By: Jennifer Dearborn
Skyler and Shane Humphrey, Tyler Bolyard, and Seth Dotson had no idea how far they’d go when they formed the band DarkMatter. On September 14, 2021 they released their first recorded single titled The Highway.
The first time this band played together live was 2014. Since then they have played many times but knew that they were more capable of just covering others music. That is when they decided to write their own music. They had their first breakthrough at Brew Skies in Timberline, thanks to Mountain State Brewery. They were on the line up at Brew Skies for two years. It was a great experience and they wanted more.
With the help of Rob Masten, who took the band under his wing, and Chris Newsom they started their climb to their first single release. Skyler gives credit to these two men, “Rob believed in us at a young age. Chirs showed us the ropes of recording.” Recording takes a different skill set than just playing live.
Over the years the band would collect and get pieces of equipment for an in-home recording studio a little at a time. Before long they had a complete recording studio. The newest released single has been a work in progress since 2019. After two and a half years this single can now be heard on Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, and soon on Apple Music. The first time they performed the song live was July 4, 2019 in Thomas, at Mountaineer Days.
The band performed their last live concert before the pandemic in January 2020. They would not perform live again until May 2021. During this time they worked hard to get their name out there with this single release. After two days of releasing the biggest audience of listeners was from New York and Arlington, which is amazing in itself. The band has never advertised in these areas.
Seth and Shane are both enrolled in school at WVU, while Skyler and Tyler both work. They work in the studio as often as they can. Skyler and Shane are also active in another band. Bo McMillion plays the keyboard and assists with vocals with the band as well.
Skyler says the songs they have not yet recorded are actually better than the released single. Their next goal is to release an EP (extended play) album, which is a five-song album.
