Still Flyin'

Still Flyin' emerged less as a conventional rock band than as a loose collective, conceived by singer/songwriter Sean Rawls, already known from indie pop outfit Masters of the Hemisphere. Rawls assembled the project in San Francisco toward the end of 2004, having moved there from Athens, Georgia, the previous year. The catalyst was a composition he had penned during his time with Je Suis France, “Never Gonna Touch the Ground.” He gathered numerous acquaintances to rehearse the track, producing a fluid roster that often exceeded fifteen vocalists and instrumentalists for local performances. The group’s press biography enumerates core participants Yoshi Nakamoto (of the Aislers Set), Drew Cramer, Zach Moran, Gabe Saucedo (of Red Pony Clock, Rafter, and Half-Handed Cloud), Frank Jordan (of the Bright Lights), Mindy Schweitzer, Brian Girgus (of Track Star and Lowercase), Becky Barron (of the Bright Lights and Poundsign), Phil Horan (of Maserati), Lizeth Santos (of Red Pony Clock), Alicia Vanden Heuvel (of the Aisler Set and Poundsign), Marjan Esfandiari, Jaime Knight (of Dear Nora and Poundsign), and Bren Mead (of Masters of the Hemisphere), while live lineups have additionally featured Wyatt Cusick (of the Aislers Set and Track Star), Josephine Olausson (of Love Is All), Jens Lekman, Tara Shackell (of Architecture in Helsinki), Isobel Knowles (of Architecture in Helsinki), Mark Monnone (of the Lucksmiths), Richard Baluyut (of Versus), and Terese Nordstrom (of the Jens Lekman band).

In April 2005 the ensemble staged the Mind Zap Festival at McLaren Park in San Francisco and subsequently toured the West Coast in support of Architecture in Helsinki. Antenna Farm Records signed Still Flyin' and issued the debut EP, presented by the label as an “EJ” or “extended jam,” titled Time Wrinkle, on June 13, 2006. A follow-up EP, Za Cloud, appeared on April 24, 2007. The first full-length album, Never Gonna Touch the Ground, arrived in 2008 via the Ernest Jenning label and revealed expanded stylistic reach that incorporated traditional indie pop alongside reggae and jam-band inflections. By the 2010 EP A Party in Motion the lineup had contracted to a stable core anchored by Rawls, with reggae and Grateful Dead elements abandoned in favor of a synth-driven indie pop aesthetic marked by pronounced '80s pop and '70s German rock currents. The 2012 album On a Bedroom Wall preserved and honed this direction, yielding the band’s strongest work to date.