Rich & Royal
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Rich & Royal

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Who We're Watching"

Catch surprisingly talented Hub City-based art rock band Rich & Royal now and you'll surely have bragging rights later. They're new to the underground scene, but not for long -- more than one major record label already has the band on their watch list. Rich & Royal combine an outstanding classic-rock guitarist with creative, grunge-rock drumming, energetic bass lines, and a soft, moody vocalist who sounds like David Gahan of Depeche Mode. In short, Rich & Royal is refreshingly original. And they put on a badass live show. Check them out at the Old Bay at 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7." - Pulse : Home News and Tribune


"June"

Sounds a bit like a "bored" Doors song in a way. It also has an inexplicable jazz element (the crooning aftertaste of the vocal). Unique sound, really. Simple, but song-driven, which is good. Not masturbatory, thankfully.
Like the rawness of the mix. I like the sound of the fingers scraping strings. It's like a breeze over it. Having recorded many things solo and pretty much just straight live, I dug this for it's spare qualities. Nice beatles-like outro. Extra credit for mood and vibe. . . . Outstanding mix of instruments and sounds.
Very good tune!
Keep making music. There is the smell of greatness here!
-dave from critical bliss - Review of the song


Discography

Hair Like Fire (2004)
Rockefeller EP (2007)

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Rich & Royal is the brainchild of Henry Rich and Eric Royal Lybeck, two friends since fourth grade. After their high school band, The Crazy Diamonds, disbanded at graduation, the two followed separate paths: Rich to Harvard; Lybeck to various schools including Vassar and Rutgers University.

2003 - Henry started Oral Fixation Mints so he can make his own schedule and play music whenever he wants - hired Eric. Putting their heads together, they took the material they had individually developed while estranged at Harvard and various clinics and pulled together a medieval concept album titled Hair Like Fire - an album who`s title track had been written and recorded when both were aged 16 years.

The medieval theme had them focusing their musical palette to grand piano, acoustic guitar, and hand percussion while maintaining the comfort zone they developed listening to Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, and Nine Inch Nails together in high school. The album was completed while working 60 hours a week, straddling the alternating lifestyle of hard mechanical labor over vintage pharmaceutical equipment and glitzy, glamorous trips to the MTV music awards in Miami. Both gentlemen lost their girlfriends at this time.

2004 - More exhausted than ready to make hoopla, one day the two unceremoniously decided they were finished. At 60 minutes, Hair Like Fire travels from dirge to Brit-pop to cyber punk to Gregorian chant to German cabaret to arpeggiated chorale to Grand Funk Railroad-esque instrumental and back and back again. Lybeck and Rich had completed an album they would listen to themselves: one with authentic guitar playing and passionate classical-style vocals; an album that required multiple spins; a modern record with depth.

2005 - Enter music compatriot from way back, Owen Susman on bass, and Andy Sapko, a legendarily energetic session drummer and Rich & Royal, ten years in the making, was fully formed. In just a year, the group has performed over 25 gigs at The Knitting Factory, CBGBs, The Stone Pony, and the other best and worst venues in New York City and New Jersey.