Howlite Magazine

Listening to Passing on the Right’s EP “End of Trail” feels like you’re an outlaw skipping town on a freight train with nothing but a bottle of whiskey and a restless spirit. The five songs capture the chronicles of a lost soul’s search for purpose and love while navigating the challenges of grief and growing.

The first four tracks trap the rapid energy of moving forward through steady drums, dynamic basslines and wild guitar rounded out with rich vocals from singer June Coombs. The final ballad on the EP, places you under the canopy of a night sky with this haunting but hopeful melody of learning to balance responsibilities and enjoying someone’s company.

Sitting in the living room of the band’s drummer James Coombs, the siblings behind Passing On The Right felt less like tall tales while discussing the musical journeys that led them to start the band and release this new EP.

The love story between June and music began with their mom’s lullabies. She would mix traditional songs like “Rock A Bye Baby” and “Hush, Little Baby” with modern songs like “9 To 5” by Dolly Parton.

“It is something that sticks with me a lot,” June said. “Just the humanity behind music and why we make it, and the connection from it.”

James, on the other hand, did not like music in the beginning. It took a long time for him to expand his music taste after finding something he did like, Green Day.

“‘I hate it when you turn on the radio. Please turn it off,’” James explained during car rides with June and their parents he would request silent. “This went on for several years, until one of the times that Dad turned on the radio, it was Green Day. And we listened to ‘American Idiot’, and I was like, you know, that’s not bad, and I let him play the CD instead of telling him to turn it off.”

Both Coombs siblings did not start playing music until taking band in fourth grade. Later, they would  get really into the video game Rock Band on PlayStation.

“I remember that I didn’t want to have put my mouth on anything. That was why I picked percussion. It was the only instrument you didn’t have to put on a weird, gross metal pipe,” James said. “I was good enough at it in the stupid tryouts our band director had, he let me keep doing it.”

James said one of the other percussionists started taking private lessons on the drum kit and that would inspire him to want to pick that up too.

“I created a drum set at home using a wicker basket, a pot lid, an upside down like plastic box, and a couple of other things. I don’t remember how many. I had a couple of different things lying around, and I was hitting them,” James said. “I remember being pretty impressed with the sound, for what it was. But that was my first at-home instrument. And then a little bit after that, mom and dad broke down and bought me a drum set, to their regret.”

June wasn’t as particular as James when it came to the instrument they wanted to play. They started both band and orchestra before having to choose between the viola and the trumpet when their family moved from Ohio to Massachusetts.

“Viola was fourth grade; trumpet was fifth grade. And I’ll say I always felt more at home on the trumpet than I did the viola,” June explained. “When we moved to Boston, they forced me to choose. I chose band, so I kept the trumpet.”

According to June, they try to find a way to incorporate trumpet in the band’s music like they did on their first studio single, “Overthinking.”

“I should have found one spot of ‘End of Trail’ to pop it on, but it doesn’t make any sense,” June explained. “Maybe I could have done like a train thing on Painted Red, instead of the guitar doing the bend at the beginning.”

The band’s process for writing and producing songs has changed over the years. The band was began as a long-distance project the siblings worked on while they were living in New York and California.

According to James, June would record songs in their dorm room and send him the audio files to add drums to. He appreciated most of the ideas June had, but nothing really stood out to until, “Lifeline.”

“Lifeline was the one that you sent me and I was like, I gotta record something for this immediately to send it back to you because I just liked it so much,” James recounted to June. “I was listening back to it in my room to make sure that it was good. Before I sent it back to you. And I was actually just, I don’t know pacing sounds wrong, but I was kind of hopping around. I was like ‘This sounds so good. I’m so excited.’”

Following Lifeline and the other early demos was “Overthinking” and later the “Pride” album. James said his boss’s boss at the time told him about the RPM Challenge to write and record an album in February. He brought the idea to June and they began to work on the album.

“We were doing open mics, but we weren’t moving. We weren’t doing anything. We were just kind of spinning our wheels, and I was like, ‘Hey, this challenge exists. There’re no stakes, you know,’” James said. “And I was like, let’s do this. I want to use it like a little kick in the tires.”

After the challenge of “Pride” came the “EP Strangers We’ve Become.” June explained the EP came about after the band performed their biggest show, Rally in the Ally with their new bassist.

“We high off of that success. We were like, alright we have a bass player now. Why don’t we start thinking up some new songs,” June said.

According to James, the whole EP came together three or four months after Rally in the Alley

“We wrote a couple songs and we’re like just book it,” James said the band was eager to get to the studio. “Let’s get in there and do it. And we did, and it came together really easily.”

The latest EP “End of Trail” includes songs that have been in the works for a while. The sound is nothing like the demos, “Pride” or “Strangers We’ve Become.”

June explained the root of “End of Trail” was, “Doctor.” They wrote the song in college, and the band had been playing it at shows, and it seemed like the right time to build an EP that could fit around it.

“The ending of ‘Doctor’ is heavier, and we needed things that would properly support it as a song. And so, in the background of my mind, I started writing some stuff that were leaning in that direction a little more,” June said. “Like, ‘Fool’s Gold’ isn’t necessarily heavy, but it is fast and kind of aggressive in that way. And ‘Painted Red’ is driving and mysterious.”

The last track “Stargazer,” June explained, doesn’t support “Doctor” but was another song the band wanted to record for a while.

“We had four songs and James was like, well why don’t we put ‘Stargazer’ on,” June said. “We’ve wanted to get a good recording of ‘Stargazer.’ So we were like, ‘yeah, let’s throw ‘Stargazer’ on there.’”

To listen to all of Passing On The Right’s discography visit their website. For updates on events, such as open mic appearances and new shows follow the band on Instagram.

The next planned show for the full band is set for Dec.12 at Rambling House, 310 E Hudson St, Columbus, Oh 43202.