GUNNAR

I've got a bit of a lead foot. 

It was late – around 10 o'clock at night – and GUNNAR, the rest of his band, and I had just finished getting into Provo, Utah from the Salt Lake City airport, which is about an hour away. After we dropped their stuff off at the hotel, the guys were hungry, and they wanted to go and grab some In-N-Out. A great choice tbh.

On our way up 500 West, I don't know what happened. I ended up gunning it up the hill at like 70 miles an hour. Suddenly, police lights appeared in my rearview mirror. Anyone who read my piece from tmrw #51 with Ronen Rubinstein should know I’m a bit of a dumbass (seriously, who calls the shots around here? I should not be in charge of transportation at this point). I saw the lights, but my brain didn't register that they were for me, so I pulled over expecting them to pass us.

But the lights were definitely for me. 

In the back of the car, I heard the whole band mocking me like I was a 4th grader who just got sent to the principal’s office. “Awh mannnn, Zach! This is for us! This is for us! You really did it now!” 

I rolled down my window and the police officer shined his flashlight into this car packed full of musicians and blasting GUNNAR’s single “Upside Down” – which had just dropped that day.

“What are you doing out here tonight? Any idea how fast you were going?” asked the officer.

The usual proceedings ensued. I handed him my license and registration, and he walked back to his squad car. As we were waiting for the officer to run me through the system, the overwhelmingly delicious smell of slow-cooked pulled pork flooded the vehicle. It was unreal. With immense hunger and our In-N-Out dreams temporarily on hold, it was borderline cruel. 

We looked around and realized that Bam Bam's BBQ off 500 West was prepping their food for the next day, and man, did it smell great. This is not a product placement, I swear. 

The police officer returned. As luck would have it, the rental car I was in had Texas plates, my story about coming from the Salt Lake Airport with guys from California checked out, my record was clean, and he let me off with a warning.  

With some cheers and clapping from the bois, we all headed to In-N-Out. The guys were kind enough to buy me a meal and a shake after a memorable first few hours in Utah. 

It was then we got to chat for a bit about “Upside Down.” Sonically, “Upside Down” is a style I’ve never heard from GUNNAR before. It’s heavier than his prior releases, and feels larger than life and incredibly anthemic.

“That’s one of those songs that just feels right to me,” GUNNAR said. 

My favorite part of the whole experience was that after the 8-hour shoot and in-studio performance the next day, GUNNAR’s manager asked, “Hey. What’s the name of that BBQ place we got pulled over by last night?” 

What a callback.

So, of course, we had dinner there before I dropped the dudes off at Top Golf.

“Bam Bam’s was perfect,” GUNNAR said later. “The brisket nachos still keep me up at night.”

That playful teasing, that spirit of camaraderie, and that excitement for the music – it defined my entire experience with GUNNAR. I had interviewed him the summer before, and we had gotten to know each other from a distance over Zoom, but this was our first time hanging out together in-person. While our first interview largely focused on the things that mattered most to him and the things that he's deeply passionate about in theory, this was a boots-on-the-ground experience of working with GUNNAR up close and seeing who he really is. I got to see what he’s like when we get pulled over; how he responds while working out the details of a difficult guitar solo; and how he paces nervously and carefully warms up his vocals before a live performance. All stressful situations.  

But GUNNAR and his band (featuring guitarist Dario Comuzzi, bassist Sean Ritchie, and Drummer Till Richter) were all equally free-spirited and kind. These guys were full of that wide-eyed, youthful vigor and energy that all young bands have. Even though they've had a lot of recent success with the release of GUNNAR’s new album SUNFADED, they still offered to pay for my dirty soda at Sodalicious.

Of course, I declined and paid for the order because we asked them to FLY TO UTAH and I FREAKING GOT PULLED OVER (and they paid for me the night before). But goofy antics like watching GUNNAR order child-sized cups of every flavor he could carry and then drinking half a dozen of them made me really happy to be alive. 

“Honest opinion: Sodalicious is fucking incredible,” he laughed. “If I had one at home I would be 40 pounds heavier. I could try a new flavor every day for a year and still have more options.” 

The entire trip was so much fun, from start to finish. “I have to give an enormous amount of credit to my guys. They keep everything so real and fun all the time, and I’m incredibly grateful for that," GUNNAR said. 

“But to be completely honest, we as artists and creatives are just reactors. The tmrw team and crew was so solid and good that it just felt like family off the jump, and we dished out exactly what was given to us.”

It would be really easy to assume that somebody so gracious, so happy to be on tour, so excited to be exploring someplace new, must have everything going for them. But that couldn't be further from the truth. GUNNAR is no stranger to difficulty and heartache. And that’s what makes all of this so memorable to me.

You see, GUNNAR recently had his house burn down in the tragic Los Angeles Fires in California. In his new song “Art of Staying Alive,” he mentions the loss nonchalantly: “My house burned down, another damn day, my luck’s gonna change.”  That song feels brutally optimistic — like a rebellion against misfortune.

“I think going through that really just pushed me to my limits about caring so much about materialistic items,” he said. “And with that also came the release of caring too much about emotional aspects of my life, like songwriting.”

Letting go, caring less, and embracing life with reckless abandon informed a lot of aspects of SUNFADED. His songwriting became a lot more honest. “Why not just be honest and speak the truth rather than sometimes getting too cute with lyrics and hidden meanings? I feel like there are songs on this album that do that, but what I’m most proud of about this project is my growth to be able to just be 100% real and honest,” GUNNAR explained. 

I don’t mean for this to be too on-the-nose, but it really feels like GUNNAR has learned the art of staying alive. And it truly is an art. “I guess from my experience, my best piece of advice would be to just accept the phases of hardships,” he said. “Some days are good, and it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is right there, and then it can switch and you feel the weight of everything again like it just happened." 

That kind of grit and optimism in the face of difficulty – and that emphasis on community – is what makes GUNNAR and company so fun to be around. This carefree, reckless hope also shines through in the music. While SUNFADED was not written as a concept album and doesn’t have any intentional throughlines, it’s special as a time capsule – documenting this formative period for GUNNAR. “I think that’s what makes it so special to me. Every song has its own story and its own timestamp to different times of my life. I will say that the honesty and vulnerability on this project is much more than anything before. I went places that I have never been as a songwriter and I’m really proud of it.”

He was willing to go to new places visually as well. Any crazy idea we threw his way, right down to tying him up in a 100-foot speaker cable? He tackled it with enthusiasm. “We honestly just had the best time and got to create something really cool and timeless,” GUNNAR said.

Cards on the table: normally I have some sort of dramatic theme or throughline for my pieces. But much like SUNFADED, this is less of a philosophical commentary and more of a time capsule of my own life. 

GUNNAR makes music to make memories to. Youthful, loud, vibrant, and full of the kind of optimism that can turn getting a speeding ticket into an opportunity for world-class barbecue.

Make sure to follow GUNNAR on Instagram. SUNFADED is now streaming.