Underage

Seattle pop-punk band Speaker Speaker never officially announced they had broken up, but they weren’t denying the rumors, either. After a show in June, they said they were no longer booking shows—singer Colin McBride went back to school, bassist Danny Oleson and drummer Jasen Samford focused on
their new project Exohxo. It seemed the band was all but thrown in a casket and buried.

But last month, the band quietly came out of hibernation, playing a minimally advertised show in Edmonds. So I asked them, “Are Speaker Speaker back or what?”

The answer is an enthusiastic “Yes!” according to Samford: “We were never really broken up; it was just sort of an extended hiatus.”

“We’ve been a band for five or six years, and I personally just got really burned out,” says McBride. “We racked up an enormous amount of debt. We were tired. We weren’t sure what we wanted to do as a band.”

After a rejuvenating break, they’ve booked a handful of shows, including a couple all-ages dates—March 5 at Ground Zero in Bellevue and March 6 at Common Ground in Burlington. They also hope to release a new album by the end of the year, which will give them the opportunity to record the more than a dozen songs they’ve written since the release of their debut full-length, Call It Off.

“We’re definitely a band now, but it’s for fun,” McBride confirms. “I don’t need to make an exorbitant amount of money playing my guitar.”

Sat Feb 27: Sound Off! Semifinals #3 with Great Waves, Seacats, Subtle Like a T-Rex, Us on Roofs at EMP, 7:30 pm, $7/$10.

Mon March 1: Against Me!, Jaguar Love, Cancer Bats at Neumos, 8 pm, $10.

Tues March 2: We Were Promised Jetpacks, the Lonely Forest, Bear Hands at Neumos, 8 pm, $15.

Tues March 2: Jarrod Gorbel, Fences at the Vera Project, 7:30 pm, $10/$11.