Sun Wizard

Sun Wizard are your favorite band from when you were in high school, back when the whole world was a little bigger and everything you touched was a bit more golden. You knew all the words to their songs, you bought every last one of their records, and rushed out to the record store every time their new single came on the radio. They were the soundtrack to that endless summer, and they colored your adolescent fever with the helpless optimism that everything was going to be just fine.

Sun Wizard officially started playing music together as a four piece in the spring of 2009, when bass player Francesco Lyon came home from a few strange months in Toronto. However, the seeds were planted on a hazy trip to Vancouver Island the summer before, where a couple of days turned into a lost weekend that saw Francesco, accompanied by James Younger and Malcolm Jack, Sun Wizard's alternating songwriter/vocalists, stagger onto stage and play an impromptu acoustic show. The following spring, carrying a suitcase full of lyrics, the band became a band when Ben Frey sat down at the drums. Sun Wizard got a jam space with a panther blanket on the wall, bought plenty of candles, incense and rugs, rehearsed a bunch, and booked their first show. Since then they have played with bands, like Vetiver, The Cave Singers, Deer Tick, Girls, and Immaculate Machine among others.

Fast forward to 2011 and Sun Wizard are now ready to release their debut full-length album “Positively 4th Avenue”. Recorded in Vancouver at Mushroom Studios with producers Dave Ogilvie (David Bowie, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails) and Colin Stewart (Cave Singers, Black Mountain, Ladyhawk) Positively 4th Avenue builds on the promise of the band’s 2009 self-released EP “Maybe They Were Right”. Influenced by classic bands like Television, Steve Miller Band, Fleetwood Mac, and Tom Petty, Sun Wizard wanted to make an album with a similar vibe: Catchy, melodic rock n' roll with big guitar riffs and tight harmonies. You can hear the band channeling that often-elusive element in rock music; that magic dust that gets pulled out from the ether every so often. It’s unexpected, and when traced it seems to act like the common thread in a lineage of influential song driven rock n’ roll bands. Sun Wizard could easily be Jack White’s younger brothers, Tom Petty’s nephews, or Bob Dylan’s grandchildren. In short, they sound like a real band; a band that have always been there.