April marks the halfway point of The Zone @ 91-3’s Band of the Month 2021 season. This month we are excited to share the fun and incomparable, Speak Easy.
Victoria’s Speak Easy is ragtag four-piece making energetic, swoon-worthy psych rock with a touch of summer vibes. The band consists of vocalist/guitarist Oliver Sandberg, vocalist/bassist Lauren Giorgio, guitarist Latham Reader and percussionist Scott Sparrow.
Following a photo shoot in the band’s favourite local park, Speak Easy took the time to share a little about themselves, their love tennis, starting a record label and creating during a pandemic with Tyson Elder.
Tyson Elder: Welcome to the Band of the Month Club!
Speak Easy: Thank You!
TE: I listened to your record Rainbow River on the way to the photo shoot and interview. It fit so well with the nice weather and especially your Band of the Month single, Polly. Could you tell me a little bit about the song?
Oliver Sandberg: Polly started with a vocal melody… [Laughs] Actually we walking back home from playing tennis at this park and I was like “guys, I’ve got this vocal melody.” I think we were coming back from tennis to band practice and then Lauren played…
Lauren Giorgio: I was like “oh, I have this new riff that I just played the other day.” I just played at home on my acoustic but thought it would sound good on electric.
Oliver: We were jamming and I was just drumming along to the riff. Then I started singing the vocal melody and it totally fit.
Latham Reader: That’s when we did our switch around. It’s the first song Ollie is playing bass.
Lauren: During our live set we swap instruments alot.
Latham: The song came together really quick too.
Lauren: I think we wrote Polly in maybe an hour and a couple of days getting together smoothing it out. It was literally the quickest song we’ve made.
Latham: We recorded the third take of the song live. Except for the vocals and maybe a few of the guitars and sounds but we had the bones for it. We sat on the song for a little while until just before the record came out because Oliver wasn’t fully done writing the lyrics.
Oliver: Yeah, they weren’t ready. Polly turned out to be the first first finished song on Rainbow River. Which was kind of funny because we originally anticipated it to be the demo and rerecording it for the record. We were originally going to rerecord everything but it all sounded great. It’s kind of funny now if we play the song live ever… it’ll be under two minutes because we play it a bit quicker now. It’s a nice, quick, little pop punchy song. It also features the first Latham Reader guitar solo ever.
TE: Speaking of your album Rainbow River. How did you find releasing a record and just creating music in general during a global pandemic different than before?
Lauren: Rainbow Road was out first album we’ve all made together. Before we moved from Kelowna to Victoria and even before we’d met Latham and he’d joined the band. The three of us had put out a really small EP. I think we released it the day before our first ever tour. It wasn’t anything much but we were getting out there for the first time. It definitely felt a little overwhelming in a way. We were finally getting all these songs we’d been working on for a long time out there. It was also very underwhelming because we were simultaneously canceling a huge tour right before.
Latham: Not having the tour to support the release of the record was definitely hard but there was still a lot of optimism. Like everyone else we that this whole thing could be gone by July. Not everything was canceled at that point. Releasing music now you’d probably have more of a context for what is really going on.
Scott Sparrow: We were kind of in the mindset that we should just put it out because it seemed like we would probably be able to play shows by the end of the summer. It did feel like it fell flat a little be in terms of how everything happened.
TE: I can see how you could feel that way. You don’t have that hometown show to celebrate all your hard work with your friends or a tour to gain new fans.
Latham: I think we were a week away from tour.
Oliver: We literally were. We had a whole tour booked but… [gestures wildly]
Lauren: Regardless of that there were a lot of nice messages and words from people we know and quite a few we don’t. They were feeling the album and that was still really nice.
Scott: We are really proud of Rainbow River as our first release.
TE: Having listened to it multiple times this past week and again on the way to the photo shoot this afternoon I have to say it’s a fantastic record. Polly, is the perfect song for a warm sunny day.
Oliver: Thanks!
TE: I certainly think The Zone’s and Zoners are going to pick up on that part of the sound really quick too.
Lauren: Nice! I really hope so.
Scott: Just to get add to your question from earlier and if I can speak for all of us it was a really big milestone for us doing the whole recording process ourselves. It was all self-recorded in our basement and mixed by Latham and mastered by Dave Perry.
Latham: Which was the first time any of us had worked with a mastering engineer separately.
TE: That’s just turning the mix up louder isn’t it?
