have been getting critical praise as well as some airtime on local radio station The Bridge. The CD is available at Monster Music and soon will be available at local Barnes & Noble Bookstores as well as at iTunes and other digital download sites. The country tunes have been well-received by fans at live shows as well.

"There's always people we don't know who haven't seen us before that seem to become fans," he said.

The songs are written in a tale-tell format that allows Bailey to set a scene through his lyrics. This has been a style that he's been working on perfecting for a while with the goal of telling a story without being too explicit.

"I wrote most of the songs last fall, and I was really getting into what I call 'story songs,' " he said. "I got more interested in painting a picture than sounding whiny. To tell a good story in a song and to do it in a way that's not cheesy is a hard thing to do."

The band will be playing a show Aug. 11 at Awendaw Green with Hundred Hands Down, another local folk-rock act. Bailey and his merry men look to keep playing shows over the next few months to promote their record with the ultimate hopes of recording more and more material. Bailey also hopes to one day get his songs on the soundtracks to some television shows and films as well.

The band's moniker, Cumberland Belle, is the brainchild of guitarist Carl Wine.

"Carl came up with it from a song or somewhere. We thought it had that sort of country sound, and it sounded like us."