The text came to McCallie senior Stuart Brown a week or so ago. It was from a friend who had just listened to Dock Party’s EP “Sailboats” on Spotify. Wrote the friend to Mr. Brown, who’s one-fourth of Dock Party, along with fellow rising seniors Sid Cheemakoti, Henry Clark and Colin Sanders: “There are no mistakes in it, like you’d expect of a high school band. It sounds perfect.”
Said Mr. Brown, “I think that’s meant more to me than anything.”
They first played together a little more than a year ago during a graduation party for Mr.
Clark’s sister Caroline, who was graduating from Girls Preparatory School. Because a portion of the party was on a boat dock, the band decided to take its name from that dynamic.
What has happened since then has been a pretty meteoric rise on the local music scene. Dock Party has played a couple of concerts for charity that have been sellouts, including one at Songbirds. The EP of seven songs - all written by the group - is taking off on Spotify. They’re already booked for an Octoberfest event this fall in Red Bank.
“It’s pretty cool to have our work on Spotify,” said Mr. Cheemakoti. “We feel like you can hear the time and effort we put into this work.”
Added Mr. Clark, who produced the EP, “It’s still hard to believe we did this. It’s one of the coolest feelings.”
For Mr. Clark, mixing the music for Sailboats in both his home basement and the sound studio inside Mccallie’s Cave, may lead to a new college major. He’s now considering entering the music production program at Belmont University in Nashville.
Mr. Brown - who is part of McCallie’s prestigious Guitar Quintet, along with Mr. Cheemakoti and Mr. Sanders (Mr. Clark plays drums) - is also considering Belmont, correctly noting, “There are lots of music opportunities in Nashville.”
To this point, Dock Party is pretty much solely responsible for their opportunities to date with a little nudge here and there from McCallie guitar teacher Dr. Michael McCallie, whom Mr. Sanders said, “Played a really big role. He’s always been there to help us.”
But overall, from writing to playing to mixing, as Mr. Cheemakoti said, “We do everything on our own.”And at times, they do it incredibly quickly.
According to Mr. Sanders, they wrote “What Are We Fighting For?” in about 15 minutes while waiting to go on stage one night.
“It’s so cool when we have a moment of creativity and end up with a really good piece of music,” said Mr. Sanders. “We never dreamed this would happen when we started out playing other people’s songs in Henry’s basement.”
A peek into how one of their songs - “Table for Two” - got written:
“We were sitting in a circle, just jamming, no lyrics,” explained Mr. Sanders. “We turned off our amps, started playing acoustically. Our songs usually start out telling a story. We started talking about a girl who was really interested in a boy who wasn’t that into her. ‘Table for Two’ came out of that.”
They all have their musical heroes. Mr. Cheemakoti loves the late Jimi Hendrix and how he “put his thumb on the (guitar) neck when he played.”
Mr. Brown is more partial to John Mayer. Mr. Clark embraces Flip Turn drummer Devon VonBalson because, “He’s always happy, always getting the crowd pumped up. That’s what I want to do when we’re on stage.”
The bands they mention admiring most aren’t the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or U2. They’re Flip Turn, Backseat Lovers and Cage the Elephant.
Mr. Brown said they especially like Backseat Lovers for their songs that start out slow and finish with a more upbeat style. This is visible on Dock Party’s intricate and polished “Dancing in Circles,” which might be their best blending of lyrics and guitar strokes.
But all the songs on “Sailboats” have their own high points, perhaps the best being that none of them sound alike, a tough skill for a new band to pull off. If they were a fine wine, an older listener might even say there’s a hint of The Replacements, the softer side of the Cure, a touch of Mayer and even Squeeze in their sound. Whatever it is, it’s pretty advanced for rising high school seniors.
Where Mr. Sanders is concerned, even heredity plays a role. His father, orthopedic surgeon Brett Sanders, plays a pretty mean guitar and banjo in the band MedRock, which consists of doctors and others in the healthcare industry.
“Yeah, my dad’s probably better than me,” Mr. Sanders admitted. “He’s crazy good at music - guitar, banjo, piano, anything. He can play some mean chicken pickin’ blues. When I was sick when I was younger, he’d play Jack Johnson’s ‘Upside Down’ in the hospital. It always made me feel better.”
Their music has already made a bunch of kids learn to play the guitar better with their sold-out concert at Songbirds to benefit “Guitars for Kids,” which furnishes guitars for underprivileged kids in the community.
“We broke their website,” said Mr. Sanders of the demand for tickets.”The event raised over $1,600 for the cause. It’s been inspiring that so many people want to hear our music.”
What happens next is anyone’s guess. In the fall, they’ll return to school, where Mr. Brown, Mr. Cheemakoti and Mr. Sanders will once more anchor the Guitar Quintet and lift up Dock Party whenever gigs are offered.
“We joke about running the world one day,” said Mr. Sanders.
“If we got famous, that would be awesome,” said Mr. Brown.
A member of McCallie’s recent state championship track team, Mr. Brown was asked what meant more to him - the title or the EP dropping on Spotify?
“Probably happier about the album coming out,” he said.
They all said they’d like to continue playing together in college, seeing how far their skills as songwriters and musicians can take them.
But wherever or whenever Dock Party ultimately docks, something Mr. Sanders said is a universal truth: “Music is really important in people’s lives.”