Getting to Know… Stone Sea | Interview 🎤

For the 65^th interview in the Getting to Know series, The Musical Hype chats with alternative rock collective, Stone Sea.

Question: How does an alternative rock band ‘rock the audience’s socks off?’ Well, according to Stone Sea, which originally formed in São Paulo, Brazil, they “…Takes them for a trip into our wild carousel of fat riffs.” That’s a distinct, quality response to the first question of the 65^th interview in the Getting to Know… series on The Musical Hype.  65 interviews in, really? My, my, my, how times flies when you’re getting the scoop on incredible musicians, sigh. Maintaining focus on the featured band, Stone Sea is comprised of three members: Elvis Suhadolnik Bonesso (lead vocals and guitar), Jonathan Parminter (bass and vocals), and Connor Middleton (drums). As we always seem to do on these interviews, we learn a lot about about musicians that we may not have been familiar with going in.  Without further ado, here is Getting to Know… Stone Sea: Interview #65.

Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype (Faulkner): Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with Stone Sea, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

Stone Sea: We try creating different musical approaches and atmospheres for every song we create. We’re pushing the boundaries of our creativity the same way we discover things about ourselves every day. It’s a learning process into something that’s constantly changing, so there will always be new things. We take them for a trip into our wild carousel of fat riffs.

Faulkner: Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your band form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?  

Stone Sea: Band was originally formed in São Paulo – Brazil in 2014 with other members. The vision of world conquering was always the same, but I suppose Jonathan and Connor just added more action into these visions.

Faulkner: Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Stone Sea: They’re still the same but much more organized and focused on doing things step by step with our feet on the ground. Is fairly easy to dream too much too often being a musician. We’re now being much more practical with things that had to be done. I would say we’re on the right track, things just stopped a little because of the Coronavirus, but what can we do, right? It’s the perfect excuse to stay more at home composing more anyway.

Faulkner: Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

Stone Sea: A lot of our songs have a certain influence on the Black Sabbath riffs and lyrics. But I think it’s the same for most of the Heavy Metal bands up to the date. If bands don’t get the influence straight by their source, they would definitely get influenced by someone that was influenced by them.

Faulkner: Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

Stone Sea: When we played at the festival Siege of Limerick – Ireland last year there was a guy screaming HEY at every compass of our song, “Prelude.” Literally, he was doing that in front of us for 4 minutes straight. We laughed so much watching the video later… it was deadly.

Faulkner: Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?  

Elvis of Stone Sea: My favorite song we recorded was “Dream Song.” I never took so much out of my subconscious mind to create a song or a music video. It’s a complete story. But to play live, “Mystify” is still one of my favorites.

Faulkner: Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about Stone Sea? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?  

Stone Sea: No, we’re fairly boring actually… You can see Elvis a few times on the TV Show Vikings and he was also on GOT. Connor makes the best burgers in town (nominated by the council of Food and Beverage) and Jonathan is a great harmonica player. He’s actually graduated from Harvard. And we all have really bad nicknames in our group chat for no reason at all.

Faulkner: Closing this thing out, what Stone Sea currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

Stone Sea: WE ARE… working on a new album that might be followed by a tour. Now, to make sure of this you gonna have to keep on looking our social media pages for more info. Stay safe, kids.

Faulkner: Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Photo Credits: Stone Sea, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype