Sunnydale High

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a popular show created by Joss Whedon, is set in a town in California known as Sunnydale and is based around a lead character named Buffy and her friends as they navigate slaying demons, monsters and vampires, while also attending high school at Sunnydale High.

This is the show that the post-punk band Sunnydale High drew and continues to draw its inspiration from. Sunnydale High is a Laramie-based band with four members: Seneca Flowers strumming on lead guitar and singing, Will Plumb rocking the drums, Fran Thrax tickling the ivories on keyboard and Will Hebert slapping the bass.

The band was formed because of a depression lead singer and primary songwriter Flowers fell into one summer, leading him to binge-watch Buffy.

“So, basically, the idea of Buffy concepts which I drew upon for the band were, ‘Let’s have a band that the lyrics are personal, but they’re also Buffy-inspired,’” Flowers, who works at Laramie Live, said. “The idea is about personal challenges and life challenges, because life will constantly hand you, like, a pile of crap and will be constantly shoving it down your throat.”

Flowers said that you have two choices when given this “crap,” you can either give up or fight.

“The Sunnydale idea is it’s about fighting,” Flowers said. “You have to fight your personal demons, you have to fight your internal and external demons in order to survive and move forward.”

The songwriting for Sunnydale High is primarily done by Flowers and bass-player Hebert, however, once the basics are written it moves onto the whole band to contribute and collaborate.

“There’s a lot of collaboration that goes into our songs,” Plumb, a social studies teacher at Laramie High School and Sunnydale drummer for 2 years, said. “I wouldn’t say a lot, I would say all of the genesis for our songs comes from Seneca (Flowers) and Will (Hebert).”

This collaboration gives each band member an opportunity to contribute and put their own mark on a song.

“Everyone in the band has input,” Plumb said. “We all work them out pretty well together.”

An example of one of the songs written by Flowers is “Welcome to Sunnydale,” and it is about his time at UW as compared to the pilot episode of Buffy.

“Lyrically, I took it from the approach where I took something deeply personal, and, which was at the time I was going to UW and I had a lot of opportunities going on, and basically, what I was doing was getting trashed and going to bars and getting in trouble and jeopardizing everything I had,” Flowers said. “So, I decided to write a song as a challenge that would be reflective of the first episode of Buffy, but yet encapsulate all the crap I was going through.”

These personal songs with a connection to a popular TV show help the band reach out to its desired audience, the “people in the back.”

“We play for the geeks and the nerds and the rejects, we play for the people in the back of the room,” Flowers said. “We encourage them to come up front and they can be themselves.”

This desire to play to and for these people shows through some of the shows that the band has played. Sunnydale High has gotten the opportunity to play at the Denver Comic Con twice, a workout gym once and the WyColo lodge right on the Wyoming and Colorado border, however, the Comic Con show sticks out as one of Flowers’s favorites.

“We somehow got on one year, kind of by luck and then they welcomed us back the second year,” Flowers said.

Sunnydale High continues to play shows in the Laramie region, having played a show Jan. 26 in the Gardens of the Union, and it will be having a show in Fort Collins on Feb. 9, and possibly a quick California weekend tour that is yet to be announced and determined. The band will also be dropping its first EP sometime in March once it is fully mastered, and this will be the first real mix put together through a studio called The Blasting Room.

“One thing about this band is like, it is a people-first band. Like I care about everyone in the band as an individual and vise versa,” Flowers said. “We try to work together, it’s like a mini family.”

Seth Haack

shaack@uwyo.edu - UW Branding Iron

This weekend, thousands of freaks and geeks will gather in the Mile High City for the annual Denver Comic Con, including the Wyoming punk rock band Sunnydale High.
The Laramie based outfit will be performing on the 5280 Stage Saturday and Sunday. 2016 marks the second consecutive year the band has been invited play at the convention.
“We are all super stoked to be playing Denver Comic Con again. I think we offer such an odd unique flavor to music in general that people, especially the nerdy pop-culture people tend to relate to us well,” said guitarist and vocalist Seneca Flowers.
“We are just this silly band from southeast Wyoming. The coolest thing is seeing other local folks down there like Phil Mitotes of the Loft and local comic book artist Chad Blakely, who did our again poster this year.”
The band was chosen, in part, for their infatuation with the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
According to the Denver Comic Con website, “Sunnydale High hails from the windswept plains of Wyoming and are a post-punk outfit with emotional lyrics and instrumentation inspired by the Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The songs are relatable to those not indoctrinated into the Buffyverse, but will have enough of the deeper tones to make any Buffy fan smile.”
Sunnydale High will perform Saturday at 7:30 – 8:30 p.m and Sunday at 1 – 2 p.m. - 101.9 King FM

Cheyenne’s Sunnydale High took the stage to perform a set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-themed punk. I had missed part of their set at the Battle of Old Wyoming in Medicine Bow back in August, so it was awesome to get to experience the full thing.
I’m really hoping they put out a record soon, but they are definitely a band that is best enjoyed for their energetic live performance. I shot video, but again, editing it is pretty time intensive.
Drummer Will Plum and bassist Will Hebert were incredibly tight as a rhythm section, and front-man Seneca Flowers really sealed their set. A moment of inspiration struck, and Flowers grabbed a beer can and slid it across the neck of his guitar, producing some insane, snarling feedback. - Casper: Rock City

Cheyenne post-hardcore trio Sunnydale High (yes, that’s a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference), followed with a bright and somewhat poppy sound that I had a really hard time placing. If you’re in Laramie, you’ll have the opportunity to catch them again with Static Nebulus on Sept. 11. - Oil City News

Wyoming's Sunnydale High have released their debut EP, Teenage Necromance. The album, recorded at The Blasting Room, is available via now the group's Bandcamp page.

They have also released two videos from the album already, and you can check out the quirky "Welcome to Sunnydale," below. - Punk News