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.
(Click the link for more)

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:

Living Single

Speaking of old Fox shows, did you see what I did with the title there? Well, at least I amused myself..... Anyway, if/when you pick up the new AD single "Living" make sure you buy it on their website as it includes an instrumental and acapella track as well as the song. I didn't realize that and simply bought it off itunes, so now I'll go back and double dip on the "special edition." Just a heads up! FYI the "I'ma Fight Back Right Now" single has an instrumental version as well on the AD site.

AD on In Living Color

Talk about some old memories- here's a video of AD performing "Mr. Wendal" on In Living Color.  This show as well as Arsenio Hall and even New York Undercover were great at exposing different rap acts to mainstream America.  For those of you not aware that she got her start as a "Fly Girl" on this show, yes, that is J-Lo at the beginning. 



Speaking of memories, here's another Atlanta-based group on the same show. Not going to lie, in 1992 this as my other favorite group back then!

The Healing Kadi Foundation

Disclaimer:  This is not a post directly related to Arrested Development or Speech, so feel free to move on.

Highway 85 has now been up for about 13 months.  I didn't make a big deal about the one-year anniversary of the site, because frankly it wasn't a big deal.  Pretty simple!  I've really enjoyed it and it's been a great experience, and will continue to be- I have a couple of hopefully fun things coming up planned.  But I think the best part of the blog is finding out, from my admittedly limited interactions, that everyone in the group and associated with the group is as nice as you would hope they would be.  There are certain artists that I think I would have a hard time listening to if they weren't (Chuck D is one that comes to mind, and thankfully he's just an awesome down-to-earth guy.  Meanwhile, would anyone care or be surprised if say Lil Wayne was awful to his fans?).  No such problem with this crew!

Anyway, here's where I am going with this.  One thing that I have resisted is trying to make any money from this site.  If anything, I've lost money from buying a lot of the albums, songs, etc. that have popped up here, although I probably would have bought them anyway.  Highway 85 has basically been done purely out of my love and appreciation for the group, and my desire to get some of their harder-to-find material out there for other fans like me.  That's pretty much it.  So I didn't enable google ads or anything like that- not that there would be a ton of money out there, and frankly, by the time this site started to rack up solid hits I basically ran out of material to post on a consistent basis.  I'm just trying to say that I didn't think it was right to even try to make money off of someone else's art.  But, since I do have a small forum to reach a few folks thanks to this site, I thought I'd give this a shot.

Basically, if you happen to have a few extra bucks in your pocket (and who doesn't these days?) and you'd like to donate to an awesome cause, I would like to point you in the direction of a group called The Healing Kadi Foundation.  You can read more about it here (as well as donate), but in a nutshell, there is a doctor that my wife used to work with named Dr. Dumba who is from South Sudan.  He has made a series of missions there with other volunteers to provide medical care to people that do not have any access to medical care.  No exaggeration- they have NO access.  People walk from miles around to line up for days to meet with Dr. Dumba and his volunteers during their annual visit.

To help these people, the Healing Kadi Foundation has come up with a vision.  The first step of that vision is something called a "Clinic in a Can."  They have already purchased 3 of these units, units that will provide a sterile environment to perform surgeries as well as other services.  So the units have been purchased, but the problem is that they are sitting in a hospital parking lot in Omaha as they are still $15,000 short of the needed funds to ship these clinics (UPS isn't cheap.....).  Honestly, if you have you ever worried about making a donation to a chartiy with the fear that the funds wouldn't be allocated effectively, you don't have to worry here- the funds go to shipping these clinics so that they can be used to save lives.  Their eventual plan is to build a hospital in the newly independent South Sudan, but that's a long ways off.

For the record, I am not affiliated with this group.  My wife just happened to formerly work with Dr. Dumba and has been a witness to the good that he's been doing.  It's really an awesome story.

(I was going to post "Africa We Thank Ya" from Strong as part of this, but it's no longer on youtube!)

People Everyday on X-Factor

I don't really watch TV so I'm behind the curve on this, but Arrested Development's "People Everyday" was performed on the show "The X-Factor" by a guy named Chris Rene.  He adds his own lyrics and removes a lot of the AD content, but I have to say, I kind of like it.  He even flips the "you know, you know, you know, HIT IT!" part.  The track is kind of busy and it seems to me that this was recorded in a studio and not on some rich dude's back lawn, but anyway, check it out.  And Rihanna is hanging out, so it's got that going for it:

Update on New AD Album (And New Speech Album)

In case you missed this on the fantastic new Arrested Development website, there was an update posted on 20 as well as some info on Speech's new album.  I have to say that I agree with this approach.  A free project would be great (thinking out loud, maybe we could get a mixtape with unreleased 20 songs as well as the unused stuff from Strong?), but I would much rather have a fully realized AD album.  They also drop a note on a new Speech record, which is equally encouraging to me.  Here's some info:

AD is planning to record this fall. They were scheduled to release a free project called, “20″ in mid 2011, but Speech reconsidered. “I wanted us to really give our absolute best, not just what happens to come out of us creatively  within a certain time period. Our next album will be called “20″ (celebrating 20 years since the debut) it will be our most compelling & significant music project we’ve ever done! Our approach is to be musically dense, melodically simple and the subject matter easy to follow” adds Speech. Speech has also been drafting a new solo album which will be a totally melodic, live band experience that will feature many of the AD members. Eshe says, “This fall we’ll be gearing up for a big 2012. We have a number of big festivals scheduled for that year already so we hope to have finished this new project by then.” The group is focused. The music, activism, exposure and brand of AD is planned to be at another level for the coming year.

New AD Single

Just a reminder- the new Arrested Development single "Living" drops tomorrow on itunes.  I'll be checking it out for sure, so you do the same!

What Happened At Midnight.... (New Speech Song)

Tonight at midnight (eastern time?) there is scheduled to be a new Speech song posted here called "I'ma Fight Back Right Now" featuring an artists named Kamren.  So check it out.

Finally, Some News!

There's quite a few things going on right now with Arrested Development- for starters, they have a new website that is MUCH better than the old one- check it out here. 

And in bigger news, they've announced a new single called "Living."  Go here for the details on this one.  The single will be released digitally on September 27th and is being produced by Randy Walker, who is someone new to working with the group.  (Randy Walker was also the name of the late "Stretch" who worked with Tupac Shakur early in his career.)  I'm not sure what project this single will be attached to, but I will definitely be checking for it and I'll have more on it then.