Mike Parrish & Sammy Hundley are the front guys & driving force behind the Parrish-Hundley Band. Lifelong friends, since childhood, they've always shared a passion for music and music has ALWAYS been the strongest influence in both their lives. Mike often says, "You give me the title of a song & the name of the artist & I'll tell you where I was & what I was doing when I first heard it. Most Elvis fans can tell you where they were when the King passed away but music has always been a life marker for me & it marks everything. There's no doubt it always will."
Emerging from the pump jack speckled prairies & piney woods along with the Gulf breezes of Southeast Texas, Mike Parrish & Sammy Hundley bring a new sound to contemporary country, country rock and country blues. For those of you who have no clue what a pump jack is, well, a pump jack is like a huge black see-saw that pumps up and down while pumping oil from an oil well and into a storage tank. Practically every one has seen a pump jack in person or, at the very least, in some movie. Some of these pump jacks even forged the sound that mimicked an off-beat Tom drum which was a sound that drifted into their windows upon the Summer night air mixed with the scent of honeysuckle & fresh cut grass as they slept in their perspective homes just a quarter mile apart. Mike & Sammy were living in the Community of Hull, often referred to as
Hull-Daisetta, in Liberty County, completely off the beaten path. In fact, it it weren't for Farm to Market Roads 770 & 834, there wouldn't even be a beaten path to lead anybody there. 99.9% of the entire planet had never even heard of Hull or Daisetta, Texas, at least not until May 7, 2008 when Daisetta had the world's attention with the occurrence of the largest sinkhole in the United States formed within the corporate limits Daisetta & became affectionately known as "Sinkhole De Mayo."
As young boys, it was early to bed & early to rise & a time when the world was a brand new magical place with much to be learned & much to explore. There were basically three channels on television with loads of cool stuff to watch in those days unlike todays satellite television which is comprised of hundreds of channels & virtually NOTHING worth watching most of the time. There were no social networks, computers, cell phones, iPads, iPods, iTunes, voicemail, email, text messaging or satellite radio but there was FM Radio. It was their radios that pulled the sounds of the most classic rock and country bands ever formed, from a station based in Houston (an hour to the west), & funneled right into the bedrooms & family vehicles of the Parrish-Hundley Duo. As odd as it may sound, Hull may have just as well been located on the moon, if it weren't for the beautiful countryside and an actual atmosphere, because even the astronauts of the Apollo missions got their radio from Houston just as Sammy & Mike did.
Sammy & Mike soaked in all the amazing sounds from the airwaves and swore that, when they were grown, they'd form a rock & roll band & they'd name this band "Black Diamond." That title had nothing to do with black gold (oil) or diamond mines, diamonds being none existent in that area, but it had everything to do with their favorite group, "The hottest band in the world! KISS!" We've explained what a pump jack is so we'll go on to tell you that these were also the days of 33 1/3 vinyl records & 8-track tapes but to save time explaining, & limited bio space, please be sure to Google 8-Track Tapes for more info on that topic. Back in the day, the boys didn't Google anything other than girls & they may still be guilty of googling a young lady or two from time to time. Sammy's first vinyl record & Mike's first 8-Track was a Kiss album known to the world as "Double Platinum," & Ace Frehley was the coolest damned guitar player that ever came from outer space! Both Sammy & Mike imitated Ace even though they knew neither of them would look as cool as Ace did with that smokin' Les Paul Sunburst & platform shoes. Then they were also influenced by the bands of their fathers, the greats like Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Pride, Willie Nelson, Ray Price & the list goes on & on. On the other hand there was Heart, Peter Frampton, Bob Seger, Styx, Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, did we say Kiss, & ZZ Top. So there was classic country & classic rock (funny how classic country was acceptable by their parents but that evil devil music was another story). Sammy's dad saved him from the devil by
Mike Parrish
Sammy Hundley
sending his Double Platinum album to hell, burning it, but Mike was a bit more fortunate & managed to hang on to his 8-Track. Believe it when you hear that they literally wore that album out. There was also the Gospel sounds of Elvis, the rockin' 50s & 60s, BLUES, pop, so much to digest, no way to know what was best, so it was just ALL good. They were Queen fans, Glen Campbell fans, Stevie Wonder fans, KC & the Sunshine Band fans, they were Jim Reeves fans and Chubby Checker fans, Nazareth fans and James Taylor fans, there was a complete goulash of influences that infiltrated their hearts & souls & no way to sort it out other than to just let it flow through them, write their own tunes & examine the results. To this day you can hear bits of hundreds of influences in every original tune.
After Mike did a hitch in the U.S. Army & about 16 years as a Texas Peace Officer, all the while Sammy worked in various technical jobs, including but not limited to opticianry and established a career based in the Houston music scene, both boys, now men, had returned home in the days before the great Sinkhole De Mayo & finally recorded an album in 2006. The album was entitled "Texas in the Man," named for the title track which was allegedly country music heavily soaked in ZZ Top flavored guitars. They built a small studio in Mike's home and whiled away the hours laying and relaying tracks until the first album was finally born. Sammy Hundley is a very accomplished musician (guitars, bass, keyboards) and an amazing songwriter but the birth of "Texas in the Man" was basically a gift from Sammy to Mike, a bucket list thing so-to-speak. Mike wrote the lyrics and melodies for all the songs while Sammy sewed all these ideas together over the course of about a year using his talents on guitar and keyboards. Sammy was playing base for a band called "The Ruse" during this time and Mike had just been elected as a Constable in Liberty County so, whenever they were both off for an evening, they worked on "Texas in the Man" through the wee hours of many a morning. Allen Dossett, also of The Ruse, was requested to lay the drum tracks but everything was Sammy and Mike. Once they figured they were done, another childhood friend, Kyle Smith, mixed and mastered the fifteen tracks that would become Mike's first album.
They won several awards in the European music world, including topping the European Country Music Charts 33 times in 11 countries & in 2010 they garnered a nomination by the Academy of Texas Music and Texas Music Awards for Best Live Band of the year. The boys also won an award that made quite a few people angry in Europe. Mike & Sammy were virtually the only Country Rock act amidst scores of Pop, R&B, & Rock contestants during the International Fame Games Radio Contest comprised of hundreds of artists from all around the world. When it was all said and done, they boys took the "Most Popular Artist" Effigy Award which was NOT expected by the artists from other genres. Most Popular Artist was not awarded by judges but by fans, just as the nomination of Best Live Band of the Year from the Academy of Texas Music, so these two distinctions meant quite a lot to Mike.
Armed with an arsenal of those classic influences the band is proud to present the album "Texas in the Man" & the brand new release entitled "What a Country Boy Knows." Mike is a Master Texas Peace Officer, still on the job for 25 years now, but his dedication to public service hasn't slowed down his musical progress. "What a Country Boy Knows" saw a few additions in regard to the musicians involved with the project. Frank Debretti (Blake Shelton, Mindy McCready, SheDaisey, Vanessa Williams, Duran Duran, SEAL and more) shres the spotlight with Sammy Hundley on lead guitar. Sammy plays rhythms guitars, lead guitars and bass guitars. Mike plays rhythm guitars, lead guitars and harmonica. Phil Dalmolin (Dixie Chicks, Johnny Bush) shared drums and percussion tracks with Allen Dossett. Kurt Baumer (Lonestar) recorded the fiddle tracks. Tommy Detamore (Kevin Fowler) laid all the steel guitar tracks. Canadian Harmonica player, blues man Roly Platt, sat in for the awesome harp tracks on Southbound Train.
"I've got at least another album in me, still a few tunes left in my guitar," says Mike. "I'll continue to write and record and work in law enforcement for as long as the fans can stand to hear me and for as long as I can stand to stomach the way a turbulent world is now treating good cops. Honestly, I can see a day, somewhere down the line, that I'll take off the badge and lay down my guns forever but I think I'll be all but done with living when I finally lay down my guitar for the last time."
