Former cover stars Sunflower Bean are set to release their latest album this Friday. Long-time admirers of the band and their fascinating journey, we spoke to drummer, Olive Faber to find out about their ‘firsts’ in music.
First Song You Wrote…
The first song I wrote was a song called ‘Bite Ten’. I was 8 or 9 years old. I wrote it on a piece of loose leaf paper with a red ink pen and it was a song about getting bitten by mosquitoes and the existential dread around that.
First Live Performance…
First live performance was probably at a Thanksgiving when I was 7. All my cousins and I would get on instruments and do an epic 12 bar blues jam for like an hour or more while our parents all had to suffer us gladly.
The first ever live Sunflower Bean performance was when I was 17 or 18. It was just Nick and I playing at this DIY space called The Living Gallery in Bushwick. Julia wasn’t in the band yet. We played the entire set with a strobe on.
First Official Concert…
My first official concert was seeing Green Day perform live at Good Morning America in Central Park. My mom drove me in at 5 am so we could stand in the front row. They only played a couple songs but I thought it was incredible.
First Festival…
I still have yet to attend a festival that I’m not playing. The first one I ever went to was with Sunflower Bean in upstate NY. It was called the Hudson Music Project and it was a disaster. The entire festival got shut down 10 minutes before we were supposed to go on stage due to lightning and from there chaos ensued. Luckily we were able to drive our minivan out of there after a few hours of taking shelter. People were stuck there in the mud for days after. The Red Cross had to be called.
First Headline Show…
Probably a Brooklyn DIY venue but there was so many I can’t think of the exact first headline. So the first proper headline I can recall was NYE eve at Baby’s All Right in 2014.
Sunflower Bean’s new album, Mortal Primetime is out Friday, April 25th
