SPILL FEATURE: KIDS, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU NAME YOUR BAND – A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE STOECKEL & JAMIE HOOVER OF THE SPONGETONES

KIDS, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU NAME YOUR BAND

A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE STOECKEL & JAMIE HOOVER OF THE SPONGETONES

The North Carolina-based band, The Spongetones formed in 1978, to perform at a one-off show. That was the intention, one show and the band was done. But life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans, and the band, who didn’t have a name for the first show, attracted an audience, and The Spongetones are still going strong some 47 years later. The band consists of Jamie Hoover (guitar), Steve Stoeckel (bass), Pat Walters (guitar) and Eric Willhelm (drums). Since 1978 the band has released several albums, EPs, and singles. In 2026, the band made the decision to release a series of singles, through Big Stir Records. The singles were “Lifetimeline”, “The Music At The Close”, “(I Really Need) To Kiss You” and “So Long.” They have just released their fifth single “Starting To Feel”).

Recently, I had the chance to speak with Jamie Hoover and Steve Stoeckel, via Zoom, about their new single and The Spongetones. And the first thing noted was that “Starting To Feel” is a very special song to the band. “That is the first song that didn’t have me, Jamie, or Pat. It is our drummer, Eric, who is just fabulous,” said Stoeckel. “Drummers have a reputation of just sitting back there and playing, and let me tell you, playing and singing at the same time, which Eric can do, is a thing, but we discovered he has a beautiful voice and then we discovered he writes songs. We had to drag it out of him. He had this musical idea, and Jamie wrote some lyrics.”

Both Stoeckel and Hoover point out that there is no formula for writing songs in The Spongetones. “Different ways for different songs,” agreed Hoover. “Sometimes Steve, or sometimes it is me. Sometimes he will do the music, and I will do the lyrics. Eric, so far, has contributed music and melody. Pat is the same way. He will come up with a music bed, and we will put lyrics to it. It doesn’t matter…we ask, ‘what do you think?’ and then we are ‘yeah, I like that’, and then lyrics will come. It can be one person writing both. In this band it really is a collaboration between all the members.”

The Spongetones did have an interesting beginning. Most bands are influenced by others and carry that influence throughout their career. For The Spongetones, they started out playing the music that influenced them. And the band, very quickly, developed their own distinct style and sound.

“We started out as a Beatles cover band,” said Stoeckel. “We got together that first night, and we wanted to play Beatles songs. But we don’t want to be categorized as a Beatles band, or even a 60’s band. So, we push ourselves.”

And one can never know what to expect from the band. The fact that they opted for releasing singles, rather than an album is interesting and a very bold move for the band. “It’s just more fun,” said Hoover. ‘It also keeps our crowd involved. By just putting them out there, and next year it will be an album. Why not release them as singles. They were meant to be singles. Big Stir encouraged us to do it. They don’t usually do this many singles in the advance of an album but they said, ‘let’s do it’. There will be an album next year.”

The music industry has changed, which does allow for some creative ways in which bands can get their music out into the world and to their fans. “There wasn’t an internet when we made our first album,” agreed Stoeckel. “Technology has enabled us to do this. All of us essentially have a multi-thousand studio in our home place, so we can do this without vaping to fly tapes around and final presses. It is quicker and much more streamlined. I love it. We are much more accessible and much more visible.”

“The way you have to do it now, is you have to get on TikTok, or different places, different things like that, and you will see people we are fans of doing their own stuff and doing their own thing, I like that part of it,” added Hoover. It is worth spending some time discussing the name of the band, The Spongetones. It was there long before Sponge Bob, and one may wonder about the origin of the name.

By the time the late 1970s came around, not many bands were playing Beatles music, but of course we grew up playing that. A bunch of people, including me, got together,” related Stoeckel. “We said, ‘we know how to do this stuff, and we are not kids anymore. Let’s get together for one night and play Beatles songs and a few others from the 1960s. Now that we can play, we can do it.’ So, in a small nightclub in Charlotte, maybe 25 or 30 people showed up, and they had a marquee out front. And it said ‘Tonight.’ We are only going to be playing for one night, so we wanted to think up a dumb name because we are never going to use it again. So, I remember looking at the marquee with the name Spongetones and laughing my butt off. No, it doesn’t sound weird to me now, but at the time…so we played for that one night. But people started showing up and showing up, and Jamie was a fan and he was at one of our gigs, and we needed a guitar player, so we said, ‘Do you want to play in the band?’ and he said, ‘Why Yes I would.” But that is the start of the name. Something goofy that nobody would ever have. We never worried there was another band named The Spongetones. We are proud of it. But it did start off as kind of a joke.”

“But it does make sense,” Hoover adds. “We definitely absorbed the music of the 1960s and the 1970s.”

“I don’t think we put that much thought into it,” laughed Stoeckel. “So, kids, be careful what you name your band.” They both laugh.

Because the band does not live in the same city, they do use technology for the recording of their music. “Jamie is the mothership,” said Stoeckel. “I will let him tell you how we record and the mixing. He has been producing and mixing The Spongetones our entire life.”

“We do the stuff separately. We will start off with a basic songwriting demo. Sometimes we will have a guide track.”

“We record everything separately, like I record my bass here,” added Stoeckel. “Eric will record his drums, and we will send everything to Jamie. He does the magic and makes everything sound good.”

“We get everything we want for the song,” said Hoover. “We talk about it and it is a lot of fun. It is not a miserable task at all.”

And here we are almost 50 years later, and the band is still having fun, creating vital, exciting and original music and most importantly, being The Spongetones.

“If you asked me 47 years ago if I thought we would still be here, I would have said ‘you’re crazy!’ It did not occur to me at the time. It started occurring to me when Jamie joined the band,” said Stoeckel. “I will tell you, we were doing covers and doing well around here in clubs. This guy joined the band, and the first thing he said was ‘we are going to make a record’. He had already been doing that, and he and Mark Williams, who were together as a producer and engineer, got us in the studio. We made our first single and then we went on to make our first album. Also, on that first album, Pat and Jamie had written the songs, and I was just the bass player, watching it all unfold in a studio with a producer and engineer. I was watching all this, and Jamie said, ‘you got to write a song’. I had never written a song ever. I went home that night and brought in the song the next day and we recorded it and I wanted to do this.”

“It was a damn fine song,” said Hoover.

And this is what The Spongetones do, they write and record damn fine songs. In fact, I would say brilliant songs.

Their new single, “Starting To Feel” is available through Big Stir Records, along with the other singles released by the band this year. This is a fun, wonderful band with a great deal of music for one to discover, unless you have already soaked up their music (I am sorry, I could not resist).

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