The Senators are not just a group of people who hang out in capitol buildings — it’s also the name of a Valley band. It considers its music indie rock, with a nod to the past — and includes a bit of a DIY element.
The Senators will be playing the McDowell Mountain Music Festival in Phoenix on Friday night. The Show invited frontman Jesse Teer in studio to talk with us about the band’s new single, and what’s next for The Senators.
Bandmates Joe Bitz and Jason Yee also came, to play a Tiny Desert Concert for us. The Show asked Teer about trying to set his band apart from others with a similar sound.
Full conversation
JESSE TEER: There are bands that do play similarly, but I think the songwriting separates everything. I think everyone has a different voice that gets it out there. So I don't think we're too concerned about not being you know this or that, just being true to the music that we want to write, and I think that's one of the things in the Phoenix scene that's beautiful.
So a couple weeks back we had Viva Phoenix where there were, you know, 90 bands playing across downtown and the diversity that you see of mostly local bands, that diversity is something that makes me proud because I think I was out in Atlanta and I love the city, but their music scene was not as diverse. Like it was very structured into like a couple pockets and a couple of sounds, but you can find anything you want to in Phoenix right now, so I'm proud of our scene.
MARK BRODIE: You've said that one of your goals is to sort of have a sound of the desert, and I'm curious what that means.
TEER: I think the feeling of the desert, you know, when you talk to people from the East Coast, they think we're all sand dunes and cactus and camels. I don't know where they get camels from, but I think there are some pieces of the way our land looks, some of the design concept that you can see walking around that, you know, don't see in any place else in the world.
And so, I think some of that openness, if we want to get technical, there's like maybe a little reverb makes a band sound like they are like in the spaciousness. So the beauty of the place we're in, I think that translates and we try to capture it in ways that might be a little less real and specific and more emotional.
BRODIE: So you guys have a new single. Can you play it for us?
TEER: Yeah, this is our new single. It's called “Hummingbird.”
[Band plays “Hummingbird”]
BRODIE: That was the new single from The Senators called “Hummingbird,” speaking with Jesse Teer of The Senators. So what do you see for The Senators going forward? What's next for you guys?
TEER: It was great last year. We got to feature in some of the major markets, and while touring, I think can sometimes be a lot of time and and a lot of gas money, we'll probably hit some more major markets maybe later this year, but I think that the model is more about getting the music out there to users in the way that people are really accessing music now.
So we are going to stay independent as much as we can, and the internet's alive with artists now. So we just need to continue to get music out on the platforms that are there to support independent artists.
BRODIE: With all those new platforms I mean, are there ones that you have found more advantageous to what you're trying to do than others?
TEER: Well, yeah. You know, the dream now I think for a band is to get on some great Spotify playlist because everybody will hear you. So those, those streaming services where people aren't necessarily purchasing but streaming are huge.
BRODIE: So can you play us a song to go out?
TEER: Yeah, this is actually a song that we're working on. It'll be one of our next single releases as we're doing a line of them, and it's called “Carla’s Song.”
[Band plays “Carla’s Song”]
If you’re in a band or know of one you’d like to hear on air, send us a note at [email protected].
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