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For eight or so years now, I've been making music almost entirely on my own. Sometimes I'll play with some old friends, but because of life, that's very rare. The friends I usually play with are always the same two: Gavan and Vinny. The three of us made up the band Sugarbud, a rock/jam/funk band that played a few shows and that was about it.
Until now.
Sugarbud started back in... 2014? 2015? The summer of 2014 perhaps, because I believe I joined during my senior year (class of 2015). Anyway, I wasn't in the original lineup. The band started when Gavan (bass) and Vinny (guitar/vocals/keys) met at a local summer camp thing of sorts, specifically for making bands and collaborating. They were all put into groups (I'm not sure if they chose with who or if they were simply put into them and made to work together - I want to say it was the latter). They were with two others, and originally went under the name Veronica Frizz. At the end of the few days or however long this was, all the bands played a show at a local bar venue which I actually attended with my dad, and I got to see them do their first show.
I won't get into specifics, partially (mainly) because I don't remember them all, but there was a falling out with this group eventually. Gavan and Vinny took most of the songs, the ones that they wrote, and left some to the singer, although I believe there were some more issues down the line with who wrote what and whatnot. However, it of course wasn't that serious - these were high schoolers in their first/early band - and soon after, Gavan had me join in on drums.
Gavan and I had been in a few bands at this point, including both our first band Forgive the Forgotten. It sounded about as bad as the name would imply. This band fell apart, and we formed, along with our guitarist Nate, Rootay Wootay. This sounded way better than the name would imply (and it implies greatness). That turned into Jams and Fiction eventually, before Sugarbud became the next focus. These older bands were all high school era.
Sugarbud began with teaching me some of the old songs, and iterating on them with whatever parts I felt fit. This led to some larger changes too, most notably in the old song Lies (this is Gavin's more recent recording, not featuring me and Gavan). I went into a disco beat on this song in the solo, around 2:30, and it became a staple of the band and an absolute hit live as it built up.
In 2017, at the end of my time in college for audio recording technology, I recorded Sugarbud for my final project. We did a full album, Elevator Music, though I myself couldn't actually play. The point of the project was to fully produce an album, and we weren't allowed to just do our own music. This album never got released though, as soon after graduating I realized that... it sucked. It was just mixed horribly. I learnt a lot from it, from how bad it sounded, so it was still a success, but we've sat on it and never done anything with it. Maybe it'll come out as a demo some day.
In 2017, 2018, sometime around there, we did play a small handful of shows as well. Three, I think, at proper venues here in Rochester, New York. They all went pretty great, and we even recorded one of them, though that's also gone unused. Again, maybe it'll surface soon. One highlight I'll always remember was our final show I believe, we ended with one of our songs that finished with some slow triplets. We ended up transitioning that into Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine, specifically right when the verse kicks in. It was absolutely amazing and a really fun way to end a set.
After that, Sugarbud fizzled out. Vinny went to school down in New York City, eventually moving there and now working down there. Gavan moved a little further away. I've done nothing. Every few years, we've done a little jam or something when we can, but extremely rarely. That is until last weekend (4/10/26-4/11/26) when Vinny drove back up here for a day and we turned the pole barn on Gavan's family's property (to us simply known as The Farm) into a studio and wrote and recorded a brand new EP. Vinny used a bunch of his equipment that he's been able to collect over the years now due to working in the field, and he took the lead on recording, producing, and mixing (a welcome change from doing everything myself for my own music for the past seven years).
It was a ton of work, eventually cut short after Vinny left (we had under twenty four hours with him to get this all done) because Gavan and I were simply too exhausted. It was a ton of hauling, setting up, tearing down, playing, all while the studio was forty-something degrees. There's a small heated room thankfully, which is where we all crashed on Friday night, but playing was not that comfortable, especially while drumming and giving it my all.
We primarily focused on writing, and then recording drums, using mics on the guitar and bass as scratch tracks for overdubs and so we could hear in the monitor, allowing us to turn them down in the room for minimal bleed. This meant every take I was going hard on the drums, and by the time we nailed it, I was tired and cold. I even tweaked a few parts eventually as I simply was too exhausted to keep up with what I had written. We thankfully had enough time with all the mics before Vinny had to leave to track all of the bass parts as well.
The EP has no release date yet, and it still a work in progress, with Vinny needing to track guitar, and both of them needing to do vocals. We ended up with two regular songs, one of them doing vocals on each song, and two instrumental jams. I believe everything ended up being about three minutes as well, so it's a short release, but full of cool parts and little nuggets of jams, funk, weird rhythms, and all sorts of cool things. Solem Oak Records will be doing a run of CDs for the release as well, which will be very fun.
It's very exciting knowing that soon the world will be introduced to Sugarbud after all these years, after years of thinking the project was dead and gone. The best part is that awesome name will finally get put to use.