[Everyone laughs]
Lauren: Finessing it. [laughs]
Latham: Polishing it. [laughs]
Oliver: Pretty much. [laughs]
Scott: Personally, it was a big success and I think everyone can agree to that.
TE: You’ve also released a live version of Rainbow River. Was that taken live off the floor in your jam space?
Latham: We actually recorded it in the backyard.
Oliver: There is actually a live video that goes along with it.
TE: Oh, the one with all the flowers? I didn’t realize that was your backyard.
Oliver: Exactly. That’s straight off the floor with maybe 10 microphones.
Latham: On a really windy day too…
Lauren: Ollie built a stage in the backyard with pallets and stuff so we had somewhere dry and nice to set up our gear.
Scott: I think that was our solution to the coronavirus was planning to host our own small show in the backyard. We only had four or five people there. It was just us and two friends filming it for us. We decided that a sick online session would suffice.
TE: How many neighbours did you piss off?
[Everyone laughs]
Oliver: None. They were all down.
Latham: The neighbours were stoked.
Oliver: It was at my place and we were talking about the possibility of doing more shows like this but the pandemic was getting worse and worse. Hopefully this summer we could get an opportunity to host a few more intimate local shows.
Latham: We’d love to do sessions like that too.
Lauren: Yes! That would be great.
Oliver: That session last summer was us figuring out a first draft of trying something like this. Recording a live set, mixing it and putting it to video. We wanted it to be something like a set you would see on KEXP or KCRW.
Latham: It did give us some peace to the records because we didn’t get to tour it. Instead we got to make this sick live album.
TE: This seems like a weird question to ask, but is the band actively working on new music? Given that you released the album last year and not being able to tour it. Right now it seems like people have been pumping out lots of new music or nothing at all. How is has your creativity and songcrafting been throughout all of this?
Latham: We kind of started five bands and a label. [laughs] No joking.
TE: Wow! That’s exciting to hear.
Lauren: It’s definitely been a strange process. We have a studio in Ollie’s basement where we would get together three to five times a week to write, hangout, play and show each other our new ideas to being so separate.
Latham: And only getting together to play tennis. [band laughs]
Lauren: Lots of tennis. We’ve all been working on a solo stuff but more recently collaboratively figuring out ways to record and sending stuff to each other to throw something onto a track. We’ve also been working on our label we created, Further Beyond. It’s been motivating for us to get finished products out and share our music with each other even if we can play together in the same room.
Oliver: Not having the pressure of having to showcase this live has helped in some ways. It’s given us the time to practice and hone our skills in terms of songwriting, recording and producing. Scotty’s getting ready to release a solo record this month, Latham’s got a solo project, I released a solo album in January and Lauren’s been working on her solo stuff.
Latham: Scott also plays in The Dough Boys and they just released an album.
Scott: We’ve all been finding other ways to still make music and that’s important. We try to share that with each other.
TE: I know it hasn’t been easy on a lot of us to keep creating throughout all of this. I’ve had my struggles but it is really exciting to hear how much you have been working on.
Latham: There have been lows for all of us but we are making it work. It’s off and on.
Lauren: It also feels weird to have free time but some days just feel really down and low because of all the restrictions that are now applied to our lives for the first time. I feel like I could have recorded five albums with all this free time, but I’ve just been in a bit of a funk.
Oliver: I also think that at this time it is just so hard to find inspiration. How do you find inspiration in the mundane? Especially during the lockdown days – it was like Groundhog Day. I was playing Settlers of Catan with my roommates like three times a day.
Latham: Right now we’ve been working on or label Further Beyond Records a lot. It’s going to be our outlet for everything and hopefully give us more of a chance to collaborate with more people.
Lauren: It’s us and Shaedan Hawse from another project called MSTR BSTRD. He just released a really cool new album called, Please Stand By. Further Beyond is where we are all going to be releasing things to gather that platform.
TE: Are most of your side projects going to be released through the Further Beyond label, then?
Oliver: Yes, and hopefully get to the point where we can produce other people’s records.
TE: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and being the first band I’ve ever done a drone photo shoot with. I’m really looking forward to hearing you on The Zone @ 91-3 during April.
Oliver: YES! Drone photo shoot. Tyson, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure.
Speak Easy’s catchy song, Polly, will be featured on The Zone @ 91-3 during April 2021. You can the song as well as two more of their songs for your listening pleasure on their Band of the Month page.
Rocktographers is a proud supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.