Two years ago Lick’s very own Stephen Page ‘15 and his two friends Thomas and Joe founded The Sutros. In the seventh grade, the threesome had played as The Avenues. As their skill and musical vision grew, they realized they needed a different sort of band. They expanded their group by two to create the sound and strength of their new group The Sutros. The Avenues had played covers. The Sutros play original songs with a new rock sound. Page says, six months they really got serious and coalesced as a professional band.
Stephen Page: Our band formed roughly two years ago, when I met two guys surfing, Iam and Greg. Turns out that they were good musicians, so when I introduced them to my two grade school friends,Thomas and Joe, we all started jam. Jam: playing with no plan, playing off each other in the efforts of creating music.
Hyphen: Where does the band’s name come from?
SP: Initially we were Sutro, then it came to our knowledge that there was already a band called Sutro so that was quite a bummer. We are now The Sutros; for the name itself we wanted something clean and local. Something chill and easy to remember, but that also had some meaning to local San Francisco people. Sutro is something you see all around the city: Sutro Tower, Sutro Forest, Sutro Baths and Adolph Sutro himself is a key historical figure of the city. (Sutro was the mayor of San Francisco from 1885-1887.) You see the name Sutro everywhere, but not everyone can connect it to something and that drew us to the word, it has a good sound.
Hyphen: What genre music do you preform?
SP: I would say some of our songs are rock songs. But mostly alternative, it’s hard to put a name on it. You just have to give us a listen!
Hyphen: Who are you musical influences?
SP: Foals (who are so alternative no one know them), Mumford and Sons, Bombay Bicycle Club, Paul Simon, Flume, to name a few.
Hyphen: What is your favorite song to get the crowd going?
SP: I don’t want to say that any of our songs are crowd pleasers quite yet, because we really haven’t played in front of a big crowd, but our personal favorites are “Last Resort,” and also “Called” and “Weekend.” “Weekend” was one of our very first songs we created, so it always has a place in our hearts, but we definitely jam more with our new stuff.
Hyphen: What instruments does everyone play?
SP: We all go to different schools, which is really cool. Greg, the singer goes to SOTA. Iam just graduated from Lowell and is our lead guitarist. Thomas, is also a guitarist, and he goes to Stuart Hall High School, Joe plays the drums. Of course Steve, me, who plays the bass, goes to Lick.
Hyphen: Where have you played and where do you plan on performing?
SP: We are still an emerging band, so we haven’t really started getting serious except in the last six months. So far, we have about nine original songs and have played at the Revolutionary Cafe a couple times. Ultimately we would like to play at some of the more prestigious places around the city like Bottom of the Hill and The Rickshaw Stop. What we really want to do is take our band seriously and make some really quality original music. We want to play a full set of songs that we are really proud of, and that takes a while.
Hyphen: How can the Lick community hear your music?
SP: We have a bunch of new songs on the way!