With an upcoming album, a full headlining tour with reggae group Ballyhoo! and a new record deal, it’s possible Passafire is having its most successful year yet.
The group, which released its fifth album, “Vines,” on Monday, recently concluded the 2013 BrewHaha Tour with Ballyhoo! in support of the project.
Will Kubley, who plays bass and sings backup vocals, said Gainesville is one of the stops the band always makes sure to play while in Florida because of the support they’ve received from local fans over the years.
The band formed in 2003 after lead singer and guitarist Ted Bowne met Will Kubley and his brother, Nick Kubley, at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The Savannah, Ga., group released its self-titled album that year and has been visiting Gainesville ever since.
After releasing its first three albums, Passafire found mainstream success when they released the album “Start from Scratch” in 2011, which reached No. 6 on the Billboard Top Reggae Albums chart.
On top of the success the band has found through record sales, it has toured with artists such as Pepper, Matisyahu and 311.
“Vines” was made after about a year of planning, writing and recording, said drummer Nick Kubley. He said Passafire took a two- to three- month break between touring last year to record some of the songs on the 13-track effort. The band stopped in El Paso, Texas, to record some of the material that was created while traveling.
Over the summer tour, the band started inviting fans to listen to some of the new material and acoustic songs backstage before the show. Nick Kubley said they started with just acoustic songs to get the fans involved but decided to start playing the new album before it came out.
He said those experiences have led the band to want to release a full acoustic album to give back to the fans who have supported the band.
The new album may have taken longer to release without help from some of those fans.
In April, the band had more than $8,000 of equipment stolen from its tour van. Fans pitched in through Passafire’s Facebook page to help raise some of the money and assure the group had instruments in time to continue touring.
“We would have had to just round up stuff and borrow stuff,” Nick Kubley said. “The fact that we were able to get enough money to get it back in less than a week was amazing. So the fans came through in a huge way, and we’ll be forever grateful.”
Despite all the achievements Passafire has had so far, it recently switched record labels from LAW Records to New York City’s Easy Star Records. Part of the reason the band transitioned to the new label was the band members felt they had not received enough attention from labels before. The band put “Start from Scratch” out on its own, but Will Kubley said Easy Star put more effort into the guys’ album than they had seen before.
“It’s been awesome having an outside group of people that believe in music as much as you do and that are super supportive, Will Kubley said.
A version of this story ran on page 7 on 11/14/2013 under the headline "Passafire celebrates mainstream success with new album"
