Sacramento ex-patriates By Sunlight make a home in Seattle

“What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.” — Joseph Joubert, French moralist/essayist

Though starting with a quote is a bit cliché, especially by anyone like Joubert, who doesn’t exactly get remembered for much other than cute little quips. Still, there is much truth that can be found in an over-simplified message. For the members of the band By Sunlight, maybe the quote would be more along the lines of, “What is true in Sacramento is not always true anywhere else.”

The gentlemen that occupy the moniker By Sunlight (originally known as Bridges) decided a few years back that a new perspective would suit them nicely, and packed their bags and took off to the city synonymous with mediocre sports franchises (at least those remaining), Starbucks, its weather and its iconic music scenes. By Sunlight’s Mike Sparks laughs over the phone during a recent interview when asked if Seattle’s dismal meteorology caused any changes in his music.

“It’s funny that every time I do an interview I get asked that. I guess so?” Sparks remarks, in a sort-of vocal shrugging, “I woke up this morning and it was overcast and I almost had a tear of joy. I mean, it’s beautiful now, but I really like that weather… It’s temperate for me, you know? Living in Sacramento was heinous. I couldn’t stand it at all.”

But, hey, not all of us living here love the heat. Still, moving to Seattle was behind a large part of how he both developed as a musician, and as a person. Sparks continues, “We were ready to get the fuck out of there. Hey man, sometimes when it’s 4:30 p.m., and the sun’s down, and I’ve got three beers in my body, yes, I might feel a bit of darkness in the spirit. There are tons of metal bands up here, tons of punk bands up here, and there is a lot of reflection of that environmental aesthetic in how people behave here, but I wouldn’t describe it as a sullen city either. Yeah, biometrics is a huge fucking change in my life, but going from everything I know to where I don’t know anything, that I would say was a more profound affect rather than the climate.”

After residing in the city for a handful of years and constantly touring, By Sunlight finally decided to settle down, and take a year off from the road. They took to inviting another Sacramento musician, Evan Ferro of Bright Light Fever/Roman Funerals, to make the journey up to the Pacific Northwest, and have Sparks, producer and band member Robert Cheek and Ferro move in together in order to record their latest album.

“We would go home after work or what-not, and we would go straight to working on the record,” Ferro recalls. “Whether it was writing or fine-tuning, it was non-stop. It was a lot of thought, a lot of annoying ourselves with how much we were thinking about it. But, ultimately it became what we wanted it to be.”

Sparks considers the decision to bring Ferro into the picture to be just what the band needed. “It’s kind of what saved our band,” says Sparks. “After the aesthetic exhaustion, fatigue and demoralization that you can sometimes get from working so hard at a band, and not really getting anything. You sort of question your art all the time; it’s that sort of weird, entropic little head thing you can get, and it really pulled us out of all that.”

Robert Cheek, who even now is instrumental as a producer and sound engineer locally–working on albums for Doom Bird, Life in 24 Frames and others–despite not being on full-time duties for this By Sunlight album, is an extremely valuable asset as both a musician and technical mind, and the other members in the band are very aware of it. Particularly since By Sunlight is a very technically minded project, employing many elements that build on and flow through each other, with a sound that is both intricate and intensely mellow, it takes a lot of abstract thought to orchestrate and balance so many elements peacefully.

“I think I’m just so blessed to be in a band with people like [Cheek]–where music is really the only thing of interest to him. For that ethos alone is enough to get a boner for a dude in your band,” Sparks says through a chuckle, “I mean, not literally. It’s like if you have someone you work with intimately all the time that share the same enthusiasm as you, and also you’ve got these huge technical talent.”

“Yeah, he’s valuable. He’s done all our records prior to this one, and even with this one he helped definitely, and did some work also. Yeah, it’s a huge one-up, and we all couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities that affords us.”

Ferro agrees, taking it a step further: “[Cheek] is a genius. There is not a better word for it, really. He puts so much work into what he is doing, whether it’s a band he is working with or a band he is in. Bob plays in Roman Funerals as well, so I have the experience of not one but two bands with Bob. To have him in a band is a musician’s dream come true. If you’re having second thoughts on a song you are writing, go to Bob and Bob will give you the answer. Actually, it’s somewhat ridiculous.”

