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Artist
The Royal Engine Company
2+ albums
blueegrassfolk
about
Ask the gents of the Royal Engine Company how, and they’ll say they were forged by good fortune, a series of coincidences just so. And in a way, such is the truth. Micah and Zak met in college, an instant friendship formed on roller skates. One day on a whim, Zak borrowed a banjo that serendipitously became his own. As the instrument inspired Zak, dormitory jam sessions inspired the three of them. “That’s when we tasted the joy of making music,” says Zak. “That’s when I knew.” Cousins Micah Patchin and Aaron Bristow grew up in a musical shadow: Micah’s dad, Aaron’s mom, and their siblings were a travelling folk ensemble in the 1970s, an influence that gushes from Micah’s every strum of his father’s old guitar. Abetted by the trio’s penchant for picking up old instruments at estate sales and on Craigslist (the accordion belonged to a woman who only played for her children, and Aaron’s bass came from a man moving to Seattle to build ships), a sound began to evolve, and a history as majestic as the sound of vintage strings continued unfolding. Their 2010 EP, Original Works of Fiction, was a five-month process of recording and re-recording, of carving out their own corner in the vastness of bluegrass, folk, and rock. The result is vaudevillian folk rock at it’s most charismatic, brimming with transcendent melodies, lyrics that work into your soul and settle, and an acute sense of heritage and musical tradition. But as their name might imply, the Royal Engine Company chugs alon
