Bumpin Uglies - Lyrics Over Everything (2024) [Official Digital Download]

Bumpin Uglies knows all about hustle. The Maryland reggae-rock band had spent more than adecade on the road, starting with local open mics and backyard parties and growing into roadwarriors, building an ever-expanding audience with sold-out shows in clubs and prime spots atfestivals from coast to coast, on one national tour after another. Then the pandemic hit, andtouring shut down.After being in motion for so long, singer and lead guitarist Brandon Hardesty wasn’t about to sitstill, even if he couldn’t be out on tour. In fact, Bumpin Uglies never really stopped working—they adapted. The group returned to playing backyard parties around Annapolis, where they’rebased, and added socially distanced concerts and full-band livestreams. In the fall of 2020, theyalso started releasing a new song every month as part of a project called the Never EndingDrop.“We felt like prospectors going out and trying to find gold—it was just uncharted territory,”Hardesty says. “We had to figure out a way to make aliving. That’s kind of what being amusician during Covid has felt like to me. You can do it, but you have to be bold.”Hardesty has been bold from the start. He was waiting tables when he started the band in hisearly 20s. With an ear for melodies and the determination to succeed, he poured his time andenergy into making Bumpin Uglies a success. For years, the band did just about everythingthemselves, from booking shows to releasing their own albums, building a sense of momentumalong the way that eventually became self-sustaining, and then Hardesty wasn’t waiting tablesanymore.No surprise, then, that a musician with his strong work ethic found a way to take maximumadvantage of the sudden surplus of time at home. For one thing, he got to hang out with histoddler son, and he and his wife welcomed a new baby. He also wrote a ton of songs. For thefirst time, Hardesty approached songwriting as a discipline, dedicating time to working on newmusic rather than waiting for inspiration to strike and then jotting down ideas in the back of theBumpin Uglies van on his way from one gig to the next.“I just woke up every morning and I made a pot of coffee, and I had this running list of ideas inmy phone for hooks and riffs and progressions,” he says. “I satdown every day and mademyself write a song, and 85 percent of them were pretty good. And it was awesome. I really,really enjoyed the process.”The result is the band’s seventh studio album,Mid-Atlantic Dub, which they recorded in 2021and plan to release this fall. After showing the breadth of Bumpin Uglies’ influences on theNever Ending Drop, from folk to classic country to hip-hop,Mid-Atlantic Dubbrings the group—also featuring Dave Wolf on bass and vocals, Ethan Lichtenberger on keyboards and TJHaslett on drums—back to the core of what they do.“It’s very groove-focused,” Hardesty says. “It’s very hooky, very vibey. It’s very accessible, butthere was no compromise on the storytelling or the lyricism.”

Tracklist:
01 - Underdog
02 - Passion is Contagious
03 - Lyrics Over Everything
04 - High Hopes
05 - Stanley
06 - Cheat Codes
07 - Forever to Go
08 - Yin and the Yang
09 - Maryland Boys
10 - Spinning Plates
11 - Off The Grid
12 - Snakes in the Garden
13 - End
14 - Live Your Life (Auggie's Version)


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