Interview by: Annette Hansen
Words by: Annette Hansen
Senses Fail and Finch are two names that hold significant weight in post-hardcore. So what happens when those two names take a failed collaborative tour and channel it into a whole new band? The result is the creation of supergroup Speak The Truth…Even If Your Voices Shakes consisting of members Buddy Nielsen of Senses Fail and Alex Linares, Daniel Wonacott and Alex Pappas of Finch.
According to Wonacott, after a tour featuring both Finch and Senses fail fell through, the two powerhouses still felt a strong desire to work with each other creatively, “[Finch was] working on a record at the time and we were not finishing it,” Wonacott laughs. Instead of finishing the album Wonacott says the band decided to phone in Nielsen to create something entirely new.
“So we got together and started writing songs,” Wonacott explains. “The first couple times we got together was really natural, it felt like it made a lot of since, so we decided to kind of commit to the idea.”
Throughout 2016 the newly formed band worked on penning songs for the project. Along the way, though, the band found themselves, not only craving the escape of working on this new project, but needing that escape
“It kind of started as like a simple idea where it was like ‘hey, let’s write a record with Buddy’, you know, then it kind of got serious,” says Winacott. The band members experienced a number of turmoils from guitarist Alex Linares’ life-threatening motorcycle accident to personal family tragedies.
“I’m really glad we had this project kind of on deck to help everyone focus on something,” Winacott expresses. “It was really kind of a release to have the project kind of in the back of everyone’s head all year long while like all of us are going through some crazy stuff.”
“I mean anytime you’re making a record, I think musicians have this, I think, do or die sense of needing to get stuff out and get something on paper,” Winacott says. “It was really important for me personally to get this finished and to make sure that it was as good as it should be, so having the ability to channel all that into a really kind of vibrant project was…it was kind of a godsend.”
The band’s vision and hard work was realized in the form of their debut album Everyone You Love Will Slip Away From You, released November 10, 2017 via Bad Timing Records. After spending nearly two years putting the album together, finally releasing the music was a long-awaited triumph.
“For us it’s like a really big kind of relief and milestone to be like ‘yes, did it, we kind of worked through all the adversity’” Winacott explains. “We’re really proud of the record.”
Releasing this new album was also a chance for the members, who’ve been around the block a time or two when it come to releasing music, to be able to put out something fresh and untouched for the first time in awhile.
“No one in the band has done much outside of their separate bands, so it kind of felt like ‘hey, we’re about to make a debut record’,” Winacott describes. “Starting from scratch, it’s freeing and liberating as far as ‘oh, we can do whatever feels good and there’s no context that’s going to dictate whether this is successful in our minds’, so it was really refreshing.”
For them Speak The Truth was the chance to start something for the first time all over again, “It’s just different in kind of the best way.”
And in case there was any reason wonder, future Speak The Truth music is definitely not out of the question.
“I don’t see any reason why we can’t make a ton of Speak The Truth records,” Wonacott says. “With the way that the music industry is now, you know, we don’t have to rely on a label, we don’t have to wait for funding or anything like that. We can just kind of just try something new and if in a year’s time, or whatever, we want to make another one, I don’t see why we couldn’t.”
