Post Sex Nachos- As Good As It Sounds

It was about 28 degrees when I arrived at the house Post Sex Nachos uses to practice. It was a smaller house past the west side of University of Missouri’s campus. Cold enough where I could see my breath in front of me, I went to the front door, knocked, and no one answered. I texted Hunter, the band’s drummer, and he told me to come out back to the back of the house. I introduced myself as all the band members unloaded instruments and equipment from their cars and followed them into a cold, unheated basement.

As soon as they got in, all four of the band members began to set up their equipment while at the same time bantering with one another. They maneuvered around a beer pong table, empty solo cups and empty bottles of whiskey and vodka. A stop sign hung on the wall, dimly lit from a couple of bare bulbs on the two sides of the room. A beat-up tan couch slumped on the other side of the room.

Hunter set up his drums. “I will castrate you!” someone said.

Sammy set up his microphone and plugged in his guitar. “Yo, are you planning on going to the party at Chi O tonight?”

Mitch unpacked his guitar, plugged it in, and strummed a few chords. *A fresh bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey gets cracked open and passed around.*

Chase smiled with a goofy grin at the chaos happening around him as he set up his bass.

These moments right here encapsulate Post Sex Nachos. They’re a group of fun-loving, college guys who all come together to make good music. They’re charismatic, dramatic, and amazing showmen. They’re friendly, approachable, but always their own goofy selves. Throughout the night I heard bits of conversation with random accents applied to them, most often British, as well as plenty of laughs and jabs at other members. Post Sex Nachos is just fun. But they’re also damn good musicians.

Chase, Hunter and Sammy are all juniors at Mizzou. They all rushed the same fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, and all got in. Sammy sent a message in the big group chat that they had asking if anyone knew how to play drums. Hunter hadn’t played drums since middle school but decided that it was college and he needed to meet new people, so he said he’d play. Sammy and Hunter started playing together, and then Chase shortly joined.

Mitch, who is a sophomore, knew Sammy since high school. They both lived in St. Louis, played at a place called The Wolf and constantly saw each other’s bands at different gigs. They had a lot of mutual friends and followed each other on Instagram. One day, the two were at the same party and decided to jam together. From that point on, they got to be good friends, and Mitch came to MU just a year after Sammy.

By the time Mitch arrived, Post Sex Nachos had already been created and was looking for a keyboardist. They needed keys for a song called “Coffee,” and Mitch decided to hop in and join them. Ironically, Mitch hasn’t played keyboard for the band since April. “Coffee,” however, is now the groups most popular song, recently surpassing over 7,000 streams on Spotify and is getting close to 8,000.

There’s a reason for those streams too. Coffee, undoubtedly, is a great song. Sammy has a vulnerable, soft touch to his voice to accompany the emotional lyrics, and he isn’t afraid to get into some higher notes. The instrumental is simple at the start, with constant, light keys in the background and an occasional guitar, all along a soft drumline. It picks up, and then hits the guitar solo that is long enough to stand out, but short enough that the listener doesn’t get bored. Sammy then comes back in again, and then there’s a second, more intense solo to drive up the energy even more. It’s a song about love, but it’s not the standard, college lyrics that you would expect. The lyrics are well written, catchy and touching. Sammy sings about wanting to share a coffee with someone else, someone that he’s falling in love with. It’s not basic your basic love song, as he even talks about not liking love, but how this person is hard to resist.

The group’s music is a lot like this. Soft rock with emotional lyrics, but with a variety of influences. Some songs like “Your Body” have a lot of R&B influence. A simple drumline accompanies spacy synths and Sammy’s voice has an echo effect applied to it. There are some group background vocals, saying “ahhhhhhh” in a low tone as a low guitar strums along. It’s a song that for sections, sounds like it could be right off of a 90s R&B love-tape. Of course, there has to be a guitar solo at the end, which ties it right into the groups style.

“Hollow,” on the other hand, has a lot of funky, jazzy elements. One guitar in the song has a twangy, street feel, while the other is a low and muted without a lot of range. The song is driven by Hunter’s drums, adding the punches and main melody for the rest of the instruments to work around.

“Vows” is soft and carries an alternative sound. Sammy’s voice is gentle and accompanied by a minimalist instrumental, with low volume guitars. In this song, his voice has a bit of angst and edge to it. At points, the drums and guitars pick up, but most of the song is pretty bare, apart from a solo at the end.

“Self Best” is rock focused with heavy drums and guitar. Sammy’s voice is less of the focus of this song, and sometimes blends right in with the other instruments. The group has a consistent basis of their sound, but they let their influences spread far and wide, allowing them to be extremely versatile in their music.

All of the members explained that a lot of the group’s unique sound has to do with Mitch.

“I’d like to preface this comment by saying fuck you Mitch, you suck, but Mitch has definitely added that [technical] aspect to it.” Hunter joked. “Our songs used to be very simple, four measures and a chorus, but they’ve become a lot more technically advanced which allowed us to grow as a band. But also fuck you, you suck.”

“I know.” Mitch replied.

So, at this point, you’re probably wondering where the band name Post Sex Nachos comes from. One night before the guys had a band name, they were all hanging out.

“Someone said something along the lines of ‘what’s better than this’ and someone said, ‘oh well sex.’” Hunter said. “And then someone else was like ‘no, no, no, nachos after sex would be better than that.’ And then someone else said ‘so like post-sex nachos?’”

That right there was the lightbulb.

“Me, Sammy, and Chase, I remember the moment looking at each other and being like alright, Post Sex Nachos it is.”

The band members have finished setting up in the basement now. Mitch starts ripping some chords on the guitar, the sound echoing off the concrete of the walls around us and filling up the room. I could feel every note in my chest. Everyone then launched into some improv, playing off each other’s energy with every note, making something out of nothing.

