Cedars, December 2017

December 2017 14 ART & ENTERTAINMENT River Soul Revival: A Band Built by Brothers Shawn and Brett Sumrall surprise audiences with a forgotten genre by Ian Sarmiento M usic is a universal language. It’s something that everyone hears, something that everyone expe- riences and it’s different everywhere in the world. However, most of all, it’s something that changes over time. River Soul Revival is a folk, western and pop band, made up of two Cedarville students. They have brought back a genre lost in history to say one thing: “Harmonicas bring people together.” River Soul Revival consists of two brothers, Shawn and Brett Sumrall. They grew up in Northern Virginia southwest of Washington, with their mom, dad, and younger brother, Ian. Shawn, a senior English major, is the main vocalist and acoustic guitaristist. Brett, a senior athletic training major, also plays acoustic guitar, the harmonica, and sings harmonies. Shawn began learning guitar when he was seven. He started taking lessons only to find that he wasn’t learning as well as he wanted to. So he gave up formal lessons and started learning on his own. “We would listen to music all the time, growing up, and it became a huge part of our lives,” Brett said. Brett began learning to play the guitar when he was 14. He said that after watching Shawn play at home and at church, he de- cided to start learning guitar as well. They spent a lot of time on a church stage together, opening up in worship for their church congregation. Shawn and Brett have grown up play- ing together in church, at school and, to the annoyance of their neighbors, late at night. The duo did not come from a musical family. However, they did have had a few family friends that played a role in support- ing them with their music. These friends were instrumental in further helping them to make music a significant part of their lives. One of these friends is Chuck Freer, the associate pastor from their church, who taught Shawn to play guitar. Another friend they mentioned is Wil- liam Keller. The brothers said Keller intro- duced them to a few bands that brought them into their current genre, helping to inspire them to write their own music. The Avett Brothers, an American Folk Rock band, have inspired a lot of the Sum- ralls’ music. River Soul Revival plays a lot of cov- ers of the Avett Brothers’ songs, which was a stepping stone toward writing their own music for their band. “We play and listen to their music mainly because our voices fit best with that type of music,” Brett said. When working on songs, the two broth- ers typically sit down together to talk about the lyrics. The topics of conversation always differ based on their life circumstances. “It could be about how we might view the world or what’s going on around us,” Shawn said. Eventually, one or the other will start playing on the guitar and begin the process of creating a melody. In their most recent song, they wrote about how people mess up. “People can make mistakes a lot,” Brett said. “It’s never an overnight change to be- come a better person ... it’s always a process.” After a significant amount of time acting as a band, they decided they needed a name. “When we wrote down a couple names, we looked back at them later and realized that they were all terrible,” Brett said. They had trouble coming up with a name until one day, when they wrote a song about a river. To them, a river symbolizes simplicity, or the idea of bringing some- thing back to simplicity “The music we play not only surprises an audience with a forgotten genre, but also helps us to communicate our music in a way that brings audiences souls back to a simple and beautiful state, almost like a ‘Soul Re- vival,’” Brett said. And so, they came up with the name River Soul Revival. However, the brother duo wasn’t al- ways this close. Like many bands, the broth- ers had their differences. The two had some disagreements after Shawn graduated high school. “He was a butt,” Brett said, “mainly be- cause Shawn was going through a different period in his life than I was, and we butt heads then.” They soon realized that their relation- ship had drifted. The one thing that kept them together was the times they played music together. Photo by Jennifer Gammie Brothers Shawn (right) and Brett (left) Sumrall draw their musical inspiration from a variety styles to create their unique sound