Realm79 was originally formed in Kent back in 2001 by Chris Fry and Ollie Tanton Brown. Chris played the guitar and Ollie provided the vocals. Dave Sinstead joined the band shortly afterwards providing the beat with his drums and the trio was formed.
With the three of us working together we wrote our first album, ‘Proximity’. As a bunch of people who had never recorded anything in our lives, it took a long time, but by the time it was finished we were happy with the result. Looking back we can see we have learnt so much in the 10 years we’ve been doing this.
In the next couple of years a bassest joined our band which allowed us to go out performing our own material and rock covers including tracks like, ‘All the small things’, Blink 182, ‘How you remind me’, Nickelback.
Realm79 gigged in pubs around Folkestone and the South East of England up until 2004. We had a hell of a lot of fun and made some great memories and managed to get a couple of tracks on local radio!
2005 saw Realm79 reform. Ollie had been away for a year but was back and ready to try something different. The new R79 was an acoustic band, Chris on his old guitar, Ollie still singing, but versatile Dave moved from the drums to piano.
The acoustic R79 was born and the gigs changed. There was more function work offered, which gave us a taste of playing in some nice venues and to a different type of crowd.
Nick Finlinson joined Realm79 in 2007 providing us with the much-needed bass sounds for the acoustic set.
Being back to a 4 piece band opened up even more doors for us; Nicks rock background, Dave dying to play his drums again and Chris getting out his Fender Strat led us trying a full rock rehearsal and that was that. We loved it. We became 2 bands in 1 and this gave us even more options when it came to gigs.
In August 2007 we preformed our first wedding gig. The first hour was an acoustic set and the second half was a full rock set. We loved it and so did the bride and groom thankfully! The new set up of being an acoustic and rock band was formed.
2007 was a busy year for Realm79 which was us taking our first steps into wedding gigs on top of our other gigs and also having our first website built by our good mate Rob Hughes. (You’re now looking at the new improved awesome site!). We also recorded our first music video for the track Crazy Maybe (again with the help of Rob) which you can see by clicking here.
In 2008 we started writing our new album, ‘Long Time Coming’, which will be finished and onto CD this year.
From 2008 to 2011 we have continued to add songs to our repertoire and write our own material, so now we are an acoustic band, a rock band and the new album is an acoustic rock album so really I guess we are being 3 bands at once. We love doing all versions of our sound and hope to release songs from ‘Long Time Coming’, in 2011, play more gigs and basically have a great time doing it.
2011 also sees the launch of our new website thanks to Rob Hughes and his colleague Ben. Thanks guys.
If you have any questions for any of the band or want to book us for a gig please email us on theband@realm79.co.uk
Thanks
Realm79
No 1 Kent Wedding Band
