“All right, I got time, whatcha got for me?” James asks me as he shuffles around the cramped green room at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, the third stop on tour. As always, even when James isn’t doing anything, he has to do something. After checking with Danny about microphone pack batteries (“basically if anything goes wrong on stage we just say it’s his fault, even if it’s not”), James relives just what set him on the road to FRENSHIP.
Growing up just outside of the Colorado town of Morrison, after which the FRENSHIP song is named, James Sunderland was constantly surrounded by music. As the child of an opera singer, it wasn’t long before he was enrolled in music lessons. At age nine he began learning percussion, and choir followed shortly thereafter. He performed in musicals and kept up with piano off and on throughout adolescence. Despite the musical roots in his life, sports came first for James. “Soccer was always the priority, I played all through college,” he tells me, fiddling with a loose thread on his shirt. Again, I’m struck by the uncanny similarities in his and Brett’s stories.
Throughout his time at Dickinson College, James dabbled in music production. He tells me, “I messed around with GarageBand and Logic, but nothing serious.” It wasn’t until graduation, stuck in the uncertainty of burgeoning adulthood, that music became a serious consideration. Unlike Brett, whose music was mostly self-taught, James began production school after moving to LA in 2010. There, he focused on piano and music theory. With his new skills he started freelance producing, working on film and television scores. Despite the stability, James quickly found that he missed singing. He joined a DJ duo, but that didn’t last long either: “It just wasn’t me,” he recalls. Stuck, burnt out on the genre, and with dwindling funds, he started work at Lululemon. Unbeknownst to James, it was this move that would drastically change his life.
After several days of prodding, I secured time with Brett and James for a deeper look into FRENSHIP’s beginnings. The band is constantly brainstorming and producing on the road, and any downtime is spent catching up on minor details like food or sleep; we use their free hour before the show to talk-as they workout, of course.
We head down the theater’s metal staircase, walking out into the Albany evening’s muggy air. James ties his hair up into a bun while Brett runs inside to grab impromptu weights. The crowded alley between the stage door and the tour vans is gravelly and uneven, but James turns to me and shrugs, “it’s what we got.” Brett exits the stage door, a large case in his hands, prompting James to call over to him, “Get it beefcake.” Setting the makeshift weight down, Brett stands with his arms crossed, squinting at ground. After several minutes of haphazard assembly and disgruntled back-and-forth, the pair has a DIY interval circuit completed. As they cycle through bursts of exercises, they recall just how the group began.
Brett and James found themselves following in the footsteps of so many starry-eyes Los Angeles transplants: working retail. The pair, disillusioned and frustrated from the stagnation of their solo music ventures, ended up working side by side under the same fluorescent lights of their neighborhood Lululemon. Far from the meaningful careers in the music of which they’d dreamed, Brett and James were faced with minor crises among the stacks of high-end spandex. As so many of us often do.
As the only guys and musicians working at the store, they were naturally met with suggestions from coworkers to work together. Despite the eventual result of their meeting, they were not instantly eager to seriously pursue music together. Largely skeptical of the other’s tastes, Brett and James instead spent the first few months of their friendship goofing off in LA’s Westside together. “Screwdrivers were our drink of choice,” James says breathily, in the middle of a jump rope set. Eventually, the two decided to try their hand at working together on a song.
Several months later (“we took at long time with it,” James emphasizes), their debut song “KIDs” was released. The electropop single caught the attention of ASCAP, prompting Brett and James to start to take their partnership more seriously. They landed on the name FRENSHIP, a callback to those drunken Santa Monica nights when James would say “There’s big ships and little ships, but the best ship of all is friendship.” They then started searching for members for live performances at Silverlake Lounge. “We sucked,” they recall, “but we were doing it.”
They continued releasing singles and performing live for the next year and a half. By the end of 2016, plateaued progress and concerns about finances were weighing heavily on the pair. “When things are going shitty, it makes everything else go worse,” Brett says during a break between sets. “We were about to break up,” adds James. Enter: “Capsize”.
To date, FRENSHIP’s chart success is “Capsize,” an expansive synth-pop composition featuring Emily Warren. In a last ditch effort, James and Brett put some money into the song’s release, hoping to push hard for good promotion. The pair remembers the day precisely. On April 15th, 2016, “Capsize” charted on the music discovery app Hype Machine. Next, it appeared on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist.
“I basically found out because Brett literally ran out of our hotel to tell me,” James laughs. They waited anxiously to watch its performance over the week, Brett even keeping a graph on his phone of the song’s daily streams. Momentum took hold and the song exploded in popularity, being named by many as the song of the summer. That one song was all it took for the labels to start calling.
The fact that these two have managed to meet at the creative common ground to produce music together is both remarkable and the heart of their success. Put simply, Brett and James do not have the same tastes. Where Brett wants a drum break, James more synth; where James wants a layered harmony, Brett wants more guitar. Since the success of “Capsize,” the duo has learned each other better. Surrounded by so many yes men, the honest critiques they provide one another are invaluable to their creative process. James says, “It’s the five percent where we meet in the middle. That’s the golden stuff.”
Though their ability to produce successful songs while having completely different music tastes is impressive to outsiders, Brett and James see it as nothing but part of the process. “We’re two different people, but you come together because you have to,” Brett says, wiping sweat from his forehead as we head back inside the venue. “I believed in him, he believed in me.”
Several hours later, we’re back in the alley, another set and load out completed. The outdoor lights above us buzz quietly, night now completely fallen. Brett and James are sitting on two large cases while my photographer snaps photos of their conversation. I steer the questions to the bigger picture that’s at the heart of FRENSHIP. They consider for a moment. James looks at me intently, “Authenticity is really the only thing we care to convey at the end of the day.” It is this authenticity that lies behind their every creative choice. Brett and James will sit with song ideas for months. As James explains, “when something feels special, you want to give it time to live.” And through their creative authenticity, Brett and James have created an atmosphere of inclusivity at their shows. As James describes it, they hope to attract “the people that are open to the world.” Such a commitment to genuineness can be hard to come by in any industry, let alone music. And it’s exactly what makes FRENSHIP great.
Brett smiles widely. “We just love this a lot,” he says before he and James launch into heartfelt anecdotes about the past few years; Brett crying while watching Bastille perform “Oblivion” as he realized ‘I’m doing this,’ and James’s swell of pride performing at Red Rocks in his home state of Colorado. The pair seems to step out of their constant need to move forward, reveling for a moment in the whirlwind their lives have become in such a short time. “You get to be buddies, see the world, and make a little noise,” James says. Nodding, Brett adds, “When I’m on my deathbed, I want to have a lot less potential than I do now.”
We sit in silence for a few moments, the muffled sounds of Bastille’s stage set up drifting through the still, smoky air. Soon the pair is back to assessing the night’s show, analyzing minute details and arguing over what to change next. For Brett and James, FRENSHIP is not an act they leave onstage after each set; it is a labor of love that they are constantly working to improve. Fueled by their momentum, they sit primed for success. I look over at them animatedly discussing mixing levels and harmonies, a pair of starry-eyed pragmatists-not quite able to revel in their own achievements because of their own restless urge to keep moving forward. And while FRENSHIP was something James and Brett never could have imagined back in their neighborhood Lululemon, this mutual and insatiable drive to create made it almost inevitable.
On the final day of tour, I sit down with Celeste backstage at The Fillmore in Philadelphia, planning on discussing her experience as a woman in music. Instead, she reaffirmed something all the more touching (and infinitely less depressing)-something that I had witnessed throughout my time with FRENSHIP: they truly are a family. Before the trip, I would’ve rolled my eyes at the saccharine sentimentality of calling a touring ensemble brought together by chance and auditions a family. But as I look around the large, industrial backstage that characterization does not ring as trite-it’s just true. Danny and JR and are emphatically playing ping-pong, flailing as they each try to out-maneuver the other while Brett and James are rapt in an intent discussion with Tony. FRENSHIP has its arguments and its aggravations and its mistakes. Yet they possess a fondness and a familiarity and genuine care for one another that transcend all of it. As we sit on the couch, Celeste shrugs and says about the group, “it’s a relief to be with people who know all the versions of you.” With this, she profoundly summarizes what I’ve witnessed all week. FRENSHIP succeeds in its goal of honesty in its music and with its audience because before anything else, they are honest with themselves. Though the parts seem small-the fondness for Brett’s off the wall jokes, the wholehearted enthusiasm to green room choreography, the constant laughter-their sum is a group of musicians, a group of friends who so wholly know and respect each other that it cannot help but translate into all that they do.
FRENSHIP’s final show pulses with energy, each member bringing a level of enthusiasm and joy onstage as potent and unrelenting as the start of the week. Despite this being the fourth consecutive night of watching their set, I am as moved as I was on day one. From the veritable dance party of “Morrison” to the emotional, poignant swell of “Love Somebody”, in under an hour FRENSHIP has crafted a performance with the dynamic range and genuine emotion some bands with full arena shows fail to achieve. At the final song of the weeklong tour, Bastille again brings out FRENSHIP. Brett, James, Danny, JR, and Celeste jump animatedly onstage, drumming and belting out the lyrics to “Pompeii”, losing themselves in the uninhibited joy of doing exactly what they love. Even as they perform, they shoot glances at one another, laughing at secret jokes and shared memories. The joy that bursts forth from these five friends is palpable and undeniable, and exactly what they deserve.
Several hours after the night’s encore, with hoarse throats and cheeks sore from smiling, my photographer and I walk sleepily to our rental car, slowly double-checking our luggage and equipment before we head to the airport. My phone buzzes in my pocket, Sunderland’s name lighting up the screen. I pick up, met with James’s frazzled voice on the other end. “Hey, do you mind checking if the venue is still open? We left a load of laundry in the washer and they might be closing up before we get back.” I laugh. “Of course, I’ll check and let you know.”
Five minutes later, I’m sitting against the stage door, a frigid 1 am breeze biting at my fingertips grasped around a pile FRENSHIP’s laundry. The last few venue staff, hurriedly clearing backstage to close for the night, had shrugged and told me the doors would all be locked in a few minutes, not nearly enough time for FRENSHIP’s van to make its triumphant return. And so I sat on that dark street, cold and exhausted and hungry, holding a pile of dirty band laundry, grinning to myself. I was perfectly happy to do this for the same reason fans travel across states solely to see FRENSHIP perform, for the same reason Bastille has twice brought them on tour, for the same reason Celeste so nonchalantly called them a family: FRENSHIP is the real deal.
Brett and James brought together by chance and good timing; Danny and JR, recruited through convenience and connections; Celeste, auditioning at just the right moment-nothing about FRENSHIP’s beginnings would suggest their result. The result is a group so cohesive, so complementarily creative, so friendly and funny and passionate, they have no option but success. Through the long days spent in their LA studio, the millions of song streams, the international tours, FRENSHIP remains what they’ve always strived to be: authentic. And in those last moments, sitting on the cold pavement and thinking back to what James had told me only a night before: “We’re gonna get this right. It’s what we wanna do. It’s what we will do. It’s what we have to do,” there’s no doubt in my mind that FRENSHIP is getting it so incredibly right.
Written by Dana Jacobs
Photographed by Briar Burns
