Cherry Drop – Thanks for Asking!

photo: Cherry Drop, by Vision Immortal

By Sara Busone.

Detroit rockers Cherry Drop played the Rock & Roll Cookout at No Fun last night. We spoke with vocalist Lucas Sunn to learn a little bit more about them.

RRX: We all get a little support from those around us. Who do you admire in your community?

LS: Being from Detroit, I think we could pick from a huge number of people. Right now, there’s a collection of bands in the D known as “The Detroit Freak Parade.” Any band/member from that group is very inspirational and admirable. To name a few specifically: Sonic Smut, The Cult of Spaceskull, Pepper and the Heavy Boys, Glass Chimera. Also, we wanna say Vision Immortal, a YouTube channel that captures live footage of bands. They’re capturing what’s going on in Detroit right now, and we look up to all those cats.

RRX: What was the very first reaction to your music, from the first person to ever hear so much as a practice jam or the demo of your first song?

LS: When we first started jamming, we had gotten some (terrible) demos together and sent them to a friend and Detroit staple Rob Ceder. We were more of a psych band at the time, and Rob liked the heavy stuff. Rob, being the super nice and supportive guy he is, said something like, “Right on, it’s not for me, but keep pushing it, fellas. Don’t stop!” That meant a lot. Just some supportive words from someone who was already so involved with the scene. Four years later, the sound has changed a bit; we listened to Rob and we still haven’t stopped.

RRX: Any interesting/funny stories from performing you’d care to share?

LS: HERE’S A GOODIE! Not while performing, but the day we played our first festival. Cherry Drop lives together; we practice in our basement. I got home from work early, and we had to play the Hamtramck Blowout Festival that night. So I walk in around noon, go downstairs to start loading up equipment. The first thing I see is water pouring from the ceiling, directly into Cory’s pedal board, Fender Deville, all of our guitars, and drums. One of us had left the bathroom sink running when we left for work. It overflowed onto the bathroom floor and into the basement. Everything was soaked, and we had to load in in like six hours. Other guys got home, we took everything apart, bought like 10 pounds of rice, and started trying to dry stuff out. Blowing fans on everything and praying to Lemmy that this would work out. Well, we must’ve done something right because EVERYTHING STILL WORKED THAT NIGHT. We got to the festival on time, used our own gear, and played a great show. I don’t think we’ll ever get that lucky again.

RRX: What is a memorable place you played?

LS: Last year, and also once on this tour, we played at this venue in Mansfield, Ohio, called The Mothership. That’s definitely a special place. Mansfield doesn’t have a lot in it, so The Mothership is where a lot of cats go for a good time. Run by local musicians and people who just genuinely care about art, it’s THE SPOT to play if you go through Ohio. Liquid light legend Roger Davies resides there. Jeff, Nate, and Shannon are some of the coolest cats to own a venue we’ve ever met. They’ve fed us, sheltered us for the night, and welcomed us with open arms the same way they do with EVERY traveling artist that comes through there. We suggest it to everyone, HIT THE MOTHERSHIP.

RRX: What’s tripped you up, musically, that you had to overcome?

LS: Musically, we’ve all tripped over our own things. I think together, though, we’ve all had a lot of fun in learning how to manage ourselves and the project itself. Like, we all knew how to play already and write songs. But we had to learn what to do with it after we got it together. How to make a record, plan a tour, support our scene, promote ourselves, all the things you don’t think about when you start a band. All of us have enjoyed learning together and are excited for all the lessons we still have to learn, even the hard ones.

RRX: What is your perspective on the genre of music you play?

LS: Genres are funny to us. We were never into the idea of meticulous sub-genres. Since we really got going, we’ve only claimed one genre: this is Detroit Rock ‘n’ Roll. It’s loud. It’s fast. It’s rude and lewd. If you dig on rock n roll, you might enjoy what we do.