by Sofia Williams
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, I sat down at King Harbor Yacht Club to speak with Taft Buckley and James Pacchiana, lead singer and drummer, respectively, of Sunset Club, a Nashville-based band that is bringing their music to the South Bay this summer.
Sunset Club began when Buckley and Pacchiana first met at Belmont University, a music school in Nashville. Buckley transferred from St. Mary’s College of Maryland to Belmont for his sophomore year after realizing he wanted to pursue a career in music. According to Buckley, he wanted to pursue songwriting and singing after playing the guitar for several years, and Pacchiana encouraged him to do so.
“I was ready to give away my life to [make music], and that meant dropping out of whatever school I was at at the time, moving to Nashville and meeting James,” said Buckley. “We put in a lot of work together, and we attracted some very talented band members who work with us.”
They met Grant McInnis, the band’s guitarist, in a class at Belmont, and later met Thomas Aberson, who would become Sunset Club’s bassist. After hearing Buckley’s original songs, Pachiana said he was inspired to create the band, and Buckley soon “took the lead with all the songs he was writing.”
Buckley began his music career at Redondo Union High School, where he formed his first band, The 405s. The experience made him more fully fall in love with creating music, so much so that it became his primary focus. Prior to forming The 405s, Buckley was a world-class sailor, and had traveled the world representing the United States.
“I sailed for 11 1⁄2 years; I’ve been to 30 countries and represented the U.S. five times, and I quit all of that during the second half of my senior year [in high school] to pursue music,” said Buckley. “I started a band, and all the [members] were a year younger than me; they were all good kids, and I had a lot of fun with them, but I feel like I was the only one who really took it seriously.”
Pacchiana, on the other hand, has been passionate about music since he was 6 years old when he started playing the drums. What he has learned as he has continued to delve deeper into his instrument is that the most technical playing is not always the best playing; rather, he aims to play in a manner which complements the music.
“When I was young, I didn’t understand that the fastest, craziest-sounding stuff…isn’t always realistic,” said Pacchiana. “As you get older, you realize that being a good musician is not playing the best thing that you can play or the most technical thing you can play all the time; it’s playing what you need for the song.”
One of Buckley’s biggest songwriting influences is Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, a band to whom Sunset Club has often been compared. Buckley cites his own intrinsic understanding of musical emotion and harmony as one of the reasons for the “nostalgic, melancholy, sometimes euphoric sound that [Sunset Club] has.”
“There’s just an innocence [in Wilson’s music], and there’s something about that that has always appealed to me,” said Buckley. “There’s a deep-rooted harmony in me that just needs to get out, and I’m trying to achieve that through my band.”
Sunset Club, however, aims to create original music in order to curate a unique sound. Buckley says he wants to “give credit where credit is due,” as many of the band’s songs are derived from musical inspirations of the past.
“I don’t think it’s respectful to other musicians or yourself if you’re spending your musical days trying to reinvent the wheel,” said Buckley. “You can pay homages, but in your own personal way and I feel like that’s what we do.”
As the band has navigated their collective musical process throughout the past year, they have faced many challenges. The band has been recording their songs as well as booking venues in Nashville throughout the school year and in the South Bay during the summer. Pacchiana said playing shows can be a long and expensive process, especially in Nashville, a city widely renowned as a hub for music.
“It’s very easy to spend money and not make it back,” said Pacchiana. “Even if you are getting shows—and we’ve played many shows—[the profits] are split between the venue, your manager, and four other people. It’s not that much, but it’s really about getting people to know who you are.”
Another challenge the band has faced is balancing the demands of running a band with the responsibilities of being a student. “There’s always something you could be doing,” Buckley said, whether it be booking gigs, recording music, or writing songs.
“There are a lot of seasonal and impromptu variables that come up, and if one could just spend all their time on that and not worry about school or other responsibilities, it’d be easy to tackle,” said Buckley. “But we’re also 20. We’re just trying to go through the motions of being 20-year-olds, and it can get gnarly.”
Pacchiana and Buckley emphasize loyalty and respect as core values of their band, and believe that such ideals are part of the reason for their success thus far. Buckley said the fact that the band members refuse to play for other groups despite many invitations for them to do so shows their devotion to Sunset Club.
“I give them plenty of opportunities to go play for other bands and they still don’t do it,” said Buckley. “Does that mean that if that variable changes at all in the next few years that I’ll care? No. But that does show me a baseline level of respect and loyalty that absolutely carries over into the way I approach this whole game.”
Despite the challenges they’ve faced as a band, Sunset Club has also shared many successes. Besides the obvious, such as the first show the band played together and the first time they successfully recorded a song, the duo emphasized that the little moments are what make their hard work worthwhile.
“It gets to be a lot, doing all of this yourself,” said Pacchiana. “But the best feeling is after you finish recording and it sounds great. Little stuff like that is very gratifying.”
The band plans to release at least four songs by the end of this summer, but is unsure whether they will make an EP from the recordings. Sunset Club aims to emulate a retro feeling with their music, and have recently purchased an analog recorder to make that feeling more authentic. Buckley says that the pressure to release music can be great, especially if one feels as though it isn’t yet good enough to be publicized.
“I have put way too much time into this for us to just drop something,” said Buckley. “It’s just, in my opinion, disrespectful. I care about it too much, and I don’t want to leave any variables out there that leave me with regret later. We’re starting a journey here and we’re going to release music and be judged off it. To simply say, ‘let’s drop it,’ I think is a very immature way of looking at things.”
With their upcoming songs and showcases, the band hopes to vary the style of their music; while they drew mainly from rock influences in their Nashville shows, this summer they hope to “promote that beach life culture, easy paddling type of thing because we do have it good here,” said Buckley.
The band will perform a three-song showcase at Saint Rocke on July 26 via Mic Drop Media, and is opening at the Whiskey a Go Go on August 5. More information about the band is available on their Instagram, @sunsetclub310.