With Cheek, Ferro, Sparks, bass player Jack Clemens, and drummer John O’Connell–the only member not from Sacramento (he’s from Virginia)–the band is chock-full of veteran talent. Finished with their latest album, titled Penumbra, they now face the arduous and sometimes daunting task of getting it out there. Starting off with a quick West Coast tour, the guys are looking forward to finally seeing the road again.

“With all the bands I’ve toured with, By Sunlight is the easiest,” says Sparks, “just because, we’ve all done it, you know, too much, and so the emotional thing that is so often an issue on tour, is sort of an old hat for us; it’s not hard at all.

“Not to sound over-confident about it, but we’re all best friends,” Sparks continues, “It’s not like we don’t get into fights sometimes, like when John wants to listen to baseball on the radio, and I just want to sit there and feel sorry for myself. It’s not like those things aren’t going to happen, but there is no fear that the bottom is going to drop out.”

By Sunlight will return to Sacramento on Sept. 8, 2012 when they play Harlow’s with Doom Bird. The 21-and-over show starts at 9 p.m., and tickets can be purchased through http://harlows.com/. For more on By Sunlight, check out their website http://www.bysunlight.com/.

Beloved Sacramento band Mister Metaphor to reunite for one night

Bands form and break up all the time; it’s what they do. What’s extremely rare, though, is for a band to become more popular after they’ve broken up, to gain hype without even playing shows, with no self-promotion whatsoever. Such is the case with Mister Metaphor, a Sacramento-based four-piece post-punk/experimental group who had a good, albeit rather brief, run back in the early to mid-‘00s. In order the achieve this sort of post-break-up popularity, one thing is for certain: the music has got to be really, really good to withstand the test of time, to remain relevant throughout the years and to not get lost in one’s CD booklet or erased from one’s iPod. Mister Metaphor’s music had all the ingredients: It was technical and highly skilled, but not so much as to make your head hurt counting time signatures; it was fast and high-energy, but not enough to scare people away; it was melodic and memorable, but not too pop-y or sugarcoated to make you want to vomit when the chorus came around. Their music had a little something for everyone, and it struck a chord with those who were lucky enough to discover the band, whether during their time together or after the fact.

Mike Sparks, Mister Metaphor’s co-guitarist/lead vocalist (who later went on to form the band Bridges, which ultimately became By Sunlight) knows first-hand the capability of good music to spread. “As the years have passed, especially the last three with all the touring that By Sunlight has done, one out of every two shows we‘ve ever played on tour some kid has come up to me and said, ‘Are you the guy from Mister Metaphor?’” Sparks admitted to Submerge during a recent interview. “For a lot of people during that time frame, it just sort of got to them. It was what they wanted to hear.”

Justin Goings, Mister Metaphor’s drummer (who has played in a slew of credible bands with regional ties including Playing to the Grandstand, O! the Joy and Jeepster), has had a very similar experience since they disbanded. “I’ve talked to so many people that have said, ‘Man, I never got to see that band and that’s one of my favorite bands,’ and I’m always like, ‘Wow!’ I’ve met so many people like that after the fact,” Goings said. Again, all of this is rather surprising considering that Mister Metaphor was only a band for about three years, played less than a hundred shows and put out two EPs, only one of which ever saw a proper release (Die on the High Road, released on Omnibus Records). “It was really brief,” Goings said of the lifespan of the band. “It went by really quickly. It was like going down a chute or something, and I got spit out the other end and I was like, ‘That’s it?’”

Turns out, that wasn’t it. Earlier this year, Francis Eastman, a good friend of the band and member of Oakland’s Echo Location, proposed to Sparks that Mister Metaphor should reunite for one last performance. “It was the end of the night after some show, and me and Frank were a little drunk and we were sitting out on his front porch,” remembered Sparks. “Basically, he asked that because he was turning 30 this year he wanted to have a Mister Metaphor reunion show.” Sparks agreed, contacted the other members and it was eventually set in stone: Mister Metaphor would reunite for one show on Nov. 6 at Townhouse Lounge in Sacramento. But who was this Eastman guy and how did he have enough clout over the band to coax them into reuniting after all these years? Surely the members of Mister Metaphor had been bombarded with random requests to reunite many times before, so why now?

“He paid for our last EP,” Sparks admitted with a chuckle. “He paid for it outright. It actually got recorded about a year or maybe even two after we were broken up.”

