At a party in 2004, Ronnie Dudek saw Dylan Raasch, a bassist who was playing in bands within his friend circle. Dudek didn’t know Raasch, but when he saw him play music he knew he wanted to create with him. So Dudek picked up a guitar and started to play a song by The Shins at the party.
“[I was] Definitely trying to get his attention, which it did,” Dudek said.
Raasch immediately picked up on the tune and they started talking about music. They exchanged phone numbers and soon began writing music together. Since then the duo, which came to be known as Years Around The Sun, have self-released three albums and are set to release their fourth, “The Other Side of Sound,” on March 20.
Years Around the Sun started gaining notoriety when their music began appearing in surf films. Their drummer at the time, Chris Cote, was editor-in-chief at TransWorld SURF, connecting them with surf filmmakers.
Notably, award-winning filmmaker Taylor Steele — whose surf films gave early exposure to major artists like Blink-182 and Jack Johnson — put their music in his film “Sipping Jetstreams” in 2006. Steele then asked Dudek and Raasch to create the soundtrack of his 2010 film “Castles In The Sky,” featuring surfers like Dane Reynolds, Rob Machado, Craig Anderson and others.
“It was a difficult challenge, but one we jumped at and it was an incredible experience,” Raasch said.
From that project came the song “Miles Away.” The track — which remains their most streamed song on Spotify — earned them an audience outside of San Diego.
“It really changed the trajectory of Years Around The Sun,” Raasch said.
After “Castles In The Sky,” the indie rock band finished up another record in 2012 over Skype as Raasch took a job in Portland designing shoes for Nike.
However, it didn’t change how the two collaborated much. For Raasch it’s always been the same push and pull when it came to creating Years Around The Sun records with Dudek.
“We now both go off for a while, work on another project, and come back and usually surprise each other,” Raasch said.
In 2019 the band started floating ideas for music again but this time Dudek’s career took off in virtual event planning. It wasn’t until 2022 that they finally worked together on a new song and the lead single off their upcoming album. The song, “Those Days Are Gone,” is a meditation on time passing and ultimately the change that occurs from loss.
After releasing “Those Days Are Gone” in 2023, Raasch and Dudek started presenting each other with ideas for more songs. The longtime creative partnership brings the best out of both artists.
“The Other Side of Sound” spans 11 tracks, and like its lead single is more reflective than past releases by the band. For Raasch, that meditative sound, which is carried by various keys and synths and Dudek’s vocals, is directly correlated with his season of life. Since having a daughter, Raasch has used the songwriting process to capture a feeling he describes as “transcendent sentimental beauty”
“It’s a little hard to describe, but I have a feeling that I quite often find myself trying to capture,” Raasch said.
He said that feeling is directly correlated to his early days of music discovery. Music has an uncanny ability to transport someone back into a moment, whether it be to childhood, a painful time or a period of euphoria. Songs leave an impression that lasts a lifetime. Raasch wants to capture that.
“Not that I’m always in that state of mind, but when I am, I immediately sit down to write in an attempt to capture that feeling,” he said.
The record is much more sonically open because of this. The guitar solo drenched in delay effects on the track “Know One” bottles the essence of “transcendent sentimental beauty.” Dudek’s vocals and lyrics capture it as well — the chorus repeats things he and the subject of the song can do together, like sunbathe, kiss, laugh, drink and sleep late.
Dudek said he’s found in his songwriting process a way to cope with losses — particularly losing his father to cancer.
“A lot of musical therapy,” Dudek said.
Even as Dudek confronts this loss in his songwriting, creating music is still a viable distraction from the reality of losing someone you love.
“Putting words to those feelings for me is really difficult to do,” he said. “I feel like I find it way easier to put it in a song.”
The album is steeped in all these things and more, but can be boiled down to a reflection on the crushing beauty of the human experience. Despite living on different continents with Raasch now in Amsterdam — Years Around The Sun remains dedicated to their attempt to distill loss and love in their music.
Dudek will perform Years Around The Sun songs alongside a full band at the Casbah on April 8.
