Caroline Polachek

BLAKE CHARLES - PORTLAND, OR - DECEMBER 2021

BAD SUNS:

FROM JUNIOR HIGH TO NATIONWIDE TOURS

PHOTOS BY MAGGIE MONTGOMERY WORDS BY ABHIGYAAN BARARIA

A lot of bands have long-winded histories of how they got together, from meeting in church groups to having classes together in college to even just growing up together. Bad Suns’ origin story is no different.

The California-based band, which consists of Christo Bowman on the lead vocals, Ray Libby on the guitar, Gavin Bennett on the bass/keyboards, and Miles Morris on the drums, has been creating music together since the inception of their debut song “Cardiac Arrest” way back in 2012 and the subsequent EP Transpose in 2014. But the groundwork was laid much before the band officially came together.

Beyond The Stage got a chance to sit down with frontman Bowman while the band was on tour in Nashville, Tennessee.

He said that he started writing songs, playing music, and eventually formed a band when he was about 11 years old, finding friends around him that were interested in music and wanted to play with him. This went on for a few years before he met Bennett.

“We went to the same middle school,” Bowman said. “We were friends for a few years.”

Then came along the freshman year of high school, when Gavin and Bowman met Morris, who was then playing with a different group of people but eventually joined the other two to form a band that would play together for a few years. Libby, although not in the band just yet, was still known by the other three due to their love for similar kinds of music.

“Ray was sort of in the music scene that we were involved in, in San Fernando Valley,” Bowman said. “So we all knew each other for a while — our bands would play shows together.”

Around the time that Bowman was writing songs that would end up being in the first Bad Suns record, Libby approached him, asking if the band needed a guitarist, just as they happened to be looking for one.

That was about 10 years ago — when it all officially began back in 2012.

“From there, we just hit the ground running and kept writing songs,” Bowman said. “And that summer, we recorded what would be pretty much half of the Language & Perspective record. Got a record deal and, you know, from there [it] was history.”

Then came the issue of finding a band name, which the members “desperately needed,” according to Bowman. After going through bookstores and libraries, looking at titles of books, albums, and movies, he finally struck gold in the form of a CD by a band called The Bravery.

“They had a song called ‘Bad Sun,’ and I always thought that was an interesting image,” Bowman said. “And I liked the way the word sounded, so we stuck Going from the past to the potential future, Bowman said that if given the chance, Bad Suns would love to collaborate with somebody like Robert Smith from The Cure who he said was one of the band’s heroes. Another person the band has been wanting to collaborate with is the American composer and songwriter Tycho.

“ I feel like our styles of music, [with] my voice and his music would be a fun combination and [something that] I’d want to hear,” Bowman said.

Bowman also added that he would love to be in the studio with the English electronic band Depeche Mode.

Speaking of the band’s latest album, Apocalypse Whenever, Bowman said that the process started before the pandemic, and everything around the world came to a virtual stop while they were making the latest record.

The latest album started brewing just as the band was wrapping up touring their 2019 album, Mystic Truth. Bowman said that he started collecting some songs and presented them to the rest of the members once the tour was over. The band started what Bowman called a “mood board” while on the Mystic Truth tour, sending each other different sorts of imagery to get inspiration for the next album.

“I would put in all these different movie stills and movie posters and, you know, album covers and photos,” Bowman said. “ A lot of things just to kind of, like, get the ball rolling.”

Going from there, the band started making the music once they got home from the tour, and already had a few songs they were excited about by the end of 2019.

Once they had written “Baby Blue Shades” and “Grace (I Think I’m In Love Again),” they considered that a good enough excuse to get back into the studio, Bowman said.

“We were really fired up and ready to start recording,” he said.

The band went back to the process they had always employed for creating music but had sort of shied away from in the third album, which was just writing batches of songs and incrementally getting back in the studio and recording them over time, Bowman said.

From creating an album during the pandemic to touring it now that the situation has somewhat mellowed out, the band has become much more appreciative of its fanbase and is thankful for each moment spent creating and performing music, “It’s wonderful, it’s really nice,” he said. “There’s just an added element of knowing that it’s something that’s not to be taken for granted. Every show and every city we had to be in, you know, it’s just a wonderful feeling.”

Bowman said that there were instances when he had doubts about how long it would be before Bad Suns could perform its music again for the fans, and on particularly bad days he would wonder IF they would ever be able to do it again.

“So now every day that I wake up on the bus, we have a show that night or even on an off day, whatever,” Bowman said. “Pretty much every day you wake up on tour, it feels like you got to take stock and [realize] how special it is.”

Speaking of the distant future and the kind of legacy the Bad Suns would want to leave behind, Bowman nodded to the fact that he wanted the listeners to be comforted upon hearing the band’s songs, for many years to come.

“I want the songs to kind of speak for themselves, and hope that people are able to find solace in them for a long time,” he said.

Well, as long as Bad Suns keep pushing out relatable music as they have for the past decade, we believe that every listener will be able to find some sort of comfort within the lyrics.

Currently, the band is touring its latest album, Apocalypse Whenever, but we won’t be surprised if they have already started working on the next project, given their latest track record.

Regardless, given the quality of music we have received from Bad Suns in the past decade, it’s safe to say that everyone will be vibing to their songs even in the distant future, exactly how the band would like to be remembered.