Hear Kentucky Buzz Band Sundy Best’s Trippy New LP ‘Salvation City’
When Nick Jamerson and Kris Bentley, who make up the Kentucky duo Sundy Best, pull up to the Rolling Stone Country offices on Music Row, they look every bit the Nashville outsiders they are. Their ride is a 2005 Chevy conversion van that used to belong to Jamerson’s grandmother — he traded her his car for it — and with Jamerson in worn flannel and knit hat, and Bentley in a puffy vintage racing jacket, the hardscrabble musicians appear in stark contrast to the meticulously manicured and coiffed country stars whose faces adorn congratulatory billboards up and down the Row.
Appropriately, Jamerson and Bentley look like they’ve just stepped out of the hollers of Kentucky. With syrupy accents and a back-porch vibe, they sound like it too. Which is what has helped distinguish the duo since forming four years ago. With Jamerson on acoustic guitar and Bentley on a cajón drum, Sundy Best have redefined what it means to give a “stripped down” performance. Still, their songs are anything but bare. Fleshed out by Jamerson’s no-mic-necessary vocals and Bentley’s rapid-fire box-drum technique, songs like “I Wanna Go Home” and “Until I Met You” from their 2014 album Bring Up the Sun are full-bodied affairs.
Jake Owen, a new fan who has tweeted his support of the group to his 1.5 million followers, praises Sundy Best’s unique sound.
“I’ve always been very thankful to people that have waved my flag before and told people I was good. That’s how anything gets told to the world. And I just wanted to wave their flag and tell people they’re cool,” says Owen, who discovered the band by watching its live performances on YouTube. “I’m a music geek and am always looking for stuff that dances around in my eardrum, something that feels good, sounds good and is different. I like the fact that they’re one guitar and a cajón.”
But while the two-man, cajón construction that has attracted Owen and the pair’s “kinfolk” fan movement remains the core of Sundy Best, the group took leaps forward on its new album, Salvation City — which Rolling Stone Country is premiering in its entirety today. (Listen to the album below.)
For one, Bentley is playing a full drum kit along with cajón; Jamerson is further exploring the guitar, electric and acoustic. And both are diving deeper into their songwriting, continuing to shy away from the surefire lyrical trends of today.
“I feel like country music is an essence. You don’t have to spend the whole time in a song talking about how country you are or how big your truck is. If that’s what you are, people will know,” says Jamerson, who settled on the title Salvation City after weathering a nearly nonstop touring schedule with Bentley. Near the end, the two were burned out.
“Salvation City is where you go or what you turn to when you’re stretched out and you need a break from everything. We had found the only time we were really getting to enjoy ourselves in the whole rat race was when we were performing and playing music,” he says. Jamerson, the quiet brooder to Bentley’s happy-go-lucky persona, credits two concerts he caught this summer — one by the Allman Brothers, the other by Tom Petty — with restoring his psyche.
“Personally, getting to see them, it saved me from losing my mind. When you do what we do, playing is what got us away from the stresses of life, and now it was the source of our stress. Getting to go back and become fans of music again, and enjoy it, that saved me,” he explains.
“We really honed in on this one, on making a complete album, from front to back,” adds Bentley, who says the duo decided against previewing Salvation City until today to heighten the album experience for listeners. “We wanted everyone to get it all at once, dive into it and hopefully be off their phones for 40 minutes to escape.”