Do you have a favorite song that hits you hard every time you listen? A song that brings chills down your arms or weighs heavy on your heart? Music that makes you feel something? That’s what music should be about, right? You want to experience those highs, those lows, and everything in between when you hear a song. That’s what happened to me when I started listening to music from our next Blue Ridge Rock Festival Rising Talent artist and I hope by the end of this when you listen to their music you’ll feel the same. Let me introduce everyone to State of Illusion.
Currently, State of Illusion consists only of Jacob Porter (vocals, guitar) and Chase Medlin (bass). The band is currently auditioning session players for the tour. Jacob and Chase are from Greenville, South Carolina and have known each other since elementary school. The two became friends in high school. The band formed back in 2005. Chase learned bass from playing saxophone. “Musical theory runs itself over pretty well,” he commented in relating to switching instruments.
State of Illusion (if I recall correctly) is the Rising Talent that has been in the industry the longest from the artists I interviewed. And over those 16 years Jacob says it’s been “one step forward, two steps back” with their music career. “It’s hard to pin down specific bad luck,” Jacob started, “A lot of rotation and things happening at the wrong time. With band members you finally hit gold and you’re kind of striding forward and then maybe someone else’s heart isn’t into it and that brings everybody down. There’s been a lot of moments like that where it’s ‘OK we can get to this next step’ and then all of a sudden, a ball is dropped and we have to go dark for a little while.” Chase added, “Any time we gained momentum, something just slows it back down and rolls it back a little bit.” Jacob went on to say, “Chase and I got a running joke that has still, even in the most recent version. Our joke is any time you shoot a video or do a photo shoot, somebody drops.” So they’ve been through a lot of struggles over their career.
But, the highs that they had were truly high. Back in 2014 they self-released their album Aphelion. During their release week, the album cracked the Top 100 at #95 on the iTunes rock charts via iTopChart.com. “It was crazy to see,” Jacob said. I was even more surprised to learn they’re an independent artist and they handled all the promotion on their own to get an album into the Top 100. And they’ve had streaks of good luck too. They’ve shared the stages with some pretty notable bands including Chevelle, 10 Years, Lamb of God, and even Staind. And getting to play with them was an interesting tale. Chase explained that Jacob had emailed Aaron Lewis when Staind was introducing the band and saying they’d love to open for them sometime. “I remember it because Jacob called me in a frenzy because he was in class and had a quiz and he had a message on his phone and the message said ‘Hey Jacob, it’s Aaron. Should have picked up your phone.'” Jacob added when he got in touch with Aaron they had an unannounced show in Fayetteville and they were adding State of Illusion to the lineup. “He was so kind and so generous to do that for us.”
Jacob defines their music as rock, though says Aphelion and their older music has a lot of ethereal and ambient elements to it. Their newer music, while still rock, is a little heavier but more. “It’s rock, but it’s got metal, it’s got ambiance, it’s its own thing. What we keep hearing from people is they don’t know how to classify it….Everybody said it sounds like it could be in a Final Fantasy soundtrack.” And while it’s great they have a standout, unique sound, Jacob tells us the struggles they had to get their music promoted. “A lot of blogs won’t play us or won’t share us because they say, ‘Oh it’s not heavy enough for us’ and the others will say, ‘It’s too heavy for us.'” It’s odd place to be, especially since their music is very good. “All the response we’ve gotten so far is like, ‘The world needs to hear this, but we can’t play it because our audience won’t understand why we’re playing it.'”
“Starlight” is the current single from the band, which is a beautiful track. It originally was going to be part of another project from Jacob, but he submitted it too late to be used. And he decided he wanted to keep the song for State of Illusion. The lyrics and vocals stayed the same, but the music was re-written to fit their style. “I really wanted a sense of heaviness,” referring to how Jacob re-wrote the music to a melody instead of the melody to music. He wrote the song based these recurring daydreams, which to him were more nightmares. The song itself is, “About what we do to people within our society, how we throw other people away at the expense of ourselves. I think the big heaviness of the course kind of highlight that.” Chase added when they were talking about doing the video, everyone had a different interpretation of the song, “The interpretations everybody kind of had on what the song was originally about was either pushing somebody towards a dream or you know trying to make sure you keep those dreams that people have still running. It was really interesting to see how many ideas we got about it.” As for the music he added, “The music itself, the intricacies that are inside the verses compared to just the raw heaviness that’s played during the chorus measure themselves really well.” I truly enjoyed this track and while other blogs may not want to share it, I absolutely will because they’re right, this is a song you need to hear. Check out the gorgeous video and song below:
“Starlight” is the first single for their upcoming album called Pluto’s Ghost that releases on September 3rd. “There’s a space theme that runs throughout the record,” Jacob said. “Every song has a clip, an audio recording, from a different planet.” And all of the art inside the CD jacket is also space themed. I could tell they were really proud of this album.
Jacob and Chase after 16 years would love to have making music a full time career, but Jacob said, “It’s a very selflish dream. My wife, there are things that she would like to do, but she can’t because we’re sinking money into music. And it’s like we can’t do this because we have to look at what are these shows coming up. What’s the schedule looking like…It’s hard to find that balance.” Both of them clearly love their families and have families who support what Jacob and Chase are doing.
When they’re not working on the band Jacob produces another band’s music. He is also part of another band named DyQuil that was formed by Cold‘s original guitar player Kelly Hayes. He loves his family, baseball, his dogs, and the anime show Speed Racer. Chase loves his family and his dog and he builds terrariums and aquariums. He custom makes them for whatever critters he wants to put in them. Jacob also threw in that Chase is a master bartender. He’s been doing that for 8 years.
State of Illusion isn’t currently playing any shows as they’ve been focused on finishing Pluto’s Ghost. The band’s next performance will be at the Blue Ridge Rock Festival on Sunday, September 12th. The band played the festival in 2018 and was planned to come back on the 2020 lineup. When the festival had to be postponed due to the pandemic, the band was invited back onto the 2021 lineup. Come check out their set, buy their merch, and keep on the look out for Pluto’s Ghost releasing on September 3rd! Check out the full video interview below!
State of Illusion’s Socials
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