Habitual rockers hailing from northern Kentucky, the members of The Borderline Something go back a ways. Eric Torres and Ben Maile have been rocking the bass and drums together since they met freshman year of high school at Covington Catholic in 2008. In no time, they were in a band together—Exit 186—playing covers and originals around town. After graduation in the spring of 2012, the two were headed to different schools, Eric to the University of Kentucky and Ben to Lindsay Wilson. It seemed that this was the end of their musical collaborations, but as it turns out the world had other plans.
That summer of 2012, Ohio University sophomore Ryan Snyder was hard at work starting a blues rock project in Cincinnati. He was meeting success, but he needed a bassist that shared his passion for original music. He called up Eric on the night of August 4th, which happened to be his birthday. “When I called Eric I could tell he was at a party, and I could tell he’d had a few. I asked him if he could play bass for me at a gig like three days away, and he said hell yeah. I honestly didn’t expect him to call back the next day, but he did, and that was the start of it all.” Ryan’s blues rock project grew into the suRio & the Ramblers.
After a semester at Lindsay Wilson, Ben decided to transfer to UK. By summer 2013, Eric and Ryan had brought Ben onboard as the drummer for Rio & the Ramblers. For the next couple years, Eric, Ben and Ryan honed their live performance skills, co-wrote songs and tightened up their playing. They played on Beale Street in Memphis in the International Blues Challenge, headlined Cincinnati Beerfest at Fountain Square three years in a row, and released an EP called Gravity, which ended up foreshadowing the sinking of the group.
Rio & the Ramblers fell apart in the early months of 2015, and yet again, it seemed like the end of the road. Ryan was in his last year at Ohio University, and Eric and Ben were juniors studying at UK. The Cincinnati-based group that served as the link between them was gone.
Rather than get cold feet, Eric started off in a new direction down in Lexington, contacting bars and venues in need of acoustic music. He and Ben learned a new set and wrote some new songs under the name—you guessed it—The Borderline Something. The acoustic gigs went well, but eventually Eric and Ben were looking at three and four-hour set times, which they just didn’t have between their two guitars. Now it was Eric’s turn to make a phone call. “I called Ryan and laid it out for him—it’s a bit of trek for you to get here, we won’t get paid much at all, and we have to practice for a whole day before we’d be ready for the show— he didn’t hesitate one bit before saying he’d love to come down.”
The 2015 – 2016 school year was one for the record books. Ryan became a full member of the band after a few shows in Lexington, and the guys started to develop their own brand of alternative blues rock. They headlined Two Keys Tavern and Stagger Inn up to four times a month, regularly played tailgates for Alpha Tau Omega fraternity (Eric was a member), and built a following in Lexington that routinely left lines out the door to get in. In March 2016, they released their first EP, Kentucky Bourbon Blues, a four-song mini-album that was effectively a first draft of their old-meets-new rock style.
A few days after graduation in May, the three musicians moved down to Nashville together to take a serious crack at becoming professional artists. Later that year, The Borderline Something teamed up with the talented and passionate professionals at Two Worlds Music to add a layer of expertise to their vision. The band is currently recording its first full length album set to release in 2017