Long before emo became mainstream parlance, Sunny Day Real Estate was setting some of the template for what the genre would become. While not the first band to define the genre (see: acts that emerged from the D.C. hardcore punk scene like Rites of Spring), the Seattle group made a few touchstone albums for the style in the form of 1994's Diary (which Rolling Stone ranked as the greatest emo album of all time) and 1995's self-titled LP (nicknamed Pink, for its monochrome album cover).
Originally composed of guitarist/singer Jeremy Enigk, guitarist/backup vocalist (and Spokane native) Dan Hoerner, bassist Nate Mendel (who would go on to be Foo Fighters longtime bassist) and drummer William Goldsmith, Sunny Day crafted a sonic palette that blended soft swirling melodicism, angst-filled punk fury and extremely emotionally charged confessional lyricism expressed via Enigk's falsetto tenderness and Hoerner's gruffer edge. But the band broke up before its sophomore album was even released, long before emo became a major rock genre.
Still the band's influence resonated for decades. While the group has had a couple runion stints, their latest reincarnation (sans Mendel) looks like their chance to finally bask in some limelight. Before embarking on a major tour, Sunny Day Real Estate heads to the extremely cozy confines of the Big Dipper for a warm-up show on Sept. 10. It's a natural fit for the band, as Hoerner lives in town and just so happens to be the venue's owner. (The show sold out so quickly that tickets were gone before I even heard about it, and I'm literally the music editor for The Inlander.)
Before Sunny Day Real Estate works out the kinks at the Dipper, we chatted with Hoerner about what keeps him coming back to Sunny Day, the band's legacy and owning a local venue.
INLANDER: What made this the right time to do another Sunny Day Real Estate reunion?
HOERNER: We've actually been working on a reunion since probably 2017. And we got really close... and then COVID happened. That sort of put the kibosh on it for a couple of years.
The tour's looking great; the band is looking great. So it's the right time. I'm knocking on wood as I say this, but so far it looks good and everybody's healthy. All the shows are selling really well or sold out. It looks like this is probably going to be the biggest tour we've ever done. We're all really excited. I think this is going to be a very fun one.
Is there anything you’re most excited about regarding this tour?
Probably headlining Furnace Fest [in Alabama] and we have a pretty good, almost headlining spot for Riot Fest [in Chicago]. Those are pretty big punk/emo/hardcore festivals. That’s definitely like whoa. I’m pretty nervous. [Laughs]
What keeps you guys coming back to Sunny Day after all these years?
Thirty years we've been together now. And we've just grown into really nice friendships that have stood the test of time and stood up through a lot of turbulence over the years.
We are very emo people, so we definitely have had a lot of bumpy parts of the ride. But I think that at the end of the day we've always just been brothers and friends, and the music itself just keeps drawing us back. I don't want to toot my own horn or anything, but I think Sunny Day has made some pretty good songs and a couple of pretty OK albums, so it's fun to keep coming back to it. It's really fun to play.
And I love that people still care about it all these years later. It's fun to see my friends in bigger bands that have gone on to huge success that still kind look fondly back at Sunny Day as maybe a partial influence on what they're doing.
Sunny Day just seems to kind of persist. It's like you didn't tend your garden for 10 years and when you come back it's all full of amazing fruits and vegetables. It makes me happy that it seems to make other people happy.
In the past, we’ve always sort of let Sunny Day be a runaway train — it just goes where it goes and does what it does. But this time, we’ve been really intentional about it. We’re directing things in the driver’s seat, and it’s neat to do it with a level of control.
Sunny Day Real Estate 2022 pic.twitter.com/zr4x30TPbV
— Jason Narducy (@SplitSingleband) September 7, 2022
What is it like seeing albums like Diary turn into these seminal, hugely influential albums after the fact?
It's always amazingly humbling. I'm such a fan of music myself. Like, I love My Chemical Romance. And to know that those guys love Sunny Day, it's so humbling.
I don't take any kind of credit. Nobody in Sunny Day is like, "We're architects of emo!" We laugh at the concept. We know that music is just a river, and we're just like a leaf in the stream. I can point to The Edge or Bob Stinson or any number of hundreds of guitar players that influenced me and made me want to write the way I write. So we just know that it's all a continuum.
But it's just funny that emo has gotten and stayed so popular over the last 20+ years. So it's fun to have a couple of albums that are considered to be cornerstones of the genre. At the end of the day, we just feel lucky to have been able to make the songs that we made.
And we're still trying to write songs too. I think we've always just approached it like, "Well, if we can write one more song, that's cool. If not, that's fine, too."
Do you have any favorite songs to play?
