Buffalo, New York · Est. 2016
Midnight Sun · Album Release EPK · Buffalo, New York
Recorded to tape at Dreamland Studios — a 19th-century church turned recording studio outside Woodstock, NY — because some rooms demand that you get it right.
The Story
Witty Tarbox didn't come out of nowhere. They've been building this for years — through rooms that don't hand you anything, through sets that had to earn their weight, through a sound that didn't quite fit anywhere until it became its own thing.
Four people. Locked in. Alex Khoury on guitar — direct, surf-inflected, built for the live room. Cody Tarbox on bass — the foundation everything leans on. Colin Gray on drums — precision without stiffness, control without restraint. And Seth Bykowski — Berklee-trained, two decades deep on saxophone, not an addition but a shift in the band's center of gravity.
This isn't a lineup that came together quickly. It's one that stayed.
Midnight Sun was tracked to tape in 2026. Not to sound vintage. Not to prove a point. Because tape doesn't give you options.
No grid. No safety net. No second version that gets fixed later.The Lineup
The band's frontman and lead guitarist. Khoury plays like he has something to prove on every single song — which, it turns out, is exactly the kind of energy a rock band needs at its center. His guitar work splits the difference between melodic precision and controlled chaos.
The band is literally named after this man, which tells you something. Tarbox is the kind of bassist who makes you feel every note in your chest rather than your ears — the low-end anchor that keeps the whole enterprise from flying apart at the seams.
Berklee-trained, with over two decades on the horn. In a lesser band, a saxophone would be a novelty. In Witty Tarbox, Bykowski's sax is a second lead instrument — by turns blistering, mournful, and utterly unpredictable. It is the thing that makes this band impossible to place.
They call him "The Professor," and you understand why the moment he sits down behind the kit. Gray does not simply keep time — he shapes it, stretches it, snaps it back into place. His drumming is the reason this band can be loud and precise at the same time.
The Sound
What ended up on the record is what happened in the room. You can hear it in the way the drums push forward, in the way the guitars sit just on the edge, in the way the sax doesn't decorate the songs so much as move them. It's not clean. It's not perfect. It holds together anyway.
Discography
The debut EP that introduced Schmitty — equal parts cautionary tale and alter ego — and announced a band willing to build a mythology from scratch. Loose, loud, and very much alive.
The full-length that sold out Buffalo's Town Ballroom. A record about heartbreak and debauchery that managed to be both cathartic and fun. Built to be played all the way through.
Tracked to tape in 2026. No grid. No safety net. What ended up on the record is what happened in the room — the way the drums push, the guitars sit on the edge, the sax moves the songs instead of decorating them. Built to be played all the way through.
They've built a reputation the long way.
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