What began in 2020 as a sonic experiment of recording music virtually among local bandmates in Columbia, Maryland (USA) continues to evolve into a worldwide collaboration. The band is the first and only music act in history to record and release two songs including original music recorded from all 7 continents – “Manor Hill” and “Puerto Aisen”. 

INTERCONTINEN7AL has been interviewed or featured in various publications, press releases and media outlets, to include BandLab, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Denver Post, NewsBreak, The Tony Kornheiser Show, International Polar Foundation, and Focusrite.

INTERCONTINEN7AL consists of musicians across all 7 continents who virtually created 14 original songs for their release INTERCONTINEN7AL, Vol. 3. The album includes the lead single War’s the Noise, a driving but poignant rock song featuring collaborators from Europe, North America, and South America. As with previous albums, the band is donating all proceeds to charity, this time supporting the Ukrainian refugee relief effort. The third album will also include an original composition called куди ми йдемо звідси (or Where Do We Go From Here?), featuring musicians from both Ukraine and Russia collaborating together to promote peace.

The origins of INTERCONTINEN7AL date back to March 2020, when COVID-19 was impacting people around the globe and lockdowns had sidelined live music. Members of the local Columbia, MD band Toast (Matt Smith, Jamie Miller, Ben Gaither, Emily Betz and guest Becca Drayer) sought avenues to continue collaborating and playing together virtually. The band discovered the application BandLab, and were soon sharing drum tracks, guitar riffs, and other ideas among themselves.

A few months later, the band recognized the potential of BandLab’s public community, and decided to publish internal song ideas outside the band framework – making them “forkable” and unlocking them with hashtags (ex. #needsvocals) so that any BandLab user can contribute. Matt posted a grunge-inspired instrumental acoustic song idea of his tentatively called Aslin. Within days, multiple lead/harmony vocal submissions were received, including North America’s Hope Gray’s backing vocals and South America’s Gustavo Prida’s lead vocals (sung in Spanish), transforming Aslin into No Somos De Este Lugar.  The band continued this process, posting a blues idea by Matt and Jamie for external contributors, and this soon evolved into the song When I’m Gone, with David Lee Rendon from North America on vocals and Robert James Shoveller from Australia on lead guitar.

In late August 2020, Matt was walking in his backyard when an idea struck him like a lightning bolt: what if the band adopts the Sonic Highways concept that Foo Fighters had (which was recording music with artists from several cities in the United States), and expands it to move forward with further international cooperation, seeking a musician from every continent to participate. The name INTERCONTINEN7AL was born, with the 7 in the name inspired by the band Tool’s song “7empest”. 

For the remaining musicians, the band contacted friends, former bandmates and family members who were fellow North American musicians (i.e. bassists Devin Heritage, Alex Burke), and used Explore and Creator Connect features in BandLab to target by location and instrument type to establish additional musician connections (i.e. guitarist Josh Pearlson of Africa). The band also reviewed musicians’ profiles that we were following to see who they were collaborating with, or who was commenting on their songs to try to recruit other participants, to include Nerse of Asia. Europe is represented by musicians such as Poland’s Marcin Nawrocki, who was recruited after flagging one of the band’s song ideas for potential collaboration, and the talented vocalist Rieneke from the Netherlands. To locate the two musicians from Antarctica, Matt contacted numerous active research stations in September 2020 to determine if there were researchers that happened to be musicians on site, and successfully recruited Aymar de Lichervelde and Stijn Thoolen. The final result was the epic progressive rock song “Manor Hill”, featuring musicians from all 7 continents to include Aymar and Stijn who were stationed in Antarctica.

Upon the release of their debut record, the band continued to expand in 2021 and 2022, adding such talented artists such as Andrasta, Bubbas Bentlass and Darren Fellows from the United Kingdom, Jukerok from Egypt, Manuelonics from Africa, Miami73 from France, Masanobu Takano and Ken Ichiro Tashiro from Japan, Rousevision from Germany, Yaroslav from Ukraine and Ruslan from Russia. The 25 musicians who collaborated worldwide to create music for INTERCONTINEN7AL Vol. 3 are listed below. The band is already working on ideas for INTERCONTINEN7AL Vol. 4, slated for release in the summer of 2023.  

AFRICA

Josh Pearlson – guitar

Jukerok – guitar, piano

ANTARCTICA

Aymar de Lichtervelde – guitar

Stijn Thoolen – percussion (egg shaker)

ASIA

Nerse – guitar, violin

Ruslan – trumpet, guitar (programming)

Tnbt – drums

AUSTRALIA

Robert James Shoveller – guitar

EUROPE

Andrasta – vocals/lyrics

Bubbas Bentlass – vocals/lyrics

Darren Fellows – piano/guitar(programming)

Marcin Nawrocki – guitar, bass, programming (drums), mixing, mastering

Miami73 – guitar

Rieneke van Laarhoven – vocals/lyrics

Rousevision – piano

Yaroslav – guitar, drums, bass

NORTH AMERICA

Alex Burke – bass, synthesizers

Dirty D – saxophone

Becca Drayer – vocals

Hope Gray – vocals

Ty’Shawn Jarell Harris – vocals

Jamie Miller – cajon

Matt Smith – guitar, vocals, programming (piano, drums, violin, vibraphone), mixing

SOUTH AMERICA

Nereo – bass

Gustavo Prida – drum programming

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