Zeke Sayer is no shady character. He might look like a spiral-eyed madman on a rampage, projecting bleary lasciviousness, but he’s really just a friendly musician with both feet in the blur of the weirdo side of Athens’ band scene. As the lead singer, guitarist and main songwriter in the trashy-but-snappy rock band The Humms, Sayer’s also one of the town’s more distinctive garage-punk champs.
Sayer’s journey with The Humms has been a stop-and-start affair, though. Two years ago, he and his bandmates—drummer ZZ Ryder, and bassist Zeb Garrison—were stompin’ around town armed with a raunchy, self-produced, 18-song collection of reverby rockers, anthems and punkish ditties titled Lemonland. They’d released it on their own label, Gypsy Farm Records, and the townies went wild for it. Flagpole scribe David Fitzgerald called the band’s debut “a mixed Halloween bag, full of a few tricks, a lot of treats, and not one lemon in the bunch.” Others in the indie music press also made a fuss over the band’s creepiest elements: the songs involving zombies, devils, vampires and haunted houses. The ghoulish themes in the lyrics played a major role in the theatrics of their live shows as well.
“A few years ago, we were playing at the Rye Bar, and we were painted up like a bunch of white-faced spooks in dirty black suits,” Sayer remembers. “We arrived out front that night in our black van, an ex-funeral home van. That started all of that, I suppose.”
Their Cramps-esque B-horror flick shtick was noticeable, but there was another side to the band’s music and personality, a side rooted more in vintage psychedelic lo-fi pop (à la The Troggs) and Gothic blues-rock (think Flat Duo Jets) than in greasy ghoulabilly.
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Artist info obtained from public profile, artist website or social media
Zeke Sayer is no shady character. He might look like a spiral-eyed madman on a rampage, projecting bleary lasciviousness, but he’s really just a friendly musician with both feet in the blur of the weirdo side of Athens’ band scene. As the lead singer, guitarist and main songwriter in the trashy-but-snappy rock band The Humms, Sayer’s also one of the town’s more distinctive garage-punk champs.
Sayer’s journey with The Humms has been a stop-and-start affair, though. Two years ago, he and his bandmates—drummer ZZ Ryder, and bassist Zeb Garrison—were stompin’ around town armed with a raunchy, self-produced, 18-song collection of reverby rockers, anthems and punkish ditties titled Lemonland. They’d released it on their own label, Gypsy Farm Records, and the townies went wild for it. Flagpole scribe David Fitzgerald called the band’s debut “a mixed Halloween bag, full of a few tricks, a lot of treats, and not one lemon in the bunch.” Others in the indie music press also made a fuss over the band’s creepiest elements: the songs involving zombies, devils, vampires and haunted houses. The ghoulish themes in the lyrics played a major role in the theatrics of their live shows as well.
“A few years ago, we were playing at the Rye Bar, and we were painted up like a bunch of white-faced spooks in dirty black suits,” Sayer remembers. “We arrived out front that night in our black van, an ex-funeral home van. That started all of that, I suppose.”
Their Cramps-esque B-horror flick shtick was noticeable, but there was another side to the band’s music and personality, a side rooted more in vintage psychedelic lo-fi pop (à la The Troggs) and Gothic blues-rock (think Flat Duo Jets) than in greasy ghoulabilly.
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Artist info obtained from public profile, artist website or social media
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