Nashville’s progressive/classic rock trio Gentry Blue have launched their debut album, Fragments. This record marks a significant milestone for the band, blending cosmic and emotional themes. We sat down with Sean Jannay and Lydia Gentry-DeBonis to discuss their journey, the creative process behind Fragments, and their plans for the future.

Congratulations on the release of Fragments! How does it feel to finally be sharing your debut album with the world?

Sean: Exciting, certainly. I’m nervous about how it will be received – this is the first band I’ve been in that actually seems to have some fans – but the few people that have heard it so far say they like it, so I’m hopeful.

Lydia: It feels intimidating. We’ve been working on Fragments for at least a year and a half and to finally have it out in the world in just a couple of days is wild, to say the least! I genuinely hope it brings a lot of joy into people’s lives.

The album explores cosmic and emotional themes. Can you talk about the inspiration behind some of the key tracks, like “Collide” and the title track “Fragments”?

Sean: Fragments is a song about identity crisis. I’m a guy who does a lot of stuff. A lot of it I do pretty well, and it takes all of my time and energy to make sure that’s the case; but I know that by choosing not to specialize, I sacrifice a level of greatness in all the things I do. I’ve spent a lot of nights looking in the mirror and asking myself what I actually want to be, and I always go to bed the same as I woke up – if I make it to bed. Of course, the chorus was inspired by the Bilbo Baggins line about feeling “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” It’s a bit of dialogue I’ve always resonated with, since I was a kid.

Lydia: Collide is about the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxy collision that will occur in about five billion years. A couple years ago I was scrolling on social media and found this fascinating video about the subject; I had no idea about it. The thought of this made me so incredibly anxious, even though I won’t live to see it. Heck, all of humanity won’t either! Earth won’t be inhabitable in that time. All of these thoughts were swirling in my head and I needed to write a song about it. It’s almost about accepting our collective fate to be doomed. Brendan wrote the instrumental arrangement of it and I top-lined the lyrics and melody over it. Even though Collide is literally about a giant cosmic event that won’t happen for billions of years, at its core, it’s more about existential anxiety.

Fragments by Gentry Blue

Your music blends progressive rock, gothic violin, and pop hooks. How did you develop such a distinctive sound, and what influences helped shape it?

Sean: Like with most artists, it’s an amalgamation of all the music we’ve ever listened to – for me, that spans from Zeppelin and Hendrix, through Nirvana and Alice In Chains, Porcupine Tree and Jeff Buckley, to Dave Brubeck and Coltrane, Bach, Becca Stevens, Jacob Collier, Sheryl Crow, Louis Cole… you get the point. There’s not a lot of conscious effort that went into it; we’ve all been making music for a long time, and this stuff is just what happened when we got together.

Lydia: I’m with Sean here–we make what we love! We have a variety of influences all over the place. If you pressed shuffle on my massive Spotify playlist, you would get a Rush deep cut, then a Taylor Swift song, then a song from a movie soundtrack, then Sierra Ferrell, Steven Wilson, Grateful Dead, Ghost, Muse, Janis Joplin, etc. We’re all a very eclectic bunch. At least for me, the love of music has left such a mark on me, that I feel like I have to return the favor and keep it going. As long as we keep it honest to ourselves and enjoy ourselves along the way, that’s what truly matters.

Lydia, as a violinist and vocalist, your role is quite unique in the rock world. How does the electric violin contribute to the overall sound and dynamic of Gentry Blue?

Lydia: I feel like I’m in a unique place among a lot of violinists in the non-classical world– the electric violin isn’t really a focal piece in a lot of our songs. I used to consider myself more of a violinist first, then a singer, but that was years ago. Right before COVID hit, I was a violin performance major and switched it to music business instead. Our college stopped private lessons if you weren’t a music major, and my level of playing really fell off the cliff in the time since. This past year I’ve been trying to regain what skills I’ve lost but also relearn how to unlock my creative side besides just simply performing live. I’ve been struggling with a lot of writer’s block; the last song I wrote was two years ago! Lately I’ve been learning a lot of fiddling songs since I occasionally gig in Downtown Nashville on Broadway and that’s been rewarding. My next goal is to become a sort-of ‘rhythm violinist’ in Gentry Blue since we don’t have two guitarists, just to fill up the space in live settings.

