Sun Veins
How do you start your first record?
What bands did you love growing up? What did their stories mean to you? Amongst my list were a handful of bands that had a certain trajectory. A single or EP introduced them to the world. A lot of promise and novelty. Some song you find at just the right time in your life and theirs, and it feels like you got in on the ground floor of something that will someday mean a great deal to a lot of people. In our early days, I always dreamed of emulating those flight paths. Burst on the scene with a song, follow it up with an ironclad EP, disappear behind the curtain, and return with a debut album that cements itself among the greats. Whether that was out of some vain impulse or some dream of making art a viable living, it was a vivid goal. As we neared the end of our first tour, and after having released two EPs, we were approaching the last step of my patented 3-step plan. On our journey to this point in the process, I always wondered what those other bands felt like before they retreated to make some of my favorite music. Did they feel confident? Did they know they had something special to capture? Or did they feel like we did? That we were making it up as we went along. That we were staring at a blank page with a very high bar above our heads.
In November of 2015, we were just about to conclude the most ludicrous year of our lives. We had left the state to tour for the first time. We played a late-night slot. We opened for some of our musical heroes. We left the country to tour for the first time. We played Lollapalooza and Red Rocks. We recorded professional music videos. And lest I forget the most meaningful gig of our career, we were invited to play Chipotle Fest. To round out the year, we return home to play a sold-out show at the First Ave main room. If you’re not from Minnesota, I’ll forgive you for not knowing the significance of such a venue. It ranks among the most storied and prominent venues in America. Unique for its connection to Prince, and formidable in its roster of artists that have played there in its tenure. A 1,600-capacity venue, it hosts bands of a sizable caliber. You are probably a national name if you can headline a show there. Attached to First Ave is its sister venue, 7th Street Entry. A 200-some-capacity venue that hosts local and national bands alike. If you aren’t an industry plant, you have probably started your career playing rooms like this. The proximity of such an accessible and frequented venue like 7th Street to that of a venue like First Ave invites the common daydream of going from the small room to the big room. To leap like that was always the covetous thought when playing 7th Street.
It was one year to the day from when we played our first headlining show at 7th Street to our first headlining show at First Ave. I regret to say that some of the meaningfulness of that was lost on me at the time. It was a wonder-year from some alternate timeline, but how are you supposed to know that when you’re living in it? We were 19 and 20, we had nothing else to compare it to, but looking back now, it seems repugnant not to thank our lucky stars everyday from something like that. Perhaps what was in the back of my mind was the worry for the inevitable album that we were yet to write. How do we live up to the promise of a year like that? How do we keep a train like that on the tracks? I think of that looming responsibility that all my favorite bands had. That moment before they disappeared behind the curtain. What did their process look like? What promise did they have to live up to? From what well did they drink and could we find it too?
Ultimately, this was the beginning of Landmark. A celebration of what we were able to do together, and the heavy expectation we had put on ourselves. We went back to the same room we had written most everything else in and started sketching. Sun Veins wasn’t the first song that cropped up, but it did feel emblematic of our trajectory. We had called the voice memo “What just happened” with some bastardized spelling. After an unfruitful day, we pick up the instruments again, and we just start playing it. The chords and melody fell into our laps with no warning. It felt unsolicited and overwhelming. We felt undeserving. Yet we also felt sure. Sure of each other and what we aimed to do together.
see more photos & listen to the Sun Veins demo below: