In the summer of 2001, if you turned on the radio just long enough to catch a few power chords and some Beatles-worthy harmonies, you might have heard it: a song called \u201cHello\u201d by a band out of Fort Worth with a name you couldn\u2019t forget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sugarbomb.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They had the hooks, the looks, and \u2014 for a brief, blinding moment \u2014 the full weight of RCA Records behind them. A single climbing the charts. An album recorded at Sunset Sound. A national tour with Cheap Trick. A music video in the works. A million-dollar publishing deal in the pipeline. A release party planned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then, fifteen days before\u00a0Bully, their major-label debut, was set to drop, the world changed on 9\/11.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRCA pulled the video budget. Pulled the touring budget. They were thinking about dropping the band,\u201d says Sugarbomb drummer Michael Harville, who now splits his time between Fort Worth and Tokyo. \u201cNext thing you know, we\u2019d lost our record deal, and I\u2019m sleeping on my buddy\u2019s couch, going, \u2018What happened?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sugarbomb was never just a blip in the scene. They were a supernova \u2014 five gifted musicians who fused prog-style grandeur with a wink of pop-punk irreverence and the kind of heady ambition that could only come from growing up on Pink Floyd’s\u00a0The Wall\u00a0and The Beatles’\u00a0White Album. The band was formed in March of 1998, and by the time RCA came knocking, they were already building buzz with their indie debut,\u00a0Tastes Like Sugar, on Fort Worth\u2013based Rainmaker Records.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They named themselves, Michael says, to reflect their duality: \u201cThe sweetness of sugar and the chaos of a bomb. That fits our music and our personalities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fronted by keyboardist-vocalist Les Farrington, Sugarbomb\u2019s lineup included guitarist Daniel Harville (Michael\u2019s younger brother), bassist Kelly Riley, guitarist Greg Bagby, and Michael on drums. All five could sing \u2014 and did \u2014 trading harmonies like a barbershop quintet that had stumbled into a pop-music dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The band recorded\u00a0Bully\u00a0in Los Angeles, working with the same producers and A&R team that helped break acts like Vertical Horizon and SR-71. \u201cRCA spent a million and a half dollars on that record,\u201d Michael says of Bully. \u201cWe thought we were on the verge.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But 9\/11 sent shockwaves through the entire music industry. Budgets froze. Tours halted. Artists were dropped.\u00a0Bully hit the shelves on September 26, 2001, to critical praise but little marketing muscle. Sugarbomb, like so many others, was left stranded in the wreckage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, they made a mark. \u201cHello\u201d ended up on the\u00a0\u201cOrange County\u201d\u00a0soundtrack alongside Foo Fighters and The Offspring. The band was invited to the film\u2019s premiere at Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. \u201cThey gave us a megaphone,\u201d Michael remembers. \u201cI said, \u2018Y\u2019all don\u2019t know who we are, but we\u2019re a band from Fort Worth, Texas, and we\u2019ve got a song in this movie.\u2019 That was a moment. We felt like nothing could stop us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But after a flirtation with Lava\/Atlantic and one more shot at a third album that fizzled, Sugarbomb quietly dissolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the Harville brothers didn\u2019t stay out of the spotlight for long.<\/p>\n
For nearly twenty years, Michael and Daniel have been mainstays of the Dallas\u2013Fort Worth music scene \u2014 even if you haven\u2019t always known it was them. Michael fronts The Windbreakers as a smooth-sailing captain belting Christopher Cross tunes, struts through disco sets in Le Freak, channels geek chic in The Spazmatics, and rewinds the ’80s in The M-80s. \u201cWe do about a hundred shows a year,\u201d he says. \u201cI perform for thousands of people every week.\u201d Daniel\u2019s been right there with him the whole way.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the dream Michael originally\u00a0had in 2001 \u2014 it\u2019s better, in some ways. It\u2019s steady. It\u2019s creative. And most importantly, it pays the bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But music\u00a0wasn\u2019t the only detour Michael took. In 2008, he\u00a0moved to Japan, drawn by a love for the culture and a chance to launch a new version of the themed-band model abroad. He speaks fluent Japanese. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t have the infrastructure we have here,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I ended up bartending. Then, managing a hostess club. It was wild.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That odd chapter in Tokyo drew interest from\u00a0The Wall Street Journal\u00a0and\u00a0The Times of London. \u201cThey were just like, \u2018How did you wind up here doing this crazy stuff?\u2019\u201d The stories never ran, but the experience stuck with him. Today, he and his wife \u2014 who\u2019s originally from Japan \u2014 own a condo in Nakameguro.\u201cEventually, I\u2019d like to retire there,\u201d he says. \u201cThe food is cheap, the trains are clean, and you don\u2019t need a car.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michael also runs a land development business on the side, flips houses when he\u2019s not on stage, and jokes that it keeps him \u201cfrom driving his wife crazy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But for all the roads he\u2019s traveled \u2014 literal and musical \u2014 Sugarbomb still lingers. In late-night conversations. In hazy memories. In grainy YouTube uploads and old fan sites that haven\u2019t been updated in years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And lately, there\u2019s been talk. Real talk. About a reunion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nothing\u2019s confirmed yet. No dates. No contracts. But the bandmates are talking again. Ideas are floating. Possibilities are being weighed. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel validated. I guess that\u2019s a big thing,\u201d Michael says about being in the music business. \u201cI think for entertainers or artists, you want people to recognize you as a real artist. Everybody suffers from impostor syndrome\u2026 but I\u2019ve had a career. I still have one. And I\u2019m happy with where it\u2019s taken me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the summer of 2001, if you turned on the radio just long enough to catch a few…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,2677,12043,12732,7371,7372,11878,975,13813,10763,5921,358,7453,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-29961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-artists","10":"tag-arts-and-culture","11":"tag-bands","12":"tag-fort-worth","13":"tag-fortworth","14":"tag-live-music","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-people-of-influence","17":"tag-stephen-montoya","18":"tag-style","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-top-story","21":"tag-tx","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114778260360078647","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}