The album includes songs that were written years ago, alongside newer tracks written during the recording process. How does Fragments reflect the evolution of Gentry Blue’s songwriting over the years?

Lydia: Fragments is such a cool title to use for our debut album, because it truly contains ‘fragments’ from when we first started as a band and includes ‘fragments’ from just a few months ago! For example, What Lies on the Other Side was the first song that Brendan and I wrote together in 2019… we weren’t even dating by this point! Blackberry Bitter was written at a midpoint in our evolution as a band a couple of lineups ago when we had Aidan Cunningham on drums. We played that song a couple times live and then scrapped it from our setlist for a reason I don’t remember. We picked it back up earlier this year and made a few adjustments in the song to make it feel tighter. Songs like Become Invisible and Think I Might Be Crazy were written by Sean only a few months ago. This album is so special to me for all these reasons. 

Sean, you’ve mentioned that producing Fragments taught the band a lot about your identity as musicians. What were some of the most important lessons learned during the album’s creation?

Sean: If I may deviate immediately from the central point here, the biggest change from this record to the next will be recording consistency. The drums on Fragments were recorded by 3 different drummers, across 3 different spaces; the vocals were recorded on a few different mics, all in less-than-ideal spaces; and it was all done over a very extended period of time, as about half the album was written during the recording process. You can hear some of this variation in the sound of the record, as hard as Colby and I worked to minimize it. The next record will be entirely written before we track it, and it’ll be recorded efficiently and consistently in the home studio space we built while making Fragments. 

To add to your question, I think we’ve all grown immensely as musicians. Lydia’s voice is a whole different animal now from when I joined the band, and I’ve become much more confident when it comes to writing for her range. Working with Colby has also made me a way better mix engineer than I was before. It’s been a great experience.

Gentry Blue has been together since 2019, but the pandemic and lineup changes delayed your debut. How did those challenges affect the creative process for Fragments?

Sean: I managed to scare away the whole previous rhythm section within a couple months of joining. From that point, the process was pretty straightforward.

Lydia: Nashville is an interesting place to have an original band– a lot of musicians come and go for a variety of reasons like getting better gigs, and you have to be alright with that lack of permanence in your band. Although I had been dreaming of releasing an album as Gentry Blue even two to three years ago, we still were getting our feet planted in the scene and figuring out our identity as a band. The work on the album finally started right after Brendan and I got married in May 2023, and afterwards it was fairly simple. I remember getting the initial mix for Collide while Brendan and I were on our honeymoon and being blown away. It was absolutely surreal to be hiking for miles in the hills of southern France and receiving that text from Sean!

Your 2022 single “Tell Them I’m Insane” was produced by Grammy-winner Mitch Dane. How did that experience influence the way you approached recording Fragments?

Lydia: It was wild how that connection was made; a family friend messaged me about someone that she had in her church youth group that she directed years ago who now produces in town. I emailed him and he wanted to get coffee. I met Will Gibson, our bassist at the time, at Sputnik Sound, a studio that was just down the road from our college. Mitch was so hospitable! He made us a cup of coffee and we talked a lot about our hobbies and music. We already had Tell Them I’m Insane tracked but were waiting on the first mix. I remember being so nervous watching him listen to the stems! After the song was finished, he said that he wanted to hop on it and mix it for us, as a way to get our feet wet working together. We took him up on it and that’s history! We would love to work with him again later down the road. I think a great teaching moment for me was how important getting the mix right is, as well as working with professionals when we were still novice college students. Attention to detail is key.

The album touches on mental health, relationships, and personal introspection, all tied together by the theme of space. How do you balance these deeply personal and universal themes in your songwriting?

Sean: We don’t. We just made up the space thing after the album was done to make it sound cooler. We write about what we want; if it’s good, we use it. We’ve got a song about me getting a speeding ticket, for christsake.

Lydia: I’m going to disagree with Sean here; it was in the back of my head when we were working on the album… 😉

I feel like every topic can be epic enough if you make it. Especially when you’re in the thick of it, mental health issues can be detrimental and can feel like the world is ending.

