Rock trio Sitting on Stacy to perform at KAABOO

Last fall, Jeff Demorest saw the band the Foo Fighters play at the Cal Jam music festival in San Bernardino. Just about a year later, Demorest’s band, Sitting on Stacy, will play on the same bill as the Grammy award-winning outfit.

Sitting on Stacy — a Ventura-bred rock trio with Demorest on drums, Kyle Hart on bass and Hoyt Yeatman on vocals and guitar — won this year’s first Discovery Tour stop for the upcoming KAABOO Music Festival in Del Mar.

“We’re just unbelievably excited to have the opportunity, especially playing by the beach in Del Mar,” said Demorest, adding he’s looking forward to sharing a bill with groups such as the Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World and Incubus on KAABOO’s first day on Sept. 14.

Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters, Katy Perry and Imagine Dragons are set to perform on the three-day festival lineup that takes place from Sept. 14 to Sept. 16 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

Sitting on Stacy — whose members recently moved to La Mesa to attend college — competed against three other bands at the Moonshine Beach bar on June 24 in the Discovery Tour competition. Because of the band members’ young ages — each of them is 19 or 20 — their usual fanbase was unable to attend because they were underage and did not meet the bar’s 21 and over age requirement, Demorest said.

Although the group’s blend of rock, ska and reggae genres wasn’t the country bar’s typical musical style, Demorest said the audience — which was line-dancing before his band’s set — still voted for Sitting on Stacy to play KAABOO over the other competitors.

“It was a positive reaction from a different crowd,” Demorest said. “Winning that night was so surreal.”

Since its inception four years ago, Sitting on Stacy has opened for big-name artists like Smashmouth, Unwritten Law and Puddle of Mudd, all of which have more alternative styles than the beach-vibed trio.

Despite playing tunes that are inspired by groups like Sublime and Slightly Stoopid, Hart said Sitting on Stacy has no problem energizing crowds who gravitate toward other musical genres.

“We don’t want to define our music into a certain genre,” Hart said. “I think that any band we open with, as long as we bring the energy, it’s easy for people to get into it.”

The members of Sitting on Stacy all met while attending an after-school music program while in high school in Ventura and relocated to San Diego in La Mesa a few years ago for the players to attend college.

Because of their fairly young ages, Yeatman said he believes that presents an advantage in that they have more time to grow in their craft.

“It gives us time to experiment with a lot of different genres and ideas,” he said. “We don’t have to take anything too seriously yet because we have a fanbase but it’s not worldwide. We can try new things, see how people like it and see how we like it. It gives us a lot of flexibility.”

Sitting on Stacy, which released its first full-length album last year, offers its sophomore album, a four-song EP, beginning June 29 on platforms like Spotify, YouTube and CD Baby.

For more information, visit www.sittingonstacy.com.