Seeing Double strives to navigate TikTok success, share passion for music

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Sarah Gross was starstruck when she met Seeing Double last spring. She discovered the band “like everyone else” — through TikTok.

Drawn to their use of harmonies and guitar tones that are “reminiscent of an older time,” Gross reached out to Seeing Double and booked an April 16 performance with them at The Garden, a house concert venue in Syracuse, where she met the five SUNY Oneonta students in person for the first time.

“Especially musicians, we get it in our brain that the artists we love are like celebrities,” said Gross, who graduated from Syracuse University in May. “Then when you meet them in person you’re like, ‘oh, they’re just people.’”

But Seeing Double, whose third single “Take It Or Leave It” comes out Friday, is far from celebrity status, even after a hit single and a few viral TikToks. The rising juniors’ unexpected success only raised more questions about their careers in music for both the near and distant future.

Lead singer Allie Sandt formed Seeing Double as a way to beat pandemic boredom on a desolate college campus. Soon after, the group shifted from playing covers to writing original music, and Sandt began working on the band’s Fleetwood Mac-inspired single “Leah” last summer.

To promote “Leah,” Sandt posted a TikTok brushing her teeth with text reading, “Brushing my teeth on TikTok until my band’s song ‘Leah’ goes viral.” To her surprise, Sandt woke up the next morning to thousands of views, and watched them grow over the next few days. “Leah” now has over 2.4 million streams on Spotify, and Seeing Double has upwards of 12,000 TikTok followers.

While fans often perceive Seeing Double as a rock band, the bandmates agree their music doesn’t fit into one genre. No two of their six unreleased songs are alike, Sandt said.

As pandemic restrictions eased and students returned to campus last fall, the band picked up more shows in Oneonta, playing an average three shows a weekend, and went on tour in the spring, Sandt said.

But during summer break, the members returned to their respective hometowns and picked up part-time jobs.

Sandt lives in Bergen County, New Jersey and guitarist Zach Torncello is from Scotia, New York, outside Albany, where drummer Dylan Travison lives. Guitarist Mike Aaron lives in Cornwall, New York, just north of New York City, and singer Ali McQueeney is from Onondaga Hill, near Syracuse.

With every member in a different place, playing shows in the summer is “a bit of a logistical nightmare,” Aaron said. The group converges on 11 p.m. FaceTime calls — the only time everyone’s free — to discuss things as simple as new merchandise, Aaron said.

“It’s not like I can just drive to Allie’s house and work on something,” Torncello said. “It’s two and a half hours away.”

The band won’t be able to record new music until school starts in the fall, and even then, there’s hardly a time when everyone’s free to reserve a practice room on campus, Aaron said.

For the time being, the band only plans to release singles, since it’s easier to write, record and later promote one song at a time, Sandt said.

“Being a student in college and running a band, it’s almost like running a small business,” said Gross, who understands firsthand the challenges Seeing Double is facing. “They have a group where each person really cares about the music equally, and that’s super important.”

Allie Sandt (left) and Ali McQueeney (right), two members of SUNY Oneonta band, Seeing Double, perform on stage. Courtesy of Mel Telesmanic.

SUNY Oneonta professor Jeremy Wall recalls seeing Sandt singing along in the front row at every one of the university funk band’s fall gigs. When he found out she was a singer, he knew she’d be perfect to fill a vacancy in the spring.

Wall, founder of jazz fusion group Spyro Gyra and now music professor at SUNY Oneonta, has run the university’s funk band for 20 years. He only takes the best students for the eight-piece ensemble each semester, he said.

With Sandt as a singer and Travison on drums, Wall said this spring’s funk band was one of the best he’s had in all his 20 years at the school, he said.

“Even though I technically had an open audition, I was counting on Allie,” Wall said. “She’s fearless. Whatever song she takes on, she dives into it and expresses herself with total freedom.”

In April, Seeing Double embarked on a week-long mini tour, playing four shows across the Northeast, in a used van that Aaron’s father found on Craigslist. The group all met at Aaron’s house since it’s centric to everyone’s hometowns.

To avoid costly hotels, the group stayed at whoever’s house was closest to the venue that night, except after their show at Dartmouth College. Sandt said the show ended too late to drive, and so the band “shelled out” on a one-bed hotel room.

“Shelled out?” Torncello said. “It was a hundred dollars, man.”

Travison brought a queen-sized air mattress for the tour that not only took up most of the space in the van, but also half the space in the Dartmouth hotel room.

“We had to bounce from the air mattress to get to the bathroom,” Sandt said.

Of all the obstacles the band has faced, the largest hurdle is yet to come — deciding what to do post-graduation.

“I wasn’t planning on being in a band in college,” said McQueeney, who studies childhood education, the only member of the group not majoring in music industry. “I don’t really have a plan, but you know, an outline. I have to figure out how (the band) is going to fit into that.”

If Seeing Double is profitable by graduation, the band will consider pursuing music full-time and move closer to each other, Sandt said.

Regardless of what Seeing Double chooses, Gross said she hopes each member keeps performing or playing music in some way.

“They’re gritty rock and roll, they’re freaking good at what they do, and they’re very talented,” Gross said. “That’s captivating for a lot of people.”