Band Marino works without a label

By Kristin Torres

Published March 11, 2008

Dylon York is really, really confident, but you wouldn’t know it right away.

The drummer for the Orlando-based Band Marino starts off most sentences with a timid “um” and has a coy, boyish laugh he breaks out when nervous.

But there’s nothing bashful about the way he talks about his music.

“People love it,” he said. “They get up and start dancing. We started playing shows and people thought it was great, so we kept doing it.”

But who can question his candor when he’s absolutely right.

Named one of the top 25 bands on MySpace, Band Marino is one of the biggest acts on the Web and in the growing Orlando indie rock scene.

What’s more impressive is that they’ve done it all while missing one crucial thing their competitors have: a label.

To produce their first album, 2006’s The Sea and the Beast, the band got a crash course from some outside help but soon polished off the record on their own.

And the five-piece band had to pull together a lot of musical talent to get it done — literally.

Vocalist Nathan Bond “was just writing songs for fun,” York said, and keyboardist Jonathan Nee was taught a few lines on a keyboard found in an old attic. As for the band’s original banjo player?

“He played no instruments,” York said. “The first instrument he played was keyboard and he picked up banjo and accordion and I don’t know even know what else.”

Regardless of instrumentation, the band still managed to become one of the most successful acts on the Orlando scene.

At their first record release party in 2006, the band’s fans packed a small venue decorated for the occasion by the band members themselves. “We had a 30 or 40 foot sea monster hanging from the ceiling that we had made,” he said. “It was a crazy, crazy night.”

Now two years later the band is well versed in a whirling array of banjos, mandolins, guitars and a whole bunch of things to strum and pound.

“When when’re writing we hear things, you know, ‘What would be perfect for this part?’” York said. “We just kind of imagine what that would be, and we just try to find whatever we need and we get it.”

There have been times when a band member will learn a completely new instrument just because he thinks it will sound good on the record, he said.

And they have to be doing something right.

With their surging popularity both on and off the Web, the band decided to re-release The Sea and the Beast in early March.

But York gives some dues.

“I don’t know what we would do without MySpace,” he said.

Without it, he said, “I know things would be a lot harder.”

But at the same time, York said he feels his band would be in the same place without the help of the site that started it all.

And for a band that’s gotten this far without a label, it’s hard to question him.

As for the tour, York is both enthusiastic and positive that Band Marino will collect fans along the way.

“The joy of playing on tour is playing to people we’ve never played to before,” he said. “We usually win people over. We’re not breaking any molds or anything, we just enjoy doing what we’re doing.”