A-ha! Now it makes sense why Mister Metaphor owed it to Eastman. He had done them a huge favor years before by funding a trip to The Hangar to work with engineer Robert Cheek to bust out five songs they had written but never captured on record. Doing this show was a simple matter of paying Eastman back then, right? Wrong. It’s deeper than that. “It was a little bit more than that,” remembered Sparks. “He’s a really good friend of ours. And honestly yeah, fuck; we do owe it to him. But it just felt kind of right. We never really had a farewell show or anything. The band just disintegrated really, really rapidly.” Sparks recalled that they had attempted to do one final show after recording the Eastman-funded EP (which never was officially named nor released, it was only available online for free download via the band’s now-defunct website), but that it never worked out.

This time felt different. “It just felt like a good thing,” Sparks said. “Of course he instigated it, but I think all of us had this weird lack of closure or something. We never got to just stand there one time and go, ‘OK, here we are.’”

Thanks to Eastman, whom Goings even described as “somewhat of a fifth member,” that chance is finally upon the members of Mister Metaphor. They finally will get to stand on a stage and pay respect to each other, to their supporters, to the music and especially to Eastman. “This whole thing is happening because of him,” Goings said. Since it seemed like Eastman was such a pivotal part to this story, we contacted him to ask what it is about Mister Metaphor that he loves so much. “At this point, the band reminds me of a period of my life that cannot be replicated,” he said. “The original Capitol Garage always had rad shows. The local scene was putting out amazing music, and we were all sharing an apartment and doing stupid shit in our early twenties.” Everyone can appreciate that. Hearing certain bands can take you to a different time and place. Good friends, good music, good times: the recipe to so many of our upbringings.

“I feel like the big thing beyond basically saying thank you to Frank for paying for our record is I don’t feel like we ever got a chance to thank everybody who was enthusiastic about the band,” shared Sparks as our conversation came to a close. “It’s going to be an emotional night. There were a lot of feelings invested in this band, and I can’t wait to get all that energy in one room. It’s going to feel good to celebrate that band the way it deserves.”

Ex-Sacramento rock band Bridges has a new name and a new EP

As wildfires burn throughout California, carpeting the skyline with smoke, Seattle rock band By Sunlight (formally known as Bridges) are in the middle of a two week long west coast tour that will bring them to The Blue Lamp in downtown Sacramento on Saturday July 12. It’s only a few days into their trip and Mike Sparks Jr. (vocals/guitar) has already made a trip to the emergency room thus leading to a cancellation of one show. Don’t worry though, he says he is OK, “I got some medication and it makes me feel like a crazy person so we’re good to go.”

With a new name and a new self-titled EP available online and at shows, By Sunlight is looking forward to a bright future. Submerge recently spoke with Sparks before playing a show in southern California.

So I read you guys recently changed your name from Bridges to By Sunlight. What’s up with that? Was it a tough decision?
It was definitely a tough decision I know that none of us really wanted to do it. Unfortunately as boring as it is there’s a band called The Bridges that put out a record on Interscope recently and it was kind of one of those things where we just felt like if we wanted to take ourselves seriously we would have to at least kind of watch that and keep that in mind. We didn’t want to get hit with some crazy lawsuit in like six months, you know?

Yeah you always hear crazy stories about shit like that happening. Bands get pissed if someone has their same name.
For sure, if you go to their Myspace page, it’s pretty funny. The Bridges are like some kind of alt-country girl band or something. They’re like the Spice Girls of alt-country or something [laughs]. We just didn’t want to fuck with it.

How do you think fans and friends are going to react? What has been the overall vibe of everyone’s reaction?
I’d say it’s kind of all over the board. To be honest with you we got a pretty fair amount of negative feedback.

Really?
Yeah and this is something that we have kind of discussed: change is kind of hard. You develop a relationship with a band, and then they do something that you aren’t immediately behind so of course you’re going to be like, “Man what are they doing?”

We put a lot of thought into it and I think that this record that we’re coming out with is probably the best thing that we’ve done. Jack [Clemans, bass] said it like, “You either have to grow with us or not.” It’s just a band name; you know what I mean?

Yeah I want to talk about the new record. Does it have a title?
It’s going to just be self-titled. We mulled around a couple ideas but I felt like it was cooler to just not title it.

