A Brief History of Sunnysmack



When I was 14 years old, I got a Harmony guitar and 10 watt amp for Christmas.  It was from the JC Penney catalog. I loved it...but had no idea how to play.  A few months later, I learned a few chords and started writing the type of songs that a young boy who only knows only a couple of chords does.

 

Really bad songs about girls.

 

By the time I got to college, I was starting to play and write better songs (about girls), and started a band (well, actually just a duo) called Sunnysmack.  E. Rhodes was a friend of mine who attended the same college and was learning to play bass.  We wrote a handful of songs when E. mentioned that he had a step brother, Joe, who lived in Minneapolis and worked in a recording studio. 

 

We drove up one weekend, intending to just track my 11 string acoustic guitar, bass, and vocals as a demo.

 

Joe ended up playing on all 6 songs, and Sunnysmack was officially born. That was 1996. Many of those songs became the foundation for our Watching Stanley album.

 

Within almost a decade, we released 3 full length albums.

 

E. Rhodes moved back to Milwaukee after our 2nd album, A Soundtrack For Sara.  Joe and I went on as a duo and enlisted the help of many talented Minneapolis musicians who played on The Mezzanine Girls record. 

 

By this time, Joe had owned The Hideaway Studios and worked with the likes of Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Doomtree and even Snoop Dogg. (He also recorded the last Tiny Tim songs shortly before that strange bastard died.)

 

In 2003 I went a bit crazy and moved back to Milwaukee myself. I was still writing and recording demos, though not quite as frequently.

 

We released our last album in 2020. A vinyl/digital release called "I Don't Mind Myself, Sometimes".

 

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Love,

Jason Eddie

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