Due to its separate geographic location, The Long Island music scene often gets excluded in conversations regardingother music from New York. This gave the region its own identity by becoming a breeding ground for artists to develop their style. Competition makes it challenging for musicians to get noticed by an audience, but with the help of technology, that barrier is easier to overcome now more than ever.
Fern Dells is a four-piece indie rock band consisting of Salvatore Santiago, Joseph Rom, Michael Perlmutter, and Zach Sieger. The music started as a solo endeavor for singer-songwriter Santiago, and over time developed into a group with the help of his friends. Together they created the first songs of their catalogue that are available on streaming services today.
The name was inspired by a road taken on a trip to a music festival in Wisconsin by Santiago, representing the journey taken to a desired destination. Santiago explains, “My influences and inspirations heavily affect all aspects of my artistic expression. From the world and its physical beauty as well as its faults, to the kind of human connection that music brings us. Those things make me strive for giving everything I have in a performance to connect with people, and hopefully find myself within that.”
Together they capture emotion within their music people are able to easily relate to. They authentically wear their influences on their sleeve and are interested in conveying a mood while also telling a story. Artists from Bon Iver, Ben Howard, Iron & Wine and City & Colour impacted the waySantiago approaches the way he writes music, but individually each member is tapped into their own influences.
Guitarist Michael Perlmutter says, “Fern Dells seems uniquely perched to dig into the kind of sound we’re creating and I think being cognizant of that will allow us to find our sound and our audience. What does a Fern Dells song mean? What does it mean to write one? Refining our own voice and feeling assured that our process results in the things we set out to achieve from a top down perspective are the ideal path forward.”
With pure intentions Santiago has been able to build Fern Dells from an idea with his friends. As an independent act they have developed efficiently as a band with a promising future ahead of them. With goals of touring outside of New York, they currently have five singles available on all streaming platforms with each song amassing over 5,000 streams.