When Jonathan Bunch's friends were joining bands in 1986 with their guitars, he just watched.
"I didn't play a thing," Bunch said during a telephone interview from Richmond, Va. "So I decided to sing."His band, Sense Field -- Bunch, guitarist Chris Evenson, drummer Scott McPherson, guitarist-vocalist Rodney Sellars -- will open for Jimmy Eat World at Club DV8, 115 S. West Temple, on Monday, March 29. The doors open at 7 p.m.
"When we did finally get our act together, we knew we wanted to make our own music," Bunch said. "We wanted to try to do our own thing and try to reach people."
By 1991, the band released a five-song extended play disc on its own H2O label. "That was one of the things that kept us going. We pressed on by selling our EP at the gigs we played. We also booked our own show and played our tails off, trying to get big (record) label interest."
Revelation Records snatched up the band after hearing its new seven-song EP, "Premonitions." And in 1994, the band released its full-length debut, "Killed for Less." The latest project is a just-finished recording for Warner Bros.
"I'm really proud of the new album," said Bunch. "It will be out in a couple of months. But there was a lot of hard work that went into it, and it turned out well."
The band joined the 1996 Vans Warped Tour and played with NOFX, Penny Wise and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
Sense Field is also enjoying record sales of its early albums in 14 countries, including Slovania, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic, where it has toured during the past few years. "Words can't explain what we felt when we saw these kids from Europe enjoying our music, even though the language was different."
The band, said Bunch, is doing well, but it hasn't always been so smooth.
"Sure, the early days were a challenge," Bunch said. "But it's a challenge doing what we want to do. And sometimes staying together as a band is a challenge.
"There's always creative tension when the band tries new things. Everyone has an idea of how a song should go. But it's actually gotten easier as we've gotten older. There's not a lot of paranoia, as there was in the past. Since we've been together for so long, we kind of know where each other is coming from."