Suite 88

Suite 88 has a “Sweet” Sound

June 24, 2010

by Karen Cotton

Suite 88 will bring their blues-based hard rock sound to the Drunken Skunk on Saturday night.

The band decided on the name Suite 88 because all four of its members were born in 1988.

The members include frontman Mike Gunns, Kolton Lee on guitar, Vic Toon on bass and Jesse Clutch on drums.

Suite 88’s sound incorporates elements of pop, heavy metal, and Southern rock. Their music has been compared to bands like Aerosmith, Buckcherry, Metallica, Nickelback, and Guns N’ Roses.

Lee said this is the band’s first trip to Cheyenne.

“It’s our bass player’s hometown, so we’re hoping the show will be really awesome,” Lee said.

Suite 88 is hitting its stride with their song “Ten Shots, Ten Minutes”.

“‘Ten Shots, Ten Minutes’ has been around for a year,” Lee said. “We all basically wrote the song in my garage, and everyone locked themselves in with an 18-pack of beer. We wrote the song in an hour.

“The song is about literally doing ten shots in ten minutes. Our singer Mike Gunns came up with it. He did ten shots of vodka in ten minutes in the dorms at Arizona State University.”

“Ten Shots, Ten Minutes” has been featured on the NBC sitcom “Parenthood”.

“That was pretty surreal for all of us,” he said.

Lee had a personal friend that was a cameraman for MTV and VH1. The friend shot the music video for “Ten Shots, Ten Minutes”.

“The guy who edited it was working on ‘Parenthood’ and needed a song and video for the one clip. He stuck it in there for us,” Lee said.

The band was paid for that TV spot and Lee said it was good for them to branch out into other forms of media.

“You can plaster yourself all over the Internet, but when you tell your fans that you’ll be on NBC at this time they can listen and watch,” he said.

The band has high hopes to make it all the way through their North American tour.

“That’s why we’re coming through Cheyenne,” he said. “Right now we’re in Oregon, then we’re going to Canada, then we’ll work our way east and back home. So our biggest, most immediate plan is to make it back in one piece. When we make it back, Mike has a semester of school to finish up, we’ll add the finishing touches on our next CD, and then there will be another tour.”

Published in: Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Link to article: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-25249304.html