Possibly the world’s leading alt-indie acoustic psych-folk trio singing about life, love, loss, death, the meaning of life and various ‘weird stuff’, The Sunny Smiles Three are drums, bass and acoustic guitar recorded mainly live in the studio with occasional splattered bits of assorted ‘other stuff’. With singing on top. And occasionally surrounded by a train set. The Sunny Smiles Three describe themselves as “Vaguely acoustic music for the vaguely thinking person”.
Members:
John Parkes (singing, acoustic and electric guitar, misc. sounds) - fronted a number of groups much beloved by night-time Radio One DJs (and more latterly 6Music) including the late, legendary JOHN PEEL who played something from every record John made over a period of 14 years. Bands include indie guitar heroes THE CHORUS, GREENHOUSE, FUZZBIRD, FOLLOW THE MOTHS, THE SINISTER CLEANERS and WHOLE SKY MONITOR.
Alaric Lewis (bass guitar) – played bass guitar for various bands including BREAKING THE ILLUSION and more recently / currently the CYANIDE PILLS and SUZY BLU, though is mostly off on tour with various bands working as a backline technician.
Simon Smith (drums and percussion) – best known as drummer in THE WEDDING PRESENT for their ‘major label years’ as well as being in THE SINISTER CLEANERS, the first line-up of the UKRAINIANS followed by CHA CHA COHEN and some playing with BEACHBUGGY, GROOP DOGDRILL and others. Simon is also mostly off on tour, in his case working as a tour manager.
History:
The band formed (in Leeds, UK) around 2018 though due to conflicting schedules only get to meet up for a few days ‘here and there’. The name is from the 1960s / 1970s fundraising scheme ‘Sunny Smiles’ whereby small black and white pictures of orphaned children were torn out of a booklet and sold by school children to other school children for money to be given to charity. Got that?
Recorded by Neil Ferguson (renowned alt-folk producer and chief engineer / member of Chumbawamba), the band released a 4-track EP ‘Loveland’ in 2019, the first album ‘Fireman Spaceman Mermaid’ followed in 2020.
Since then a number of short recording sessions have been possible and 2025 finally brings the release of 2 singles and the ‘Some Everyday Hazards’ album. This has been recorded by Will Jackson known for recording (among many others) The Kaiser Chiefs, Pigeon Detectives, The Music, Embrace and er, The Smurfs.
Lyrical subject matter ranges from plague doctors, toys, imaginary friends and the Ark of the Covenant to love and longings, strange happenings, philosophical musings and obliquely, Little Richard. As well as the music the band have lo-fi (and some slightly higher fi) videos made by Hoam Maid Films of Leeds.
These often involve cut-outs of the band, broken toys and small fires on kitchen tables. These appear on distributor The Orchard’s YouTube channel ‘Radial by The Orchard’. In most cases there’s a video for every track.
Influences are almost impossible to pin down but there’s surely some singer / songwriter (who’s not going to say Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young?) , a bit of indie / alternative guitar rock, a chunk of alt-Americana / country (if Wilco or Bill Callahan are that) and a bit of English 1960s psychedelic rock blending into early 70s prog - at the listenable rather than the 13/ time signature end of things.
The Sunny Smiles Three record mainly live though bits of tongue drum, various percussion things, electric guitar and bits and pieces will often be added