By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 9, 1994
Sooyoung Park’s theory is there’s a time and place for everything. When he majored in math in college, he didn’t worry that school was holding back his music career. And when Seam’s singer-songwriter-guitarist felt ready to tackle music full time, he put grad school on hold.
He just did it.
“We’ve only been playing on a regular basis for a year now,” Park said of his three-year-old band. “Before that, various members were finishing up grad school and concentrating on studies. Seam didn’t become our priority until a year ago.”
The Chicago-based alternative band’s lineup has vacillated over the years, but the nucleus of Park and bassist-girlfriend Lexi Mitchell has remained steadfast. For all intents and purposes, the singer is Seam.
He’s not your stereotypical rock-star-in-training. Smart, funny and quirkily good looking, Park is the son of two Korean chemists. The bespectacled musician attended Oberlin, where another rising Chicago star, Liz Phair, was a classmate. He attended North Carolina State University to pursue a graduate degree in architecture, but learned he couldn’t cram for finals and tour at the same time.
Luckily for the music world, grad school was temporarily shelved. Seam’s latest album, “The Problem With Me,” has earned the group a slew of rave reviews. Several major labels are courting Seam, but Park isn’t ready to leave the local independent label Touch & Go Records just yet.
“I’ve seen too many bands get signed to huge labels and then get lost in the shuffle,” he said. “I want to build our career properly.”
The group has won a powerful supporter in Metro owner Joe Shanahan, who was instrumental in giving the Smashing Pumpkins major exposure when they were just another local band.
“There’s a lot of future in that band,” Shanahan said. “I really believe Seam is the pick to hit. It shows in the way everyone responds to them. The crowds, clubs and press love them. That’s a pretty unusual combination.”
During an earlier tour of Europe, when Seam opened for the better known Yo La Tengo, Park was surprised that his band got all the press while the veteran headliners were all but ignored by the music papers.
Seam will kick 1994 off by touring Europe and the states. When it returns to Chicago in the spring, it’ll begin work on its third album.
“The challenge is to consistently make good records and make a career playing good music,” Park said. “In the grand scheme, two records is nothing. We’ve got a lot to prove . . . to ourselves.”
