Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

The Lucy Ring

RIYL

The Goastt, the Smiths, Television, REM, the Sinclairs, Bandalier, Social Green

Inception

San Diego , 2008

Influences

Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Television, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, the Clash, the Smiths, the Kinks, REM, the Who

Discography

Video(s)

Sponsored

The Lucy Ring was founded by two former members of the Sinclairs and two former members of the reggae group Social Green.

David Hyman and Scott Seader formed the Sinclairs in Brooklyn, New York in 2008. At the end of 2013, after hooking up with a San Diego drummer via Craigslist, the Sinclairs drove across the country and played a show the first night they arrived. They ended up liking San Diego so much that they stayed. “We had become a little spent on some of the superficiality and oversaturation of the New York music scene,” says David Hyman.

They band put together their own small recording studio in North County. In 2014, they were invited by Charlotte Muhl, girlfriend and musical partner of Sean Lennon, to record in upstate New York at Yoko Ono's private studio. “We met them through our good friend and musical mentor as well as the producer of our first EP, Dougie Bowne...we also attended Sean and Charlotte’s first show as the Goastt, so I guess our fates are just intertwined in that way. We’ve met Yoko a bunch but have never played with her.”

In 2016, the Sinclairs paired down to just Hyman and Seader. The duo recruited Sean Cox (Bandalier) and renamed themselves the Lucy Ring, later adding drummer Adam Chini, who played with Cox in Social Green.

Hyman told the Reader how the two bands ended up merging. "Cathryn Beeks played the Sinclairs on the Local Hour, and Sean Cox was tuned in because she was also playing his band Bandalier that night. He heard us and immediately got in touch and suggested our bands to do a show together. We played a small gig together, after which Sean told us that he could also play keyboards and wanted to play with us."

"Scott and I really liked him and, when we saw how good a musician he was, playing both guitar and keys and having a great voice, we were pretty blown away. He played maybe three or four gigs with us on keys in the Sinclairs and things just sort of organically began changing."

The new band name references a famous tale from World War 2. "Lucy was the code name used by Rudolph Roessler, who was a German citizen who spied on the Nazis. Still to this day, they don’t know how he did it, but he got Nazi secrets to the Soviets and the Allies and helped turn the war. A very mysterious guy."

Hyman says the Lucy Ring is too unlike their previous bands to keep their previous name. "We thought about bands like the Dead and the Who and Radiohead who went through name changes, so we went for it. It literally took us a month and probably 300 attempts to find a new name. You wouldn’t believe how many band names are already taken."

Their debut self-titled Lucy Ring EP was released in October 2016, promoted with a video for the track "Make It Rain" filmed in La Mission, Baja, Mexico. "My girlfriend, Paulina Jurzec, is a filmmaker and producer," says Hyman. "We had gone horseback riding in Baja for a day and met a great woman named Marty Harriman, who owns a horse ranch in La Mission, not far from the border. On the ride, I mentioned that I was a musician, and she told me I was riding the horse from the Beyonce and Jay-Z video, 'Bonnie and Clyde,' from way back. We had a big laugh about it, and I told her we needed a video for our record...she and Paulina basically then set up the whole thing."

Conceived as a pagan acid western, the video features stunts performed by real Mexican bull riders and vaqueros who put the band through their paces as they had to quickly acclimate to spending all day on horseback. Paying homage to both Jodorowsky’s El Topo and old spaghetti westerns, the video was directed by Tijuana filmmaker Luis Mercado, featuring a brief cameo from Shorty Rossi, the star of the reality TV show Pit Boss.

By 2019, the band had pared back down to a trio featuring Cox, Hyman, and Seader.

Sponsored

Upcoming Local Shows

No shows scheduled

Post a show View show history
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.