The Earlies

With half its members residing in Texas (Brandon Carr and JM Lapham) and the other half (Christian Madden and Giles Hatton) in Northern England, the Earlies bridge the geographical gap with the wonders of technology and the group's shared love of prog, psychedelic, country and electronica. The band's musical penpals approach started in the late '90s, when Lapham met Madden at a sound recording class in Manchester, and also met Carr at a record store in Texas. Acting as the link between the other members, Lapham handed out DAT tapes to Carr, Hatton and Madden, and this way the group slowly built the songs that they began releasing in 2002 on Eps such as Bring it Back Again. In 2004, the band released These Were the Earlies, a collection of their previously-released work, in the U.K. That year also marked the first time that all of the Earlies met each other in person, for a tour that expanded the band's ranks to a small army of 11. American fans had to wait until 2005 to get a domestically-issued copy of These Were the Earlies, when Secretly Canadian released the album that fall.