Lucy Ring's spaghetti western

“We changed our name to the Lucy Ring because Sean Cox started playing with us, and he was so good, he quickly began singing some lead,” says bassist/singer David Hyman of the band formerly known as the Sinclairs. “Over the next month or two, we realized that it was a very different project than it was before, although much of the material carries over.”

With Hyman and singer/guitarist Scott Seader the sole returning Sinclairs, Sean Cox soon quit Bandalier, switching from keys to guitar and vocals to join the newly christened Lucy Ring. In September, the trio was joined by drummer Adam Chini, with whom Cox previously played in the reggae group Social Green. “At this time last year, I never would have thought we’d have a totally new band, but life is funny like that...sometimes you don’t even know you’re missing a piece of the puzzle until it shows up and changes everything.”

Demos originally recorded by the Sinclairs at Yoko Ono’s studio with Charlotte Kemp Muhl (girlfriend and bandmate of Sean Lennon) were repurposed for the self-titled Lucy Ring EP released October 28 on Yellow Year Records. “Sean added some vocals and guitars to some of the tracks we had done with Charlotte, and we also started a few new tracks from scratch, with him singing lead, recorded at our rehearsal space in North County. So of the six tracks on our EP, Scott sings lead on four and Sean sings on two. Alan Sanderson at Pacific Beat in La Jolla mixed them and did a great job creating cohesion and matching what we had before with the new tracks.”

To promote the release, the band spent three days at the end of August shooting a short film in Baja for their cinematic track “Make It Rain.” Says Hyman, “We’re all big fans of spaghetti westerns and also trippy filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky [El Topo] and David Lynch, so we just brainstormed and came up with a very weird, loose storyline.”

The shoot found them doing stunts with Mexican bull-riders and vaqueros. “None of the band was that comfortable on horseback, so the Mexican cowboys had a good laugh watching us struggle not to fall off and die. There’s a scene where we’re all galloping on the beach where you can see me almost eat it.”

The Lucy Ring appears November 16 at the Belly Up.