Sarah and the Sundays Share a Sunday With Us
Austin based indie band, Sarah and the Sundays, seems to be running on the high of their first national headlining tour. Building off of their 2019 hit “Moving On” from their debut album So You’re Mad About the Cups, the band of five have been touring since mid-March building excitement for their upcoming album Like A Damn Dog.
They recently stopped in Orlando for the last few shows on their run and found some time to sit down with us and discuss all things touring and new in their careers.
So you guys have been friends since high school, and now you’re on your first headliner tour. What’s that like and how was the process leading up to this tour felt?
Miles: It’s exciting, I mean we all dropped out and have been doing this for so long that it feels rewarding and exciting. We’ve all lived together for a while now, all five of us, and I think that helped us prepare for touring because we were already so used to being around each other
Brendan: Some fans have been lining up and waiting for us, and shows are selling out so it’s.. crazy what happens when you get out there.
Liam: It’s still a trip, I don’t know. Every time we play for like any crowd of people there’s a piece of my brain that doesn’t really like process it. It’s so crazy everytime, getting to do this and getting paid for it. It’s so cool.
Miles: The imposter sydndrome hits.
Quinn: Especially when there’s people waiting outside. It’s like you guys aren’t here for us!
You guys have been sending some “tour prep materials” to fans, with some unreleased songs inside. Can you tell us about those songs?
Liam: Yeah, so that’s half of our new album. It’s like six songs? Five?
Declan: Four, it’s four songs.
Brendan: It’s more like a third of our new album.
Liam: Yeah. Anyway it took a good six months to make the record, and over a year to write it. We’re super stoked on it, we think it’s our best yet. We were trying to get it out in time before tour, but it just didn’t work out. Every show we’ll ask the crowd if they got the tour materials, and usually people will raise their hands, but at the show last night not a single person raised their hand.
How would you describe your collaboration and creative process as a band?
Quinn: It’s really straight forward honestly. Liam usually makes the bones of the song, you know writes the lyrics, does a guitar line and some of the computerization stuff, and then sends it to us to add our own parts and stuff like that. Then we see where that takes us.
Brendan: This album had a slightly different process. We went to Connecticut for three months to write, so every day we would wake up at 10 and then get into the studio to work and record together. Except for the song we just released, “Cease”, which we wrote a few months before we went up there.
Miles: We recorded multiple different versions of a song, cause we had some spare time. So we’d do a fast version, a slow version, a more electronic version, or acoustic version; something like that. Then we’ll decide on which version we like the most and work on that.
I remember when “Moving On” had kind of blown up on TikTok over quarantine. How do you think social media has impacted your career and your growth as a band?
Liam: We’re not good at social media. We probably should use it more and get better at it, but I think we’ve done pretty well without it.
Miles: My brother had actually posted “Moving On” on reddit, and the next day it was on, like, the front page of reddit the night before we all left for college. So that’s where it first all really started. It was really just luck, but I think that’s how it usually goes with promotion and social media in music.
What advice would you give to some of our local bands looking to grow their sound and presence in the industry?
Miles: I would say spend a lot of time together outside of playing music. Like sharing music and just hanging out contributed a lot to our dynamic and sound.
Declan: Consistency.
Liam: Yeah.
Brendan: I think COVID really helped us just focus on music and isolate on it since there was nothing else we could really do.
Liam: There’s a sense of it having to be everything. It has to be everything and anything to you, you have to put everything you have into it. Which is hard a thing to commit to if you’re not truly devoted to it.
Quinn: I think very few people find the success that they want without really diving head first into it.
Declan: It just matters what you want out of it, we met multiple times with people giving us shiny deals and stuff. Getting to the very top is lonely and empty. So for us, we all moved to Austin to really play live. What originally started out as weekend hobby during high school and recording music on our computers in our bedrooms, has now turned into this. It’s important to really identify what you want out of it.
What’s been your favorite city played so far, and what city are you looking forward to playing?
Miles: Playing New York City was super cool, that was awesome.
Brendan: We’re really looking forward to playing our hometown show in Austin, I think a lot of us are just wanting to get back home and such.
You can find Sarah and the Sundays on Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, and on their website!