“If this is your first time seeing us, we are The Band Solstice. This is our hometown Knoxville,” lead singer Marty Gee said into the microphone.
It’s an hour into their set at The Layer, performing a pop-up show planned for the week of Aug. 18. The stage, shoved in the corner between two houses, platforms the band members as they rock out in the rain. The lights illuminate each performer, painting them different colors: blues and greens, reds and purples.
The Band Solstice consists of five Knoxville natives and two sets of childhood best friends. Gee, the singer and rhythm guitarist, has been friends with drummer Grayson Strader since 5th grade, while bassist Maddox Frazier and lead guitarist Jackson Frazier are brothers and best friends with Jacob Greene, the piano player.
Gee, Jackson Frazier and Greene graduated from UT in May of 2026, while Strader is a current online communications major and Maddox Frazier is taking a break from studying architecture. The groups met through their parents during the older kids’ freshman year of high school.
“We’re among that rare high school band thing where they continued playing,” Strader said.
Their first practice fell on the same day as the summer solstice in 2019, giving them their name.
“It’s funny when we tour and we play with a lot of bands around the country; a lot of bands are 20s, 30s, sometimes younger,” Strader said. “We tell them, ‘Yeah, we’re 21, 22 and we’ve been a band for 7 years’; they’re like, ‘what?’”
In the past two years, they’ve toured up and down the East Coast, venturing further from Knoxville each time. They go out with different bands, supporting the likes of current indie staples Winyah and Happy Landing.
They flew to Boise, Idaho, in March to play at Treefort Music Festival and performed at Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in June, marking their biggest festival to date. Rounding out the summer, they played at Carolina Bloom Music Festival in Charlotte, North Carolina on Aug. 23.
“We’re going out on tour with this band Cardinal Bloom,” Gee said. “We’re going to a couple of cities we’ve never been to before. We’re really excited to get out and meet a bunch of new people. We’re trying to plan some stuff for the rest of the year and get shows lined up for 2027.”
This tour takes them to Tallahassee, Florida, New Orleans, Louisiana, and three of Texas’ hotspot cities in San Antonio, Dallas and Austin. For Jackson Frazier, he’s most excited to get to play in and explore Texas with his bandmates, who he calls some of his best friends.
“Almost every night you’re playing a show, then staying there, then wake up, exploring the city, playing with your friends, then go get lunch or something, then do it again the next day,” Jackson Frazier said.
At every stop, they’re meeting new people, creating an ever-growing network of connections within the music industry. Their manager, Zach Jones with Triple 8 Management, slowly cultivated a relationship with the band, who chose to work with him based on his pure intentions and efforts.
Shortly after, they signed a record deal with TooFine Records for their self-titled first album “The Band Solstice,” which dropped March 13. Currently, they’re looking for a second record deal as they prepare for their second album release.
These connections are based on the band’s self-sufficiency to make things happen for themselves. Strader mentions that with each tour they do, they’re learning how to book smarter and build their own scene within new markets.
“(We realized) we just got to send it to another city if we want to tour,” Gee said. “We can’t wait for that opportunity to come.”
Their first show not in Knoxville took place in Raleigh, North Carolina, where they played for about five people. Looking back, Gee finds it amusing how excited they had been.
About a year after their first venture outwards, they got a breakthrough moment with the release of their July 2024 single “Mile Dive.”
“And it happened pretty quickly; in about 3 and a half hours we’d written and recorded an entire song, ‘Mile Dive,’ and we’d never thought we’d put it out,” Gee said. “It was a demo of a song, but we were like, ‘This is really good; we should just put this out and see what happens’ … we didn’t have any traction on streaming or anything like that. We put out that song, and it got 10 thousand streams in the first week. We were mind blown.”
The song got added to Spotify’s “Fresh Finds Indie” playlist, which today has just over a quarter million saves. That August, they set out on their first tour, going to both Carolinas, Georgia, and multiple cities across Tennessee. Called The Mile Dive Tour, they played with other bands at each stop.
“Every weekend we were out on the road and playing our music, and it was a mix of bars and really small venues,” Gee said. “And ‘Mile Dive’ was the start of the recognition for our music, and we just kept pushing through. We were still going to school, we were playing shows every weekend, recording.”
This past summer, they started working with Atlas Touring, which Gee describes as their “dream touring agency.”
“That was insane (that) they thought we were able to work for them, and we’re so beyond blessed and grateful for all of these things,” Gee said.
Last month, they wrapped up three weeks spent on the road supporting Happy Landing, giving them just over a month in Knoxville to rest and recover before setting out again in mid-October to support Cardinal Bloom.
“I saw a thing the other day where the goal is you should be excited to go to work and excited to come home,” Jackson Frazier said. “We’re just playing music and hanging out and seeing new places and seeing new things … I think it’s just as exciting to come home and see my family and see my friends.”
As Knoxville natives, the city has a special place in the band’s hearts. They’ve built themselves up here not just as musicians but as people, finding inspiration in the community that they grew up in.
“I really do like sometimes the hometown (shows), seeing my mom or my girlfriend or my friends in the audience, that just makes them more fun,” Jackson Frazier said.
After having a scheduled show fall through, the band decided to host a pop-up hometown show. The spontaneity of putting something together so quickly and playing a DIY event rather than a venue sparked excitement for them, with Gee saying how they wanted the show to be “the biggest DIY show that Knoxville’s ever seen.”
On Monday, the week of the show, they put a flyer up on Instagram, getting almost 500 shares within the first few days.
People flooded into the yard, bodies pushed together against the barricade as the crowd cheered and sang along to the music. String lights strung between the two houses lit up the audience that continued to grow throughout their set.
The backyard, dubbed the Layer, provides bands a spot to play while they’re in the awkward growth stage that’s too big for a bar yet not big enough for a venue.
“I want to say this about Knoxville: they don’t really have a midsize venue for bands to play,” Strader said. “You either have to play a bar or the Bijou Theater which is 750 capacity.”
Despite this, Strader explains how Knoxville is one of the best spots for bands to start due to the college town aspect and its proximity to other major spots.
“I think Knoxville … it’s one of the best touring spots because you’re 2-3 hours away from many cities,” Strader said.
For their second-to-last show while touring with Happy Landing, they co-headlined the Mill & Mine on Aug. 27. For The Band Solstice, this marked an important step in their career.
“I like, was brought to tears before we went out on stage,” Gee said. “We just huddle up, we pray before every show, and I was giving an ‘I’m proud of us’ kind of speech. It just meant so much to all of us that we’re able to be the common factor for so many of us in a room. I can’t even describe that feeling of bringing everyone together in a room… it’s very wholesome.”
The Mill & Mine is a downtown Knoxville venue with a standing room max capacity of 1,200.
“We played the Mill & Mine three times in one semester, which is like insane to me, I grew up going to shows there,” Strader said.
During the fall 2025 semester, they played with The Stews on Sept. 5, Happy Landing and WILLIS on Oct. 22, and Congress the Band on Nov. 19.
Six days after the release of the album in March, they held an album release party where they played through each of the songs at the Bijou Theater, nearly selling out the place.
“I normally don’t get nervous for any show, but for some reason that one felt, I don’t know, it was senior year and all my fraternity brothers who’d watched me build this thing from almost nothing (were there),” Gee said.
The band highlights how they’re able to bring together family, friends, and fans and give them something in common. Gee notes how his favorite part of going to concerts is the community aspect, how people from all walks of life come together for the music, and that getting to be that anchor for others is the “honor of a lifetime.”
“It was unreal and it kind of, I feel like I blacked out during the whole thing, that show was awesome,” Gee said. “That one will always have a special place in my heart for sure.”
The album tells the stories of the band as they navigate college, life and the people they’ve met and run into along the way. Strader explains how since they’ve been a band for so long, one of the main ways he’s seen them grow is through songwriting. For him, the feelings he had as a 16-year-old are vastly different from how he feels at 21, and his writing reflects that.
Now, they’re working on writing and recording a second album that continues to tell their story while delving into new sounds.
“I’m excited about album number two,” Maddox Frazier said. “It’s definitely our best stuff so far. It’s more into, like a grungier side; it’s a little bit heavier than our last album.”
The first album leaned into their indie roots with a hint of folk. This second one takes on a more rock side, drawing inspiration from bands such as Wunderhorse and Fontaines D.C. while still staying true to themselves and their sound.
“We’re working on writing some new stuff, we recorded a live session that included new demos,” Jackson Frazier said.
In late October, they plan to drop a cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” from the live session after teasing it on their social media. A few weeks after, the full live session EP will drop on streaming services and YouTube, but YouTube gets exclusive coverage of two new songs that will likely be included on their second album.
“Our new unreleased song, it’s called ‘You and Me,’ that one was sort of put together when we’re all in the same room,” Maddox Frazier said.
Each song has a different writing process. For some, like “You and Me” or “Mile Dive,” the entire band was together. Others were put together from voice memos of melodies or lyrics that one member would send to another to expand on.
“We’re sort of a collaborative band when it comes to songwriting,” Strader said. “So all members kind of piece together their ideas.”
Maddox Frazier expands on that, saying how it works that they all write differently because they bring different perspectives to the table.
“If I write a song and it’s a little out there and kind of weird or something, someone who’s more grounded with sort of more genre-conforming ideas sort of is like ‘alright, let’s simplify this,’” Maddox Frazier said.
Over the past seven years, they’ve learned how to work together by splitting up tasks and bouncing ideas off one another, a process that is continuously happening.
“With anything, time really does condition you into being more proficient and confident in your ability,” Jackson Frazier said.
Time and repetition have taught each of the members various life lessons.
“Patience is a huge (lesson learned),” Gee said. “Whether it’s like ‘waiting for your moment’ but not even like that, like small-scale patience, believing in each other and being there for your guys. ‘Cause it’s not always sunshine and rainbows with everything, cause there’s life decisions that need to be made.”
While they’re getting the chance to live out their dreams, having made it past the point lots of college bands call it quits, there’s sacrifices they’ve had to make in order to do so.
“I’ve learned that you gotta just keep going when you doubt, and to not look back and give up and understand that things are hard and you can do hard things,” Maddox Frazier said. “When you put your mind to something, even if it’s a far-out dream, it’s possible.”
Gee adds that it’s challenging at times trying to do something that can feel out of reach as college kids, but they’re determined to make the dream work.
“I’ve also learned how we can create our own opportunities,” Gee said. “No one’s ever going to just hand you a career. You’ve got to take those sacrifices and go full petal to the metal.”
With all of the chasing opportunities, Jackson Frazier realized that just focusing on how a show goes without factoring in other elements won’t be fulfilling if it means forgetting why they went in the first place.
“I think it’s really important to kind of stay grounded,” Jackson Frazier said. “For me that comes from friendships, I think my relationship with the Lord, having people around me that support me.”
As they continue to grow, both Frazier brothers emphasize the fact that it’s important to look back on where they were so as not to lose track of the process. Maddox Frazier explains how, as a band, every 3 to 4 months they look back to see where they were before.
“It’s easy to get lost in your progression of things and not realize you’re like doing it, and I think our time is coming and I’m really hopeful,” Gee said.
Seven years of being a band, two years of touring, and countless hours of dedication towards the craft have brought The Band Solstice to where they are today – not just their nearly 90,000 monthly listeners, but how they draw crowds that fill the room, their passion for the music and ability to take the challenging music industry in stride.
Each band member plays an invaluable role, and there’s an entire supporting cast who have contributed to their success that they hope to make proud.
“There have been so many people along the way who’ve helped us get to this point,” Gee said. “We’re just so grateful we’re so excited to just keep working our tails off, we really want this. We don’t just want it for ourselves, we want it for everyone.”
