Musicians’ pandemic collaboration leads to future album

By John Hult, for Pigeon605

The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been easy on musicians.

Venues shuttered, weekly events in spaces like the Levitt Shell were canceled, festivals were suspended, and touring to promote new music was off the table.

But some musicians made the best of the seclusion, drawing inspiration from the circumstances or pushing themselves into new creative territory.

Such is the story of Sun Daze, a Sioux Falls collaboration between Wes Eisenhauer of Soulcrate Music and OK, Parade and Brandon Phrommany, who led The Tenenbaums and played guitar in OK, Parade.

The band’s genesis was a sort of pandemic fluke, a way to stay busy and share ideas. The early results of those collaborations brought out the best in each musician, with Phrommany’s airy baritone and dreamy guitar lines floating atop Eisenhauer’s hip hop-infused beats, combined with subtly infectious melodies and earnest, heartfelt observations on relationships.

The music felt more natural and satisfying than either expected.

“Early pandemic, it felt like we were trying to salvage something about the moment,” Eisenhauer said.  “I was at my home studio making beats for the first three months. I would keep sliding them to him, then the first couple (songs) came out, and it was like ‘sh*t, I like this.’ It’s been really fun for me to take on more of a producer role with Brandon because he can do things vocally and on guitar that I can’t do.”

For Phrommany, it was an opportunity to try something different from guitar-driven indie rock and make genre-crossing music that matched up more closely to his personal taste.

“It’s really in line with what I love to listen to in hip hop and indie music,” Phrommany said. “It reminds me of the music I like.”

The first three songs were released in the fall, after which Sun Daze played its first and only show – a drive-up parking lot affair downtown. Their latest single, “Bonsai,” is a stripped-down, sentimental dream pop earworm that could fit snugly and memorably into a playlist filled with indie music or straightforward pop.

Eisenhauer’s excitement and high hopes for the project’s future are tied to a recognition of the new music’s relatability.

“This is something that I see having a wide appeal,” he said.

Nailing simplicity in a final product is often a matter of finding the right spark. Eisenhauer recorded 220 beats, songs and bits of songs in 2020, often written to leverage Phrommany’s strengths and passed along back and forth between the duo’s weekly sessions, at which they sift through the ideas that work, add guitar or synth parts and write lyrics as a team.

The goal is to complete a song in that two-hour window, driven by a desire to capture and follow shared inspiration to a satisfying endpoint before the inspiration goes cold.

“Sometimes when you have an idea for so long, you want to flesh it out right away rather than sit on it for a couple weeks because then it just feels old and outdated and becomes something else. It’s fun, but it’s also a challenge to come up with a song in an hour,” Phrommany said.

“And not overthinking it,” Eisenhauer said. “We get the song done in an hour, and if it’s good, it’s good, and if it’s not, we move on.”

With a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, the two foresee the release of the album’s worth of material they’ve produced so far and scheduling performances. They can play the songs live with a laptop, guitar and microphones, but they expect to pull together a full band at some point for larger shows.

“We’re sitting on a whole bunch of stuff. Our thought was it wouldn’t be a great time to release a record because who knows when we’ll get to play (tour) on it,” Eisenhauer said. “But it’s looking like we’ll be ready to release over the summer.”