Thee Sinseers are an R&B/soul outfit out of Los Angeles that could be a group of ’50s/’60s greats in disguise.
Everything from the beautiful voice of singer Joey Quiñones, to the instrumentals, to the backing vocals scream “vintage blissful soul”; even the production quality offers some subtle grain and classic reverb. Check out “It Was Only a Dream” and “Seems Like.”
On Friday, Feb. 24, the band will join The Altons for a show at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace. Thee Sinseers are frequent tour partners with The Altons, labelmates on Colemine Records; the bands even share a revolving cast of performers.
“We’ve been kind of the same circle of musicians for a little under 10 years,” Quiñones said during a recent phone interview. “It’s been the same guys playing with each other in different outfits here and there, traveling and filling in, so we’ve had this tight circle of musicians. It’s been pretty consistent for the past 10 years. We’re able to take on these gigs more frequently, because we have more personnel to fill in holes when we need to. Not only that, but we all just get along really well, and we enjoy making music together; we enjoy traveling together. It’s a good relationship that we have, and the labels take notice of that, and it helps us help them work together.”
Thee Sinseers are no stranger to the desert; they have performed at both The Alibi (with The Altons), and Chella in Indio (alongside Ed Maverick, Israel’s Arcade and Garb).
“We love going out there,” Quiñones said. “We get invited out there a lot, and a lot of fans and friends and family who are out there always try to get us out there to do events and stuff. The goal is always trying to get into Coachella at some point, for sure.”
Part of the band’s success is due to their intermingling of cultures. Thee Sinseers are a perfect fit alongside old-school Chicano love songs, beloved by so many across Southern California.
“The support behind the genre that we’ve been lucky to tap into has been really strong,” Quiñones said. “This is the first time I’ve been in a band where the fan base ranges from 3 months to 75 years old, and everybody can find something to enjoy about it.”
Quinones said most of the band members come from punk-rock or ska backgrounds.
“So we’re used to mosh pits and fights and sweaty kids jumping up and down—and you don’t see that at our shows,” Quiñones said. “You see people connecting. It’s not that they’re bored; they’re conversing, and they’re connecting. It’s a really cool thing to see the different people. We get a lot of the younger kids coming from Echo Park and Hollywood and stuff like that who are into the Daptone Records scene, and then you see all the cholos and cholas on their date nights, and then their grandparents and their kids. It’s cool to see all the different people connect.”
“We get a lot of the younger kids coming from Echo Park and Hollywood and stuff like that who are into the Daptone Records scene, and then you see all the cholos and cholas on their date nights, and then their grandparents and their kids.”
Joey Quiñones
The melding of cultures found in the band’s music is owed in part to Colemine Records.
“They (Colemine) gave me the freedom to kind of produce the records that I wanted to, and not have a limitation of a genre style, or a stamp of restrictions,” Quiñones said. “I’m excited to be able to have the support from the label like that to push us and have confidence in the music that we’re producing on our own. We manage ourselves; we travel and tour-manage ourselves, and we produce and write and record ourselves. We’re kind of a fully efficient little machine that’s getting their gears running, so it’s cool to have the support from a label to say, ‘Go ahead and go full steam.’”
The Sinseers have only a few singles streaming currently, but the band members are working hard on their debut full-length.
“Right before the year ended, we finished recording our first full-length album as Thee Sinseers, and it was kind of in sync with the same time we were doing my solo record as Joey Quiñones, so we’re going to have two records coming out this year, with lots of opportunities to travel and tour, and we’re really excited about that,” Quiñones said. “I think they were talking about a springtime, early summer kind of release. Of course, vinyl plants are backed up right now with all the major labels, so we’re going to be expecting the vinyls later in the year after that.”
The debut album has been a long time coming—because Thee Sinseers wanted to make sure they got it right.
“We recorded the album in late 2019, and, of course, that’s when everything kind of shut down, and there were plans for us to market it and travel and tour around it,” Quiñones said. “When live concerts shut down, it didn’t really make sense to put out a product that we couldn’t really promote … so we put it on the shelf. Throughout those two years, a lot more songs were written; a lot more ideas came out; and through performing a lot of those quarantine sessions for different shows, we realized that if we’re going to do this again, (we should) go back in fresh, and redo the stuff that we wanted to do. We wanted to make sure that we’re all happy with it and not rush it. I think Colemine has been really cool and patient with us, letting us take the time to get that right, because there are a lot of people expecting a lot of things.”
Thee Sinseers and The Altons will perform at 9:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 24, at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53688 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. The show was listed as sold out as of this posting. For more information, call 760-228-2222, or visit pappyandharriets.com.