My Interview With Speech

 It’s not often that you get to ask one of your favorite artists a bunch of questions that you’ve always wanted to, so I was honored to recently have a chance to ask Speech a bunch of questions and have him respond back. Since I am an amateur at this, in lieu of a phone interview or something like that, we corresponded through e-mail and needless to say I am beyond thrilled with the results.  I hope you all enjoy reading the answers as much as I did, and hopefully I covered enough material to satisfy the AD fans out there who are tired of hearing interviews that start with “where have you guys been.”  We of course know the answer is that they’ve been making great music while many slept.  Now on to the interview….

Highway 85:  First off, thanks so much for agreeing to do this! I really appreciate it, and I also want to thank you for twenty years of “Life Music.” I guess I’ll get right into it, and anything that you don’t feel like answering, please just skip. Some of these questions came from a couple of contributors to Highway 85 as well. I tried to ask some oddball questions that you might not hear in your standard interview, so please accept my apologies in advance if you find any of them too off the wall….. We’ll start off with an old stand-by question: What are your plans for your next project?  

The Yoshida Brothers!

SPEECH: Well, we have a couple of plans in the works. #1.) I'm working on a Japanese collaborative project with a duo called the Yoshida Brothers, who by playing the traditional instrument, shamisen have quite a large following. I'm mixing a hip hop sensibility with their lush eastern sound, bringing a very unique style to the table all its own. 2.) The group has begun recording a new album to celebrate our 20 years in the business. With this record we're taking more time than ever before, since our debut and making sure we have the quality we're looking for, It's been REAL exciting! Lastly, we're striving to make bigger moves into the world of charities and lining our audience with them. We've done two things already (Yo Gabba Gabba and the Childrens Hospital in Atlanta). We're going to do much more of that!

 
Highway 85:  Are you still going with the mixtape idea or something else?  
SPEECH: We probably will, because we did about 10 songs recently, of which "Living" was one. And they're great tunes, that deserve a listen. We felt they weren't the best representation of a 20th year celebration album, so we put them on the back burner. However, like "Living" we'll plan to leak them out there, one by one.

Highway 85:  How has the feedback been to the new single “Living”?  
SPEECH: The feedback has been really great! One of the biggest obstacles we have now is getting it out there in a bigger way! We're not financially in the situation to do it right now, so we have to be patient. But the song itself has gotten much love, especially in the States! Seems like it’s been getting some love out there on twitter and so forth.

Highway 85:  Any thoughts of calling the album Twenty Years, Five Months and 2 Days in the Life Of….? SPEECH: ;-) Nah, that album has been such a blessing to us, that we don't want to draw anymore reference to it for future stuff, and lessen it's impact. It's also quite tuff to outshine that albums successes, so we're chipping away at peoples perception of that being our best work.
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Acoustic AD Charity Performances

I am a huge sucker for acoustic performances by Arrested Development, and if you are to, make sure you check these performances AD did for a benefit for Children's Health Care of Atlanta. There is also an interview included. Awesome stuff! And if you are a fan of acoustic performances, make sure you check out this previous post with a full Speech solo performance. Probably my favorite post I've done on this site.

Tennessee:

 

People Everyday:


 Interview: