Band infuses Anaheim fest with Long Island sound

Even when stranded by a blown spark plug in a hotel lobby somewhere in Texas, Ryan Hunter can’t deny his love of life on tour.

“It’s really nice getting out on the road again and seeing the country,” said Hunter, the 23-year-old front man of Long Island post-hardcore outfit Envy on the Coast. “You miss all those little things like looking out the window at five o’clock in Florida and watching the sun go down after having some beers and an afternoon show.”

Hunter’s band is currently in the midst of a North American tour that will lead them to Anaheim, Calif., this weekend for the opening day of The Bamboozle music festival.

But for as much as the guitarist and vocalist might romanticize life on the road, Hunter most enjoys returning to New York and his native Long Island.

In the recently debuted video for “Head First In The River” — the first single from the band’s upcoming album Lowcountry — Long Island landmarks and some of the band’s more personal haunts are prominently featured.

Among other authentic hometown backdrops, the video spotlights a dam by guitarist and vocalist Brian Byrne’s house, a dock in Hunter’s friend’s waterfront backyard and a set of train tracks where the bandmates spend a good portion of their summers hanging out and drinking beer.

“All the places in that video and the people in the video are the real deal,” Hunter said.

It’s impossible to disengage Envy’s sound and lyrics from the band’s Long Island roots. The area plays a critical role in all the music the band produces and work they do creatively.

“Long Island is not the type of place where you’re really proud of the cultural diversity or necessarily the people that come out of there or the reputation that we get in regards to that,” Hunter explained. “I think the reason that we love being from Long Island is the actual geographical stuff there and the nature.”

Fortunately for Hunter, the things he and his bandmates love most about home could be translated into a visual medium like the music video.

The band entrusted young directors Erick Sasso and Brian Wendelken — also Long Islanders — with the task of converting “Head First In The River” from strictly sound to a more complete audio-visual product.

Sasso and Wendelken, whose past adaptation of Raekwon material roundly impressed the boys of Envy, had already proven to have a vision compatible with the direction Envy sought for the song.

Hunter had written a few treatments and concepts for the video himself — most elements of production were kept in-house — and is pleased with Sasso and Wendelken’s execution of the band’s vision.

“They killed it,” Hunter said. “Every single verbal idea that I painted for them, they went and took it three steps further and made an incredible video that really, I think, epitomizes what we’re about and what Long Island is about.”

Hunter said the band really wanted to give fans an idea of where they came from. “We wanted it to be pretty true to form in regards to what home is like for us,” he said.

When Lowcountry, the sophomore follow-up to 2007’s Lucy Gray, is released Tuesday, Envy on the Coast will prove their continued dedication to the ideals of musicianship, as well as their strong convictions regarding the importance of crafting a solid and cohesive album — not simply a collection of standalone songs that are heavy on the hooks.

Actually, the band was reluctant to place too much emphasis on the selection of a single at all. When the band’s label, Photo Finish Records, chose “Head First In The River” as the track that would represent Lowcountry, whispers of a possible push to radio made Hunter and his bandmates deeply uneasy.

“We have a certain paranoia that we’ve developed over the year just from watching our friends’ bands break up and call it quits,” Hunter said of his mistrust of placing too much emphasis on a single. “We work hard on a record; We don’t go in there looking to write a hit song.”

Like a lot of musicians, the guys of Envy on the Coast resent the idea of one song representing their whole band, rather than having a listening audience that will hear and consider their album in its entirety.

Hunter said the objective of the band’s recording process is to produce a snapshot of where the band is in its life and career at that particular moment in time.

“That’s how we look at records: They’re just like a 10- to 12-song snapshot of what you’re being influenced and hit by at that point,” Hunter explained. “It’s an opportunity to make a whole piece that expresses yourself, not just one song … because when it comes to the songs, we just kind of play and jam and let things hit us, so you kind of need 10 or 12 songs to get your whole point across.”

If the excitement of their life on the road is at all reflected in Lowcountry — it really should be, given the band’s method of capturing the spirit of the present in a rock Polaroid of sorts — the new recording will make for great listening.