Lydia, you and Brendan got married during the band’s formation. How does that personal connection influence the band’s chemistry and the collaborative process?

Lydia: It’s an awesome and rare connection to have for sure! He initially joined the band as our first drummer in February 2019 and we started dating later in that October. We just got married last May! It can be wonderful but sometimes difficult– we have to be in ‘business/band mode’ occasionally when we’re gigging or on the road together. But we work great together and there’s no other feeling like having your best friend on the road with you. He’s the only person I don’t feel self-conscious around when I show him my music, and he’s helped me grow a lot as a person. We’re each other’s number one cheerleader. 🙂

Your influences include legendary bands like Rush, Jefferson Airplane, and Fleetwood Mac. What elements from these bands do you feel resonate most in Gentry Blue’s music?

Lydia: This is insanely difficult to answer… a lot of our influences are simply bands that we look up to significantly. I think a huge element from Rush that resonates with me is their passion and being true to themselves; it’s inspired me a great deal.

How do you approach songwriting as a trio? Do you have a specific process for writing together, or does it differ from song to song?

Sean: Very few of our recent songs are true co-writes; generally, one of us will come up with something at home and bring it to the band just about fully-formed. I’ve top-lined a couple of Debo’s instrumentals; that’s about the extent of it since I’ve been in the group.

Lydia: Most of the time we’ll bring a fully formed song to the table, or occasionally top-line each other’s songs. 

Fragments features a rich sonic landscape, thanks to the multi-instrumental talents of Brendan and Sean. How do you decide which instruments and sounds to bring into each song?

Sean: We rassle to see who plays what instrument on each song. You may think he’d win every time because of his size (he’s 6’3″), but I’ve got a lower center of gravity and I’m real wiry, so it’s actually a pretty fair fight.

You’re known for your captivating live performances. How does the energy of performing live influence the way you write and record your music?

Sean: We try to preserve some of the raw, blemished quality of a live performance in our recordings – just enough to remind the listener this thing was made by humans, with an actual instrument in a real space.

What do you hope fans take away from Fragments? Are there any specific messages or emotions you want listeners to connect with?

Lydia: I hope people resonate with the last song on the album, which is Cutthroat. Even though we live in a dark and depressing world and we will be knocked down time after time, we have to keep rising up after the fall. I think kindness and optimism can be hard to find in this time we live in, as cheesy as it sounds, and it’s up to us to keep that lantern of hope lit.

Nashville is known for its vibrant music scene, but Gentry Blue’s sound is quite different from the city’s mainstream genres. How has Nashville influenced your journey as a progressive rock band?

Sean: Nashville is where I’ve met one hundred percent of the musicians I know, and pretty much all the friends I have. Most of those people are not native to the city, and none of them are exclusively country-heads. The beauty of Nashville, regardless of what is popular in the scene here, is the mixing-pot element. Everywhere you go, you’re gonna run into somebody who’s a hundred times better than you at what you do, and they’re gonna introduce you to some crazy new idea or lick or artist, and you’re gonna go home wanting to practice. It is tough being a progressive rock band here – but I don’t think I’d want to be a musician anywhere else.

Lydia: Nashville is an awesome place to be a musician. There are so many opportunities to grow and learn, and despite what people may think, a lot of fellow musicians genuinely want to help each other out. There’s an amazing rock and metal scene here and so many live for the art.

Finally, what advice would you give to young or emerging bands looking to carve their own path in the music industry, especially in a genre like progressive rock?

Sean: Tune. Write. Write all the time. Write enough that you stop being precious about your songs. Practice your instrument. With a metronome. Learn how to record yourself. Tune. When you have a rehearsal, learn the songs before you get to the rehearsal. Unless you’re the last band at a show, tear your shit down fast. Tune. Post on social media regularly. Try not to be stressful to be around. Make sure your instrument is intonated reasonably well at all times. Learn to sing. I don’t care if you’re actually going to do vocals in the band. All together now – Tune!

Looking forward, what are Gentry Blue’s plans after the release of Fragments? Can fans expect a tour or any special live performances to celebrate the album?

Lydia: We’re back to work on our second album!

Fragments is out now; order it from Bandcamp here.