Artist Spotlight is a segment that we started to introduce our listeners to some deserving up and coming artists/ bands. They have made an impact on us for all of the right reasons. Today, we’d like to shine the spotlight on Speak Easy Circus!
Speak Easy Circus are an alternative-indie band from Glasgow, Scotland. They have a great song coming out this Friday, May 28th entitled “Company Of Men.”
The guys have made a short video where they all chat about the new single. “It’s a song that attempts to break down outdated ideas of masculinity in an electrifying ‘frankentune’ of rock, soul and punk. Lessons of how to act like a “real” man are explicitly and unconsciously passed down from generation to generation: that masculinity means strength, stoicism, violence and heterosexuality.”
This song was written as an attempt to understand and break the influence that these ideas have over us.
Check out the video below:
1. Every super hero and villain has an origin and a band is not different. Well, minus the radioactive spiders and secret government experiment. What’s the origin of Speak Easy Circus?
During my time at university I (Jack – guitar/vocal) flirted with playing music full time, it was always what I wanted to do but I had never really made the full push that you need. Once I finished university I decided that I had two options, I could get a job and consign myself to the fact that music would always be a hobby, or I could commit and try my best to make something of it. So I looked into renting a place in London, screamed at my computer screen when I saw how much it would cost, and decided to move to Glasgow instead.
When I first arrived in Glasgow I began looking for a band and tried to play with as many people as possible, including a Radiohead cover band for a while. I really wanted to form a band that combined all the different music that I listened to but I was never able to find the right group of people for my own project though, until I met Jon and Chats whilst we were all playing in a different band together. When that band disintegrated I knew that I had to get them involved, so I told them they would get all the riches the music world had to offer if they joined. I lied. That was around a year and a half ago and by that point it was too late, we were introduced to Frazer through a mutual friend and Speak Easy Circus as we know it today was formed.
2. What’s in a name? Sometimes a band’s name has a story behind & sometimes it’s something that sounded cool. What about Speak Easy Circus?
Really the name actually came about because we specifically wanted to create a name that wasn’t something that already existed, we wanted to have something that would create a unique image in people’s mind that would reflect the eclectic mix of music we wanted to make. So we picked ‘Speak Easy Circus’ because we thought it was a strange enough combination of words that it might make people think twice.
3. Some artists know exactly when they knew music was their path. For some, it was when they saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan or heard a classic album that really moved them. Do you remember when you were bitten by the music bug?
We all have different moments in which we knew that music was going to be important for us, Jon (sax) for example pinpoints the Bleedin’ Gums Murphy episode of The Simpsons, Chats (bass) mentions hearing Stevie Wonder, Frazer (drums) Blink-182. Personally the moment I knew I wanted to play the guitar was when I was nine years old and my Dad put on ‘Appetite for Destruction’ in the car and it just blew my mind. I immediately asked if I could have an electric guitar and just became obsessed!
4. We’ve lost quite a few music icons over the last few years. If you could pick one or two to jam with, who would you pick?
I think having the opportunity to jam with Prince would be an amazing, and probably intense, experience! David Bowie is another artist who springs to mind, I feel like he was such a chameleon-esque artist that you could play any genre or any combination of instruments and he would just be able to make it his own!
5.. If your music were a mixed drink, what would be in it?
We have deferred to Jon for this one (as he has spent many years working in bars), and in his eternal wisdom he states that we would be a Manhattan, as no one really knows what is in and and it can come in so many different ways.
Connect with Speak Easy Circus:
