Arizona-based power pop band the Resonars solidified their sound once guitarist/vocalist/producer Matt Rendon decided to quit trying to play with other people and started working on his own with an old 4-track recorder. Once alone, he concocted an approach that blended the snappy melodies of the British Invasion with the powerful punch of mod bands like the Who. He added some garage rock swagger and recorded the songs with unvarnished arrangements and a bit of fuzz. The group's first album, 1997's The Resonars, laid out the template and each record that came after followed it closely. With stays on labels like Get Hip, Trouble in Mind, and Burger Records (where they released their finest albums in the 2010s), the band carved out a space for themselves where garage, power pop, psychedelia, and mod all happily converged.
The band initially started out as an idea Rendon had for a comic book about a folk-rock group from the '60s called the Resonars who get lost in the '90s. The name was a tribute to a real Tucson, Arizona band that had featured his older brother, Rick Rendon. While the idea for the comic book about the Resonars didn't quite pan out, the band did (for a while). In 1991, rhythm guitarist Rendon was joined by Mario Cordova on bass, Dustin "OJ" Moyer on drums, and Eric Royer on lead guitar and vocals. This group recorded a four-song tape in 1992 (released two years later), but broke up in 1993 due to increasing musical differences.
Rendon briefly moved to Sudus Point, New York before returning to Tucson in early 1994. Once there, he re-formed the Resonars, this time with the addition of Forest Dunn on bass. In 1995, they recorded Tripping in Your Coffin, a full-length cassette-only release. This lineup of the Resonars called it a day in late 1996. Rendon gave it another shot, along with former bassist Cordova and drummer Moyer, but they were unable to find a suitable lead singer and decided to disband soon after they began.
Rendon continued to use the band's name and, free from working with other people, began to develop a sound that borrowed the songcraft of the best garage rock, the energy of mod bands like the Who, and the crunchy tunefulness of power pop. In 1998, the Resonars' self-titled album was released on the Tucson-based Star Time Records. The album featured Rendon four-tracked on all instruments and vocals; the other bandmembers listed were names he'd planned to use for his comic book years earlier. The second Resonars album, Bright and Dark, was issued by Get Hip in 1999. Rendon had always intended to form a new band to play live shows, but never quite did, and eventually retired the Resonars moniker in October 2000. He continued playing music and joined local institution Al Perry & the Cattle. After moving to Seattle, Rendon joined the Vultures (playing the drums as "Mickey Finch"). As quickly as he left, Rendon returned to Tucson in 2001 and joined the Knockout Pills, a garage-punk band featuring members of the Weird Lovemakers and Los Federales. In 2002, he resurrected the Resonars' name for a new release on Get Hip called Lunar Kit, which featured a more powerful sound, and both sides of the 2000-released single "Floor Lamp Eyes."
Playing with the Knockout Pills took up most of his time during the period that followed, but when the band split in 2006 he returned his focus to the Resonars. In 2008, the band -- which was still Rendon recording alone on his trusty 4-track recorder -- issued another album for Get Hip titled Nonetheless Blue.
Jumping over to the influential California label Burger Records, the Resonars continued cranking out records with a similar sound. That Evil Drone came out in 2008 and Crummy Desert Sound in 2011. The Resonars released an EP for Trouble in Mind titled Long Long Thoughts in 2012, then the label released The Greatest Songs of the Resonars, a collection that gathered material from all the band's previous albums. Around this time Rendon finally formed a live Resonars, with guitarist Isaac Reyes of Lenguas Largas, Knockout Pills' bassist Jeremy Schliewe and drummer James Peters of the Jons filling out the lineup. He also began building a more permanent studio in his backyard, which he finished in 2014. He started recording other artists as a full-time gig and also managed to contract a case of writer's block, which meant no new Resonars albums for awhile, though it didn't keep him from recording a heavily psychedelic album in 2015 under the name the Butterscotch Cathedral. He did start working on another Resonars album in 2018 with the help of members of his live band at the time, including drummer Johnnie Rinehart and bassist Ricky Shimo. Rendon even handed vocal chores on one song to ex-Knockout Pills bandmate Travis Spillers. The finished product, 2019's No Exit, showed no changes to the band's core sound while maintaining the high level of songcraft fans have come to expect over the decades.
