The outset of the pandemic was bad for a lot of reasons. If you were a touring band it meant a loss of revenue and the roar of a crowd. But for Sub-Radio, it was a blessing broadcast on social media from their DC area basement.
While in lockdown, that's where they made a name for themselves livestreaming performances and doing their own renditions of popular music. They eventually went viral with their own version of "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne.
A few years and millions of views later, the pop-punk group released their first full-length album and played a few songs at NPR's headquarters.
The five-piece grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs and they've known each other for a long time.
"We did the cover band thing for a little while to make some money when we were in college," guitarist Matt Prodanovich said. "But it mostly started when we were just like young kids in high school, getting a little bit more experience playing shows in the area in D.C."
"Whitlow's, Clarendon Ballroom – We have been all over whatever sticky stage you would see a Taylor Swift Cover played on. We did that," adds lead singer Adam Bradley.
The pair met in a guitar class in high school.
"Matt was sort of collecting the members of the band like Thanos or Infinity stones or whatever. I'm not qualified to make that reference, but Matt … saw me play at a talent show for our guitar class in high school, and I played Hallelujah, like the Rufus Wainwright song, the Jeff Buckley song, and he was like, 'oh, this guy can sing,'" Bradley said.
It really isn't difficult to see why Prodanovich wanted him.
With vocals somewhere between Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump and an 80's ballad belter, Bradley is the energetic frontman any band could hope for.
The band was eventually complete when Bradley and Prodanovich joined up with drummer Michael Pereira, guitarist Kyle Cochran and John Fengya on the keys.
Together, the band is both a continuation of an early 2000s pop-punk tradition and a reinvention.
For fans of that phase of the genre, it doesn't get any bigger than bands like Panic! At The Disco or Fall Out Boy. And now with Sunrise City there's a direct line between those acts and Sub-Radio, thanks to Grammy-winning producer Neal Avron.
"I mean, me and Adam are probably the biggest fall out boy stans of all time, and he produced From Under the Cork Tree on," Prodanovich said.
Sub-Radio knew they wanted Avron to help them bring their debut to fruition, and despite their own managers' skepticism, they set out to get his attention with another viral social media video.
They asked their followers to share their plea 10,000 times. They delivered that and much more.
The band has technically had a full release before — self produced by member Kyle Cochran — but Bradley said the process was a bit haphazard.
The band would put together an instrumental demo and send it off to Bradley and Prodanovich who would write some lyrics.
Whatever they came up with, they would throw on an album.
And to be clear: plenty of people appreciated that work.
But, Bradley said the process has changed, especially when it comes to his writing.
"When left to my own devices, I'm kind of an arty lyricist and not a pop lyricist, and I really needed help with that. We want to be a commercial act, we want to have a broad appeal [and] we want to make pop songs," Bradley said.
Sub-Radio's broad appeal is undeniable. They have a combined internet following in the millions and tour to sold-out shows. And the band maintains the music is for everyone.
At the same time, looking out at the crowds they draw, it's also impossible to deny how much goodwill they've built up with the queer community specifically.
"I'm bisexual," said Bradely. "I talk about it on stage. I make sure that it's a part of the act. And I think that's important for a couple of reasons. I mean, my queerness has influenced the band in a lot of ways because it's attracted a lot of queer fans to the band. And that feedback loop has been really positive for us. We just have these big, beautiful queer crowds and it is really beautiful, safe and welcoming space that they create."
He added, "We've invited them there, but like they create that space. Anybody can come to the show, we just got lucky with these people."
Although queer people have always been a part of pop-punk and adjacent genres, the early 2000s in particular was a different time.
It wasn't as common to see a band so overtly welcoming to queer fans, let alone a lead singer so open with his own sexuality.
Not to mention that the genre was plagued with misogyny.
"I always felt like the Warped Tour sort of scene, the whole pop punk thing that we came up in, was incredibly masculine and incredibly misogynist," said Bradley. "And like, I think those are also things that we wanted to intentionally move away from, and so Sub-Radio is a band of five dudes, but I hope, that like our affect, the way that we come off on stage, the way that we are as people is like soft."
That soft and positive energy isn't something reserved for love songs or fun romps either. Sub-Radio's Sunrise City also has tracks like "Nothing's Broken."
It's a slow song about the heavy topics of depression and anxiety, but it doesn't have any less of a positive spin than anything else on the record.
"I wrote it as a sort of amalgamation of people in my head who I think could use like some – saying that they could use some perspective sounds judgmental – [but] what I'm saying is I think that some people need a song that says it's okay and that it's actually fine to feel a little broken while maintaining in the back of your head that that's not true," Bradley said.
So if Sunrise City were a real place. Where would it be? What would it be?
"I think it's just kind of a place, whether it's real or not, that you could go to whenever you need positivity. And if you need to come to a show for that, great. If you need to listen to the songs, great," Prodanovich said. "But it's somewhere that you can be … safe."
"I mean, the idea of Sunrise City to me is it's a place where the sun is always coming up. The day is just starting whenever you're there. And the slate is clean. And whatever happened yesterday is not that big a deal because it's a new day," Bradley said.
The 15 tracks on Sub-Radio's first full length album are a lot like a blueprint for a place we'd all like to live in, even for just a little while.
And you can go there just by listening to Sunrise City, which is out now.
This live performance chat audio was engineered by Andie Huether and Josephine Nyounai.
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