A Sweet Life for Suite 88

Meet the band: Mike Gunns, 21 ― Vocals, Vick Bourne, 20 ― Bass, Kolton Lee, 21 ― Guitar, and Jesse Clutch, 21 ― Drums. Photo by Peter Lazaravich

Suite 88, named such because all of its members were born in ’88, is one of the Valley’s newest rock bands. Keeping their music as close to “good old fashioned rock n’ roll” as they can, says guitarist Kolton Lee, Suite 88 writes music that will have fans singing along in no time.

SPM speaks with lead singer and marketing senior, Mike Gunns, 21, about Suite 88’s growing fan base, their plans to tour next summer, and why they won’t stop ’til they make it big.

SPM’s Whitney Smith: So which band members are ASU students? Is finishing school important to you?
Mike Gunns (MG): I’m actually the only ASU student. Kolton is at Scottsdale Community College, and Jesse and Vick are just working. We’ve had the chance to tour because my manager also manages a band called Veins of Jenna, and they’re touring all the time. We’ve thought about going on tour with them, but I didn’t want to pull myself out of school. I’m here on scholarship and I didn’t want to lose that, so I felt that unless it was a golden opportunity, I’d just stay. But we are planning a tour for next summer right when I get out of school.

SPM: Are you hoping to hit any summer festivals?
MG: Yeah, we’re in an interesting situation because we’re a kind of band that doesn’t fit into indie music. The people that would see us with indie rock bands and indie festivals wouldn’t like us, because they’re looking for stuff that’s not mainstream. We have to really compete with these more mainstream bands.

SPM: Would you describe your sound as mainstream?
MG: Yeah, I feel like it’s a “top 40” type of material.

SPM: Are a lot of your fans ASU students, or do you reach a wider fan base?
MG: I’d say maybe half are. But actually the markets most receptive to us are high school girls and people that also listen to bands like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. But also because we do have a very classic-rock sound, we reach an older fan base as well. But I think that it’s a little harder for us to get ASU fans because it’s easier to think someone is cool when they’re older than you, as opposed to when you’re the same age and you think, “What do they have that I don’t?”

SPM: What’s your plan for the next few years?

Dude. Sweeeet. Suite 88. Photo by Peter Lazaravich.

Dude. Sweeeet. Suite 88 Lead Singer Mike Gunns. Photo by Peter Lazaravich.

MG: For me I think our focus should be primarily in Arizona — to be the biggest [rock] band in the Phoenix area so that when bands come into town on tour, they’ll want to play with us since they’ll know we’ll bring a crowd. You get to be paired up with some great bands that way, and they actually want to play with you.

SPM: What are you doing to get yourself onto the music scene in Phoenix?

MG: We need to do more, and try to reach kids through ASU and local high schools. We played at Camelback High School a while ago for the Edge 103.9’s “Campus Invasions,” and the kids got really into it.

They swarmed the stage and were asking for autographs, and the guys at the Edge actually told us that they’d been doing the Campus Invasions for a while and had never seen people ask the band for autographs before.

SPM: What would you say has been your biggest challenge as a band?
MG: The biggest challenge is that with our music, we really need a major record label support in order to get our music out to a mainstream level. So I think our end goal right now is to record for a major label. We set up a pretty good studio at my house, and when we recorded our new song “Rock Star” we did it all in our living room. But our level of recording is no less than any other [local] bands.

SPM: How did you write that song? What was the inspiration for it?

MG: What we said was that we really wanted to write a song that they would play in the clubs, a song that people would want to play at a party, and to really have that more rap and hip-hop attitude coming through. So that’s what “Rock Star” is. We’re kind of a party rock-band. There’s a lot of familiar faces at our shows, and we like to know people and have them come up and talk to us. We don’t want it to feel like they’re just watching us through a glass wall — we want it to be fun for everyone, a more ‘We’re all in this together’ feel.

Become a fan of Suite 88 on Facebook, snag their first self-titled album off iTunes, or listen to “10 shots, 10 minutes.”