Inside Nero Simon and the Sunsetters’ journey to musical authenticity
By Michael J. Pallerino
It was 2021, and Nero Simon was driving down the A1A, a scenic stretch of Florida highway that runs along the Atlantic Ocean. It was somewhere between Miami and Key West—a trip he had made a bunch of times—that a melody popped into his head. The Keys had always been an inspiration to Simon. He stood in awe of how the eclectic island paradise became the muse for iconic writers like Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Defined as much by its seminal history and wild characters, as it is the picturesque ocean scenescapes, the coral cay archipelago continues to be an artistic calling card.
And this time, it was calling Simon.
The melody that consumed the consciousness of his drive would become the song, “Treasure Chest,” the first in a collection of glimpses into Simon’s personal experiences of falling in love, finding escape, making bad decisions and starting all over again. Now, years into playing lead guitar and singing backup for a number of bands and musical projects around Atlanta, the former New Yorker had what it took to take his musical journey a step forward. “Up to that point, I had a notebook full of songs, an acoustic guitar and me. But I had little interest in being a solo singer-songwriter.”
Recording, mixing and mastering the songs was the easy part. Simon ended up playing nearly all the instruments and serving as producer. But to do justice to the songs that would become the album, “Treasure Chest,” he needed a band. Turning to the platform Bandmix, a digital matchmaking platform for musicians, he cast a net into Atlanta’s diverse musical talent pool. A few messages, a couple of demos and one pivotal phone call later, Simon found his first two bandmates: Marcus Durham on bass and Sam Ross on drums.
“What surprised me the most about Marcus and Sam is that when we got together, they came fully prepared,” Simon recalls. “They knew all the songs. In fact, I was probably the least prepared of any of us to play the songs. By the end of the session, we were already planning our next get together.”
Over time, the Sunsetters, the name they chose, grew in size. The group eventually added Steve Flores, guitar; Michael Hester, synths; Josh Vick, percussion; Jeff Gaines, saxophone; and MaryAnn Ooten, who shares vocals with Simon. Melding their respective talents together, the Sunsetters became a mirror into to the decades of music that Simon grew up on. The soul of the ’70s. The soft rock vibes of the California music scene, reminiscent of artists like Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, Santana, Pablo Cruise, among others.
“For a rock/folk musician, no period in history has offered so much great music [than the ’70s],” Simon says. “It might make me seem like a relic, but I don’t care to make music that sounds like the music of today. Too much of it sounds artificial. I don’t want to record using auto-tune or any of the tools that strip music of its soul. I can’t understand why recorded music today needs to sound perfect. There are lots of imperfections in many of the great songs from years past that we now think of as timeless. I think people appreciate that. We are humans making music the real way.”
Writing. Recording. Magic.
In 2024, Simon and the Sunsetters released their second album, “Waveland.” This year, they are following it up with “Pura Vida,” which will culminate with a release party at Eddie’s Attic on May 11. For this record, Simon booked Standard Electric in Decatur, which is run by up-and-coming recording phenom Damon Moon. The studio is run out of a building that used to be a church, adding to the Sunsetters’ aura.
“I sent a few of the recordings from the album to a friend of mine whose music opinion I trust and he told me, ‘You’ve really captured the sound of the world I was born into; it’s so warm and familiar and good spirited,'” Simon recalls of the exchange. “Hearing that meant a lot to me. Maybe that’s not necessarily what we are consciously going for, but if that’s the feeling people get when listening to the record then I am all about that.”
The songs on “Pura Vida” are a little more personal for Simon. They document a very difficult time in his life, including a painful divorce and the loss of a couple of loved ones. The situation essentially changed the way he approached writing music. Where he used to write songs that were more abstract, he started drilling down into subjects that were closer to his heart—stories about people and relationships, love and loss, hope and resilience. The music also captures his time with his kids and his new wife, Jodi.
“An old friend of mine who I played with some years back asked me where this songwriter was back when we had our band together. But they were the songs my younger self would have never been able to write. I needed to weather the storm to emerge as the songwriter I am today. My wife, for example, has helped see the beauty in keeping up the fight—the joy that is there when you reach the other side. I really admire songwriters who are disciplined enough to sit down to write songs every day, but that’s not me.”
For Simon, the process is when the song hits him, much like that drive down the A1A. It might be an inspiration during the day or one that wakes him at 3 a.m. to grab his guitar. Once the seed is planted, he’ll spend days with it, sometimes weeks until it transforms into something complete enough where he can record a demo and share it with the group. The song, “42 Bridges Away,” from the new album is an example of this. The song tells the story of a singer/songwriter from a music city who tires of the cutthroat scene and looks South. In this case, Key West. “There are 42 bridges between mainland Florida and Key West, and the song is representative of the journey of getting up and going somewhere else to find a new life and pursue dreams elsewhere away from it all.”
The somewhat autobiographical song is reminiscent of the path one of his songwriting heroes, Jimmy Buffett, may have taken. The road where after taking every bump and twisting turn, you come out on the other side standing tall. For Simon, the other side has been his time with the Sunsetters, where performing live with a band delivers the very essence of being a musician. Atlanta’s music scene, especially spots like Eddie’s Attic (they are playing for the first time for their new album release party), Napoleon’s, Wild Heaven Brewery, and others, have been good to Nero Simon and the Sunsetters. “You work hard to get that connection with the audience. And once you feel it kicking in, and the band and audience are grooving off that energy together, there’s nothing like it.”
