The band’s new album, The Acchin Book, is due out August 4th.
“Born among the pitch pines of southern New Jersey,” reads the band’s bio on its bandcamp website, “Pine Barons is a super team of ultra-pals who write songs for everyday thinkers, movers, magicians, friends, animals, and legends.”
That’s quite an eclectic array of people. But it’s true. The soothing, mellow vibe of Pine Barons’ brand of indie rock and roll has fans in just about every demographic of living creature, which is a large part of why the band has escalated up the ladder of Philadelphia’s flourishing indie rock scene.
But that ladder started in Shamong.
“We recorded [the first EP] in my parents’ basement in Shamong,” frontman Keith Abrams told The Sun at Johnny Brenda’s, the local bar for artsy 20 somethings in the recently rejuvenated Fishtown/Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, which is also where Abrams lives. Abrams plays guitar, sings and writes all the songs in Pine Barons.
In fact, as Abrams ordered a $2 Kenzinger pilsner at the bar during the 4 p.m. happy hour, the bartender carded him. As he opened his wallet, he showed the bartender his license, which had still yet to be switched from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.
“It has my Cape May address,” he said. “My parents live in Cape May now.”
He’ll be back at Johnny Brenda’s with the rest of his band on July 9, where Pine Barons are slated to open a show for Broncho, an up-and-coming indie band from Norman, Okla., at the upstairs part of the bar.
The band’s first full-length album, titled The Acchin Book, is due out Aug. 4.
If you want to trace Pine Barons back to its inception, you’d have to go all the way back to the early 90s, back when Abrams, who’s now 25, met current Pine Barons drummer Collin Smith in preschool. Abrams said the name of the preschool was Day Bear Care, and it was located in Shamong.
“We started a band when we were in fifth grade or something. So we’ve been playing in bands on and off for a long time,” said Abrams.
It wasn’t until much later when Abrams met the band’s other three members, guitarist Brad Pulley, bassist Shane Hower and keyboardist Alex Beebe, the latter of which is the newly added fifth member of the band. However, Pulley, Hower and Beebe are from Southampton not Shamong.
All band members attended Seneca High School, where they were taught by music teacher Doug Barber, who’s still at the school.
Abrams was in the school’s concert band and wind ensemble, and also took various music technology classes the school offered, where he initially learned how to record music.
He was also very influenced by his dad, who played the guitar in various cover bands. He remembers one was called Midnight Runner.
But he was also very influenced by Queen.
“Queen was my first favorite band,” Abrams reminisced. “I was obsessed with Queen when I was 4 years old. I made music videos and stuff to their songs. I had cardboard guitars that I would use. I would force my family members to be in the band. My brother would be the drummer.”
As he got older, he turned to songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen as his main sources of inspiration. These influences can be heard on The Acchin Book.
By the way, where did that name come from? Well for starters, Acchin is an intentional misspelling of the word “Action.”
“When my family moved [from Shamong] to Cape May I was going through all these boxes and all these books I made when I was a little kid. I was probably 4 or something. And one was the ‘Acchin Book.’ And you’d flip through it and there were pictures that went along with it. It was like this is Big Bird looking at a bunch of people. This is my dad’s band setting up. But everything was spelled wrong. But the only consistent word was ‘Acchin, The Acchin Book.’”
One of Abrams’ favorite Shamong pastimes? Simply exploring the outdoors.
“That’s all there is to do [is play in the woods],” he said. “A lot of camping and stuff. But yeah, that’s literally all there is to do. There’s a Wawa. Me and Collin would always sneak out at night and go to Wawa. I’ve always been a night owl.”