It's so fun to play "In Circles," because the second I start my riff, everybody loses their shit. And it's fun to see that reaction.
I think we’re all having the most fun playing this particular session are a lot of the stuff from The Rising Tide. We didn’t really have a lot of time to play The Rising Tide stuff before we broke up. And then when we did the reunion tour in 2009 and 2010, we focused heavily on Diary and Pink. I think for this go around, we’re definitely going to focus on The Rising Tide and kind of more expansive sound. It’s been really fun to relearn and reinvent those songs.
What led to having the warm-up show at the Big Dipper?
Jeez. That's just like the hugest favor to me from Jeremy and William. I can never pay the guys back for doing this. We always like to play a little icebreaker show just to kind of get on stage and get the feel for it. So we were lucky because I own the Big Dipper. So we can just like set up there for a few days and practice on stage and kind of get used to that feeling.
Again, I’m so grateful to the fellows for letting that happen. It’s just a huge feather in my cap. It’s definitely one of the best bookings we’ve ever made at the Dipper.
It's gonna be really fun, too. It sold out in just minutes, and I know literally like 99 percent of the names on the list of people who bought the ticket. So it's just gonna be a bunch of friends and family getting together and sending Sunny Day off on a big ol' tour for a couple of months.
How is it going with the Big Dipper in general?
It's just amazing how the Dipper has grown into what it is. Very, very rocky start. The first couple of years were really hard. I don't know anything about booking. None of us did. We just were kids who wanted to save the broken down old venue from being turned into a parking lot. And I had played one of my very first shows there a million years ago. So it was kind of a sentimental thing for us and just something fun that we wanted to try and do.
Without [help from Lucky You’s] Caleb and Karli Ingersoll, honestly, the Big Dipper never would have even really started... or we would have had a really hard time. I’ve just forged some incredible relationships with some really amazing people in Spokane. I gotta give a shout-out to Ryan Levy from Monumental Booking — he’s so awesome.
The Dipper has a big advantage I think over a lot of small music venues, especially in Spokane, because there's really not a lot to go around here in Spokane. We know who the big players are, and they vacuum up most of the oxygen in the room. But the Dipper can do anything. We can book like a really eclectic mix of things — from really great acts to like a kid who's having their first show. Local bands will often have their first show at the Big Dipper. That's kind of what it's for. We can survive and make money off of all of that: parties, quinceañeras, weddings, plays, movie screenings. We're not locked into any kind of genre. We don't have to be cool. We can book anything.
As someone who owns a venue, how would you assess the current state of the Spokane music scene?
I consider myself to be a friend of most of the bands that would probably be considered to be the biggest bands in Spokane... which is not really a huge amount of people. Spokane has a pretty small scene. You've got Kadabra — anything that Garrett Zanol does is going to be amazing. He's been with the Dipper since the very beginning. He's incredibly talented and charismatic.
When Sunny Day plays on the 10th, we're going to have Deer, the Smokes, and Itchy Kitty open. I think Itchy Kitty is one of the all-time great Spokane bands, and they've been having great success of late. Those are some of the most talented people that you're ever going to be around. They're closer to me than family. I couldn't possibly love them any more. My wife, Dawson — she's the heart and soul of the Big Dipper — took a couple of pictures of me practicing a few days ago, trying to get ready for the Sunny Day shows. And on the wall is this huge poster of Naomi from Itchy Kitty on it. So they're like right there with me in my most sacred space.
So I think the state of the scene is that there are incredible geniuses here, but it's also Spokane. Historically, it has kind of an upper limit to what's possible here. So that's always the challenge.
When I was a young kid growing up and I started playing shows here, it became apparent to me, pretty much by the time I was 19, that it was critical that I moved to Seattle in order to try and pursue music for real. And I don’t know if that’s still the case or not. I know that the internet has changed things, but definitely when I was a kid, there was no question that if you stayed in Spokane, there would never be a career for you. You could just music on the weekend or have a cover band or whatever, but then you were going to work at Blockbuster or whatever.
I’m hoping that the scene is gonna pop open and get bigger. And just because I mentioned just a few of them, that doesn’t mean that there’s not dozens more acts in many genres.
I do love Spokane. I mean, I choose to live here. I was born and raised here and come from a family that's been in Spokane for many generations. So as a Spokanite I feel like I've earned the right to sort of lovingly mock the little town. ♦
Sunny Day Real Estate, Itchy Kitty, The Smokes, Deer • Sat, Sept. 10 at 8 pm • Sold out • All ages • The Big Dipper • 171 S. Washington St. • bigdipperevents.com • 509-863-8098
