Spartanburg singer finds new band was the punch she needed all along


Getting it right by Wayne Bledsoe for the Knoxville News Sentinel

When Brandy Lindsey was putting together her band the Punch a little over a year ago, she knew when the mix was just right.

"With this band, everything they do makes me smile or laugh or cry or just react in some real way," says Lindsey in a telephone call from her home in Spartanburg, S.C.

The music that Brandy Lindsey and the Punch perform is a combination of Americana and pop with a little country and rhythm and blues blended in. It's like being in a honky-tonk or a greasy rock club that isn't embarrassed to serve good wine along with Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Lindsey says she got her start as a singer about 15 years ago when she and a friend decided to visit a Spartanburg band called Pineapple Drive.

"One of my friends was friends with the band and (they) were just hanging out and they were jamming," says Lindsey. "When they took a break and went upstairs my friend and I got on the microphone just to be silly. When they came back downstairs they handed me some lyrics and told me to sing along."

Suddenly, Lindsey, who had never sung more than in school music class, and never as a soloist, was a vocalist.

However, she eventually she got tired of just singing the band's songs and started writing some of her own.

"I just wanted something from a female perspective," she says. "Now that's the part I really enjoy - the songwriting."

Lindsey ended up marrying Eric Lindsey, the bass player with Pineapple Drive, and the two provided the core of a group that went through numerous name changes and lineups over the next several years.

"I think we first changed it to Meteor Macaroni," she says. "We had some really bad band names."

The Punch came together after Lindsey released a solo disc three years ago.

"I just took some songs that I had written that didn't really fit with the band," she says. "When it was finished I could see that was the direction I really wanted to go."

The previous efforts had been rock with a capital "R."

"I could be pouring my heart on on stage, but I'd be screaming it out," says Lindsey. "I didn't dislike it. It just wasn't me."

Lindsey's solo effort was far more subtle and concentrated more on the melody. She and Eric began looking for like-minded musicians.

The duo had found guitarist Scott Hart and drummer Kevin Heuer and (recently) keyboardist Wilson Warren. While the group's sound is not a recreation of any of the members' influences, it's a mixture of those influences.

"We love the old country music and Motown and pop - and by that I mean the Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann kind of pop, and the pop songs from the 1960s," says Lindsey.

In 2008, the group released the EP "Songs We Know."

She says that, rather than wait until the group could finish an entire album, she and the band wanted something to represent what the group sounds like immediately. But there's little doubt that the band will record a complete album in the future.

"Everybody has faith in the music," she says. "We are all older and we've all played in various bands through the years and we know it's always a pipe dream, but we have so much fun!"