May 2015

'JUST BE WIERD': FEELING THE VIBES WITH BALTIMORE'S SUN CLUB BAND

These days, there's more to this popular rocker than his party-band past suggests.

By Melanie D. G. Kaplan

A 15-passenger van had recently transported the band Sun Club thousands of miles, from Baltimore to Austin and back, so they could play eight shows in three days at South by Southwest. Two weeks later, she couldn't even make the short trip from Baltimore to Washington.

“Our van didn't start so we had to cram into a minivan,” bassist Adam Shane texted me before their show at DC's U Street Music Hall. “So we're running a little late.” Later, he texted, "Again, sooo freakin sorry.”

It's hard to begrudge band members so courteous about being tardy, and so self-assured that they'd admit to borrowing the minivan from a parental unit. Sun Club, which grew out of a grade school band in suburban Baltimore, still straddles youth in a manner that's both captivating and delightful.

In one breath, the band members want to be grown up: They admonish the writer who mentioned their “tour,” as though they were playing dress-up; they nonchalantly add a year or two to their early-20s ages; and they long to make enough money to quit hourly jobs or share proceeds with their parents. But in the next breath (or more often, in the middle of the same sentence), the topic changes to sexting acronyms and tree-climbing. Band photos show faces covered in ice cream, feet in mismatched socks and all five musicians' naked bodies contorted into a bathtub.

But alongside the frivolity and glee, Sun Club keeps a busy tour schedule and is known for its percussion-heavy, crazy-infectious, high-energy shows. Last year, independent label Goodnight Records put out Sun Club's debut EP, called “Dad Claps at the Mom Prom,” and the band has recorded its first full-length album, expected to be out in the next few months. This spring, they're preparing for a European tour, with a stop at The Great Escape in Brighton, and will perform at Maryland's Sweetlife Festival in late May.

Before SXSW, I stopped by a practice session on the second floor of the CopyCat Building in Baltimore, a gritty warehouse where musician Dan Deacon once lived, which Sun Club guitarist Shane Justice McCord now calls home. The flat looked like an artist workspace, with giant canvases, exposed brick walls and an electric pink skateboard hanging from the ceiling. A sewing machine sat alongside a number of dead plants on the windowsill.

Lanky McCord walked out of his bedroom sipping hot coffee and almond milk from a Mason jar. The band was preparing to leave for Texas the next day and still needed to rehearse a few of their new songs, like “Durty Slurpy” and “Tropicoller Lease.” Once they began, the sound in the cavernous loft was deafening, sending a paint chip plummeting from the ceiling. When they finished, Shane crawled outside to smoke on the window ledge, and a cat named Mailbox walked on the coffee table, around a chess board and bottle of black nail polish.

Sun Club was formed in 2012; a session with refrigerator magnetic words yielded the name. McCord and his brother, Devin, were childhood friends with guitarist and vocalist Mikey Powers. The three began playing instruments and covered songs in middle school, and after high school, Shane and Kory Johnson joined the band. To display their loyalty to the state of Maryland, three of them have its outline tattooed inside them forearms.

The band's sparse website proclaims, “Sun Club tis a group of buddies playing happy music,” and titles include “Summer Feet,” “Beauty Meat” and “Repulsive on Chocolate.” Shane McCord and Powers get together to write lyrics, but oftentimes, the words come without the music, or vice-versa.

“It's more about the vibe than anything else,” Powers told me, describing the music as “loud, feelsy pop,” The group has been compared to the Beach Boys and Talking Heads, and they often say they're influenced by Animal Collective and Tom Waits; these days, they're listening to Baltimore bands Goblin Mold and Ponytail.

“Sometimes, I feel like we're not weird enough for Baltimore,” Devin McCord said. To that end, the band is careful to remain independent; the Chevy commercial that used one of their songs and provided a nice cushion to finance touring is barely an afterthought in conversation.

When we met up before their Washington show, everyone agreed that SXSW was “crazy awesome,” especially the burritos. Shane McCord said, “We went down there to get in front of people in the music industry and so in that respect, it was a success.”

That night, Sun Club opened for Athens, Ga., band Reptar, playing in a dark basement hall for about 30 minutes—they rarely play longer, because it's too physically exhausting.

The set began with “Worm City,” and they played two of their new songs, wasting no time warming up before the rambunctiousness began. The percussionists played with such vigor, it often looked like they were battling their instruments; the guitarists whipped their long hair around, sometimes ending songs with it hanging, curtain-like, across their faces. Most surprising was the dynamic range of Powers' voice: One moment it was a scratchy psychotic scream, the next, it was startlingly melodic.

After the show, Shane, wearing black-rimmed glasses, stepped outside for a cigarette—part of his post-show unwinding ritual.

“It's nice to be playing in a more relaxed environment now,” he told me, his long orange curls finally at rest. “Just to get up there and have fun, not worry about who is out there. Just be weird and move around a lot.”