Is it considered an EP or is it a full length? How many tracks does it consist of?
Yeah I don’t know actually that’s another logistical question we have been mulling over. It’s six songs, but it’s forty minutes. If it’s a length issue I think I would definitely call it an LP but if it’s a track number issue than it’s definitely an EP. I don’t know, we’re describing it as an EP. We went in with that intent and it kind of turned into something more than we anticipated.

When and where will it be available?
Yeah, we’re doing something kind of new. We’re not pressing CDs, we might press some, like 100 or something. Or maybe we’ll press some vinyl; I would much rather do that.

We’re doing this thing where you get this little card at our show for $5 and it’s about the size of an ID. On the back of it is a little code and a Web site. You go to the Web site and enter in the code and you can download all the songs in like three different formats. You can look at all the lyrics and see all the credits and all that kind of stuff.

It’s a very innovative approach. What was the inspiration for that?
There’s a band in Sacramento called Bright Light Fever that we used to work with all the time. We’ve been friends with them for a really long time. They called and said, “Hey I think this is what we’re going to do. We want you guys to jump on board and the two of us can try it and see if it works.”

That’s where the business is going. Everything is digital right now, you know?
Absolutely, I can’t see any reason not to. Especially if you factor in gas prices and pressing fucking 1,000 CDs is like $1,500 or $2,000. It’s not a little bit of cash, you know? So this way the cards will be cheaper, it just makes more sense. Maybe it will help get the music out there on a different level.

I want to talk about your move up to Seattle. How do you like it up there and how is it compared to midtown Sacramento?
That’s a good question. I think all of those counter culture heavy pockets in any city are kind of similar. I really like Seattle man. It could be something as simple as the fact it’s a lot less hot [laughs].
It’s a really music oriented city. I feel like if Sacramento had a little bit more of a chance it would be like Seattle because there is such a core in Sacramento of kids. That tight knit sense of community that there is in Sacramento is unbelievable and I haven’t really found it that particular way anywhere else. If there was something close, I think Seattle is very similar to that. Obviously though the Seattle music scene is a Leviathan man, it’s a pretty serious machine.

Were you well received up there? Was it an easy transition?
Yes and no. It was easy just because I think we were so focused on it and accepting all that change at once that it just felt really good. We’ve met some cool bands that we really like and we’ve made friends. But it feels like there is this big shell you have to crack into. There are people who have been up there in that town for 10, 15 years, you know? It’s hard. You can’t just like come in and get it. In that respect, it’s a little tough. I would say half the shows we’ve played were really, really good and half the shows we’ve played no one was there. It’s like starting over.

I read you tour blog yesterday and it seems like things got a little rough for you a few days ago? What happened and are you fully recovered?
I’m doing OK, I’m better. We took that drive down from Portland to Chico and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that in my life. It was like 100 degrees and I’m sure you know that California is like on fire. It’s ridiculous. It was like being inside of a smoke filled oven for nine hours. So we played in Chico, and it was a great show. I love Chico. We drove from Chico to Sac that night, and I was just laying down and I started feeling really severe abdominal pressure. It got really bad to the point where I was panicking a little bit. It felt like I had appendicitis basically. So I went to the emergency room the next day.

Is your set on this tour consisting mostly of new material? Can people expect to hear old stuff as well?
We are basically playing the new EP in a different order. What we’ve done for the last couple years is we just play our set seamlessly without stopping. We have been playing those old songs for so long, like for instance “Consciously Cornering,” we must have played that song every show for like two and a half years. It’s just a rebirth; it’s something new. It’s a new EP and a new band name.

You were in the band Mister Metaphor, and now Bridges for the last couple years. Do you view By Sunlight as a third entity? Is it enough of a new direction/progression to be considered a new band for you?
I definitely don’t consider it a new band. It’s just a new labeling of the band. It’s just for logistical reasons. Trust me man, saying goodbye to the name Bridges has been really hard. Not like emotional-pow-wows-every-night hard, but it sucks. But, you know you have to at least try to think of it positively. I like the new name.

So what’s next for By Sunlight?
I’d like to make it through this tour without dying first, that’s a good goal. I think we’re going to go out for two weeks every couple months for the next six months to a year and in the interim start writing new stuff. This new EP has showed us exactly what the four of us are capable of doing as a band and we’re just gonna keep doing it!

Stay up to date on By Sunlight visit Bysunlight.com