Music
Press
"Are you from the US or the UK?"
I asked Andrew when we're talking about his music. American was the answer, and after having a quick peep at their Myspace page, it seems that they're indeed from Knoxville, Tennessee. Is it important then? Yes it is, because they're sounding so British that you think you're dealing with another classic band from Liverpool. And no, I am not talking about the famous fab four but bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Mighty Wah!, Orange Juice or even Shed Seven. I am saying this because The Royal Buzz are a band who believe in the strength of an indiepopsong...because that's what stays in the head after all. So far the band have recorded 3 EP's and they even played Europe...every song seems to live on a world on its own, a world called melody. If you're digging classic indiepop with 80's-waveguitars you might have found a gem.
-Didier Becu
Original Sin - Webzine
Discography
Nina Circle EP 2009
Thoughts of You EP 2008
Royal Buzz EP 2007
Entombed (Single) 2009
4tress Acts Compilations 1-4
The Royal 7 EP
Photos
Bio
The Royal Buzz is comprised of brothers Andrew Sexton and Eric Leming. Sexton was writing and recording new material for a year after his first band Sefrona dissolved, until 2007, when he and Leming started rehearsing new music, traveling to Europe, playing shows, and recruiting drummer Brad Duncan to join the group. Drawing upon their influences, they focused on compositions with direct, tangible subject matter and driving musicality. They directed these ideas into the Royal Buzz EP and subsequent Thoughts of You EP which set in motion some 40 shows within the next year at a variety of venues in 10 ten different cities. "Thoughts of You", "Entombed" achieved radioplay at home (90.3, 94.3, 105.3 Knoxville), as well as abroad in the UK.
Andrew Sexton (12/28/87) & Eric Leming (7/13/88) were raised in a religious, working class family in eastern Tennessee. The world of the Royal Buzz is this: Eric listens to metal 24/7. His hands tear out the intestines of chickens for a living. Andrew attends a university for dreams, which he insists has an excellent study abroad program. Brad is living in a cave on the second story of a cracked apartment building. Hardwood floors and a bay window sit over a garden with crickets in full swing. Exile on Main St. turns on the record player. A wine bottle decorates the refrigerator, a thousand white paint chips guard a windowsill. Andrew Sexton says, "Our mother see, she loved books and music and poetry. She gave a lot of that to us. Our Dad, he smelled of dynamite, he worked really hard, watched MacGuyver when he came home. We got a lot of him too. It was like Eden, our childhood. It was closed off in some ways, yet innocent of many things. That makes the world hell, doesn't it?. "
Life radically shifted from the idyllic surroundings of youth. Adoptions of six siblings brought nine children together in one house. Their mother Sharon was diagnosed with a rare cancer at 33, which she died from in 2009.
Through tumultuous times as these, Andrew taught himself the guitar at age 11 on a 1960s Silvertone acoustic and has been writing for ten years since. Fueled early on by a steady steady of Brit-pop, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Nirvana, and Mazzy Star. Eric learned bass at 15, after seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers live and hearing The Smiths for the first time. A brother Josiah inked a deal with Warner Bros after playing piano from age 8.
"We realized we were like fish in water with music, all we're doing is just swimming."
Now 21 and 22, their pen follows: love, parties, girls, abject boredom, youth, contradiction, America, the universe. The world as one gleaming oyster. Ours, everybody's...But mainly, theirs.
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