Story by ELLA SAMS – Broadcast Staff
Since their formation in 2010, Stay the Sea has found its footing in the Athens music scene.
By the time they performed at Athfest in July 2014, many locals were familiar with Stay the Sea, a band comprised solely of Clarke Central High School students. However, few know the story of the group’s origin.
In the summer of 2010, seniors Brent Jackson (guitar) and Nate Deal (bass) began casually practicing together. In December of 2011, senior Zach Wright (drums) joined the band, and a couple months later, “Stay the Sea” was born.
“It’s all just home stuff,” Jackson said of the band’s origin. “Just doing what we can with what we’ve got.”
Since then, the band has appeared at multiple music festivals both locally and elsewhere in the state. The three members practice weekly. Throughout these three years, Jackson has developed their song-making process.
“It starts with me most of the time,” Jackson said. “I usually will demo out rough structures of stuff on my computer just by myself at my house. I’ll do the guitars and very rough drum tracks to go along with it. Then from there all three of us will get together and restructure it if necessary, add in the bass parts, and Zach will do his thing on drums. It’s a pretty collaborative effort, but it usually starts with the guitars.”
Jackson says the band’s style has shifted over the years.
“Post-rock is probably the closest (genre we’ve been) most recently,” Jackson said. “Post-rock specifically is taking traditional rock instruments–like guitar, drums, bass–and making non-traditional sounds with them. I could hear something in my head and then get it out. It wasn’t just random stuff.”
The band plans for their second album to be a what Wright calls a concept album.
“From my understanding, a concept album is that there is not really a storyline to it, but it’s based off of a subject and you break it up into different sections, and the whole album itself is related,” Wright said.
An approaching end to high school brings uncertainty in the future of the band. Despite this, “Stay the Sea” hopes to remain in touch.
“I don’t really see us breaking up as a band,” Jackson said. “Once school is over or we get out for breaks or whatever, we’ll probably get together, still play shows when we can and practice when we can. I see us staying together despite us going off to college in the next year.”