“I’m really vibing with this right here, let’s keep going five minutes and see where this takes us,” Sammy said.

Later, I learned that I had just witnessed part of Post Sex Nachos music creation process. A lot of it comes from improv and members of the band bringing something to try out. If it works, they refine it, and if it doesn’t, they just scrap the idea. Hunter explained that the band is at the point where each new song they make is more technical than their last, largely as a result of the band’s growth and experience.

After trying out some new ideas that never seemed to fully flourish, the group began to launch into a set of songs. They were trying to nail down what they should play for their upcoming Saturday night show. In between songs, Jack Daniels was passed around the room, oftentimes via games.

Sammy reached for the bottle.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Mitch said, stopping him. “What’s Andrew’s major?”

“Uh, documentary journalism?” asked Sammy.

“Yeah I think that’s it.” Mitch said looking at me for approval, laughing and handing the bottle to Sammy.

This sort of comedy and comradery is key to the group. Chase gives the most animated, larger than life grins as he rocks out on the bass, staring looking around and finding someone’s eyes or even my camera to lock onto. Every time they play, every group member feeds off the other. They’ll lock eyes, smile, maybe laugh and then play. Their music is so cohesive and full because every single group member is on the same page as one another, and every group member is just as energized as each other. This is part of the reason the band loves live shows.

“One [reason we like live shows]: energy,” said Mitch. “Two: the fact that I haven’t been in this band long and we play songs people already know the words to. We release an EP, and people learn the words pretty fast. So, when we’re on stage and people are shouting the words back at us… Jesus Christ dude.”

Live shows are largely what keeps the group going. It’s the affirmation they need that all their work isn’t going to waste.

“For a lot of musicians, there’s that concept of shouting into the void,” Chase said. “You put your heart and soul into a concept that you create and then no one listens to it. It’s nice to know that there are people, even if it’s just our friends, that genuinely enjoy at least one or two songs that we have. That’s cool.”

Post Sex Nachos has built their own following. The group has 414 Instagram followers, 1,559 monthly listeners on Spotify and has played everywhere from Café Berlin to FYGU Fest, where they won $600 as the top student band. FYGU Fest was a music festival sponsored by Tik Tok and Amazon Prime held on MU’s campus. The headliners included popular artist like Trippie Redd and Dani Leigh, but for the very start of the show, they let four student bands compete for a $600 grand prize. It was the group’s first gig of the year, and they won.

Getting to that prize money, however, is a whole story in itself. When they went to redeem their prize, they found that there was only $100 there. Chase got into an email battle with the FYGU people, claiming that the group didn’t have the money, but FYGU sent receipts back showing that they had paid the band. The whole time, the email with all the money was sitting in Chase’s spam folder, and he realized it was there when he checked it one day. He was quick to apologize to the FYGU people.

They used that money to surprise Hunter with a new drum set. The group convinced him that FYGU had went bankrupt and was unable to pay them. While the rest of the group was busy ordering Hunter’s drums, Hunter was planning on creating a whole two-minute “Fuck FYGU” video detailing the situation. He only found out that the group actually had the money the day his drum set arrived.

“I called him and was like ‘Yeah, uh, we lied, come pick up your drum set,” said Sammy.

“Bad drummer and a bad drum set don’t mix,” joked Chase. Hunter got his old drums or $250 off Facebook marketplace when the group first started, and he had to drive an hour and a half to pick them up. This time around, the group had them ready as soon as he pulled up to the apartment.

The group’s success in the contest was exactly the validation members of the group like Mitch and Sammy needed.

“We, in this contest, beat out two hip-hop musicians and a singer songwriter. These hip-hop musicians make music that people are currently listening to, and we gave an energy that was beyond that. That was something where I was like ‘oh shit, the professionals in this industry, our music is something they’re into.’”

Mitch and Sammy both came to MU as music majors but quickly found that “the music school here is not suited for people who want to actually create music in a world setting.” They both felt like the people who join the music program are good at creating music in a box. But they want to do “shit that befuddles people,” music that’s more experimental and different, without unnecessary borders and restrictions.

After watching them for a while, everyone’s role in the band just seemed to make sense. It fit. Sammy has a softer and quieter aura about him that makes him the perfect emotional vocalist. Chase’s crazy faces and bouncing up and down on bass is exactly the energy the group needs. Hunter’s is cool and collected but breaks out bits of swagger when playing the drums. And Mitch is a healthy medium of everyone in the room. He was the perfect last puzzle piece to put Post Sex Nachos together.

The groups cohesion, however, can sometimes come back to hurt them. Because they let every single group member shine, with guitar solos coming up frequently in their music, they sometimes don’t hold the same allure over recording that they do in person. It’s fun to watch Chase and Mitch rip it up on the bass and guitar while Hunter slices up the drums. When you see the group live, the drawn-out solos and other non-vocal bits have a chance to truly shine. It makes sense. But it isn’t the same experience when you’re streaming. There’s a whole element that is lost, and without vocals, the instruments don’t feel the same that they do live. Sammy’s voice is one of the standout parts of Post Sex Nachos, but they don’t seem to utilize it enough. The group is constantly improving though, and a lot of their new music makes strides to remedy this problem.

So, what’s next for Post Sex Nachos?

“We’re probably all going to die soon,” said Sammy.

“Yeah I think we’re all actually going to cease to exist,” added Mitch.

“Are you familiar with the song Hallelujah?” asked Chase. I nodded in response. “So that song only got big because the guy that covered it, Jeff Buckley, died. It wasn’t big yet, but that was one of his only songs out. Anyways, we figured our best chance at success is all dying.”

If music doesn’t work out, I think the group might be able to pursue a career in comedy.