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"It's a weird roundabout way to get to a band," declares TeamMate singer-keyboardist Scott Simons. "But it happened."
Scott Simons and Dani Buncher fell for each other in West Virginia in 1998 and were in a relationship for 10 years when she came out of the closet.
That's when most couples say "later" and that's the end. Instead, they worked through it to become long-distance bandmates ... or TeamMate, as they are called.
Their story is documented in "Sequel," the bouncy electropop track that opens their debut EP that begins with him singing, "She said, 'I think I like girls'/I said, 'I do too'/she said, 'I'm so afraid cause I'm still in love with you'/so we cried all night, and then we cried all year/I said, 'You're the only one who could ever dry my tears.' "
Squirrel Hill native Buncher met Mr. Simons at West Virginia University, where he was playing in power-pop band The Argument. After graduating, she worked for Arista Records in New York, and then came back to Pittsburgh to work for Rostrum, the label that sprung Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller.
Rostrum was also home to The Argument, which broke up, leading to a Los Angeles-based Scott Simons solo project. Ms. Buncher, best known musically for being the drummer for the now-defunct band Big Hurry, was backing his solo stuff on drums despite the distance.
"Coming right out of the breakup, we never could've predicted that this is what we would do," he says from LA on a conference call, with her in Pittsburgh. "At the...