“If you could, just really, really talk about how small we are,” Sun Seeker’s Alex Benick deadpans. “It’s what we’re trying to get out there: ‘These guys are just so little.’ ”
The guys in Sun Seeker are actually average-sized humans — not “Nashville’s tiniest band,” as Benick’s bandmate Ben Parks suggests on a call with the Scene. It’s fun to imagine the group as a band of Lilliputians, since they make big, ambitious psych folk. Self-described appropriately as “cosmic American music,” their sound is crafted with a degree of skill that belies their relative youth.
The players who started Sun Seeker — Benick, Parks and bassist/vocalist Asher Horton — are in their early 20s (Benick and Parks are 21, Horton is 22), and they already have more musical experience than plenty of older artists, having played together since grade school. (Rodrigo Avendano, a longtime local MVP who’s performed with Lylas, Stone Jack Jones, Coupler and many more, joined Sun Seeker in February.) Their debut EP Biddeford, out July 14 via Third Man Records, was in many ways a very long time coming.
“Asher and I played in bands before,” Parks says. “He and I met in fifth grade. We played in different bands and switched instruments and did all sorts of stuff. Alex reached out after we’d met briefly, and we all went downtown and played music.”
Benick, Parks and Horton’s first gig as a trio was busking down on Broadway and recycling a set of songs — “just rack[ing] up some cash,” as Benick recounts. “It’s still the most money we made from a show. It was like $51.”
“One time we made a hundred,” Parks offers.
Benick counters, “That wasn’t involving me.”
As busy as they all are, you can’t blame them for mixing up projects — members of Sun Seeker are also in Fox Fun, Big Surr and a laundry list of other local acts. It’s those deep, close ties to the Nashville music scene that landed them on Third Man in the first place.
“Our small heads could hardly grasp the magnitude of what was being presented to us,” Benick laughs. “We had been friends with a lot of the people who worked at Third Man for years. A lot of those people, like Josh Gillis and Cam Sarrett, were huge parts of us being adolescent musicians in the Nashville music scene.”
One of Sun Seeker’s breaks came when Gillis asked them to open for Gories co-founder Danny Kroha at The Basement in early 2015. Many of the tunes they played had been brewing for a couple of years — Benick began writing lyrics for the songs that would end up on the Biddeford EP while farming in southern Maine after graduating high school — and they caught the ear of Third Man co-founder Ben Swank.
“Ben was at that show,” Benick recalls. “He asked when we were playing again, came to our next show — and pretty much at that show, which was at The Stone Fox, threw it all on the table. He said, ‘Hey boys, we’re gonna make you the biggest band in the world.’ [Laughs] So we’re holding them to high standards.”
With guidance from Third Man, Sun Seeker whittled roughly 20 of their songs down to around six, and the band teamed up with producer Buddy Hughen to record what would become the EP as well as their debut single, 2016’s “Georgia Dust” (backed with “No One Knows”). Having also met Hughen at the now-shuttered Stone Fox, the trio credits that space with playing a major role in their career. They’re also quick to note the importance of the DIY scene, which offered them important opportunities to play while they were still an underage band.
“There are some really great spaces open for younger kids to go to shows,” Parks says. “Drkmttr is one in particular that’s really cool. It’s super easy to book, and it’s all-ages. That was super important for us when we were kids. And Glenn Danzig’s House, which is gone now. I definitely think there could be more spaces like Drkmttr, but I know it’s not the easiest thing to get going.”
In the aftermath of the tragic 2016 fire that killed 36 people at Oakland, Calif.’s Ghost Ship, other DIY venues across the country faced pressure from local officials. As the Scene reported in the days following the fire, Nashville DIY spaces suspended operations or shut down indefinitely. Drkmttr was able to reopen in April with a full suite of Metro safety certifications, after renovations paid for with help from a crowdfunding campaign; East Side spot Queen Ave is in the process of doing the same.
It’s no accident that local bands like Sun Seeker can start gaining attention for their proficiency as relative youngsters. But it’ll take our scene’s trademark ingenuity — a little more help from the city wouldn’t hurt, either — to continue to produce and attract the high-caliber musicians we’re known for.
Hear a full stream of the album.
Email music@nashvillescene.com
