 "Photo: The Accent")
 "Photo: Sarah Vasquez")
SPEAK immediately got the Antone’s crowd dancing through their shyness at a December show with their 80’s reminiscent indie pop. These four baby-faced guys looked like they weren’t born to enjoy that music when it originally debuted but the lack of black x’s on their hands proved they are much older than their looks insinuate.
Those young looking kids are really vocalists Troupe Gammage, guitarist Nick Hurt, drummer Jake Stewart and bassist Joey Delahoussaye.
The origin of SPEAK began when Gammage, Nick Hurt and Stewart formed Jupiter-4 in high school as a piano rock band with post rock influences. But when Delahoussaye joined a year ago, the band became SPEAK taking on a new name as well as a new sound. The progression of this new genre took shape rather quickly.
“I was having a conversation with Troupe and I remember saying ‘yeah dude, we need to get people up and dance,’” said Nick Hurt. “It was definately a decision we made... We didn’t want to be shoegazer. We didn’t want to be ambient indie. We really wanted to play pop. Classic pop songs.”
Early in February, the four piece finally debuted their first EP Hear Here to the masses. Hear Here serves as an appetizer before their main course full length which is tentatively planned for a summer release. The band shows that they have perfected the craft of writing sugary sweet pop tunes listeners can’t seem to get enough of.
However, as we have been told many times throughout our childhood, too much sugar will cause a tummy ache. Eventually, you will need something with a little more substance to fill your hunger, but for those guilty pleasure binges, SPEAK has you covered.
The five track EP almost two years to make. With the combined effort of recording in converted bedroom studios and at The Bubble with local producer Frenchie Smith, the guys took their time to produce an album they could be proud of.
“I think we really annoyed the management,” said Stewart. “They’d say ‘Come on... You don’t need to make any changes’ but we’d say “No... There’s that one little guitar lick that needs to be adjusted.’”
“We’re pretty meticulous. We kind of obsessed over the little things,” said Nick Hurt.
Once the EP was done, SPEAK declared a SPEAK Week to celebrate the momentous occasion. The events included an album listening party at Sneak Attack and a Waterloo in-store performance where they arrived in an Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile.
“Our photographer had an intern who worked for the Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile... He offered to allow us to roll up in that thing and we obviously had to say yes because who wants to turn down that kind of opportunity?” said Gammage.
At the listening party, fans watched a special premiere of SPEAK’s music video for “Carrie.” Danger Films filmed the guys individually rocking out in a simple black room at Sanctuary Printshop’s warehouse.
“Each band member had to perform the entire song five to ten times, probably 15 for me, from various angles,” said Gammage. “That’s all we had to do.”
Then those performances were projected on Austin buildings and landmarks from a projector mounted on a moving car.
“We were constantly worried about cops seeing us shooting the projector out the side and kept turning it off whenever we saw cops,” Dane Hurt, the part owner of Danger Films said. “It was hard to line up the focus of the camera and the projector at the same time as the surfaces we were projecting onto constantly got closer and farther away, but we knew we were getting great footage, so we weren’t discouraged.”
For the finale of SPEAK Week, SPEAK performed two sets at the Independent, one set with their original songs featured on the EP and another set featuring love themed covers such as Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” in honor of Valentine’s Day.
Notorious for performing an off-the-wall but accurate cover song at every show, the idea for the cover set sparked when someone mentioned that the guys perform as a cover band.
“We do all these covers, and we try to do them as accurately as we can,” said Gammage. “I just thought it would be fun to actually be a cover band for a night or at least half a night.”
Now with the new EP finished and released, the band is preparing for the upcoming South by Southwest Festival (SXSW). SPEAK is taking some time away from performing before their official showcase at Encore and a day party at Clive Bar as well as all the socializing and bands they want to see.
“SXSW is always insane because we have a lot of friends that we made during the past few years from out of town and that’s a good opporunity to hang out with them,” said Gammage. “It’ll be a hectic week but I’m really looking forward to it.”
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