HiFi Handgrenades.com

This is an interview between Eric Allen from the realdetroitweekly.com with the band.

Obviously, you guys have all known each other for a long time from playing around the Detroit scene, but how did you choose that you four would be the members of Hi-Fi Handgrenades?
Right around late-December last year, I was talking to Robbie, our former bass player, and he was pestering me to get something together because I wasn’t playing in any band at the time. It kind of just started as a fuck around — play once every month-and-a-half and just have covers that sounded like one cohesive band. After one practice, I felt kind of embarrassed because the level of musicianship was high and we were just getting together to do covers and arrange them. We were just kind of like, “Huh?”

What made you guys pick up the melodic hardcore sound of bands like Naked Raygun and the Replacements?
Robbie said we should do something like the kind of stuff we listened to when we were teenagers … stuff like Descendents, Dag Nasty, Bad Religion, old Replacements and Naked Raygun — shit like that. With the new material we are writing, it’s a lot more broad in scope.

I remember seeing your first two shows. How did you guys get so good with only a couple of months of practice?
I think that everybody has the experience of being in enough bands to know how to pay attention and open their ears. Everybody has played with really good musicians and learned from them. You have to learn under the gun and practice a lot. Robbie isn’t with us anymore, because he had personal stuff back here, and we got Rich from the Suicide Machines. He and Ryan go back, before the Suicide Machines even — about 11 years.

How did you guys get friendly with Foo and open for them on tour?
Our manager is a good old friend of mine named Gus Brandt. He has worked with the Foo Fighters for about 14 years and he just arranged for us to go to California for a little down time at Dave’s once they were done with their new record. We went out there, and the last day we were mixing down some stuff and Dave happened to walk into the room. We didn’t notice him — he was sitting in the back. The song ended and he was like, “That was really cool.” Dave goes, “What are you doing in a couple of weeks,” and that was the Foos tour. | RDW

Credit: Doug Coombe
Copyright: Doug Coombe

One of the band member John Speck, was interviewed by associatedcontent.com.

John was emphasizing a lot on how the band really put faith above all else.

Faith is not just the word tattooed across John’s knuckles; it’s a mantra, a punk rock manifesto and a state of mind, a musician must have when shooting for musical success

Speck also told AC about his previous band: Hoarse

“We put out two 7 inch singles and one of them got a ton of radio airplay. After that we released our first full length disc on RCA records, we did one of the early Warped Tours, etc…”

And went on saying:

“The goal of this project, (the inappropriately named band) The Fags was to try and make guitar driven music that was commercial enough to get on the radio.” When asked why this was the main goal of the aforementioned group Speck sighs and simply states, “When we would listen to rock radio at home in Detroit we just thought to ourselves, man this stuff sucks!!

My friends and I would ask ourselves what happened to artists like (early) Elvis Costello, The Replacements and The Jam. I mean I get the idea that everyone is trying to write a hit but we just thought that we could make something that was better than what was on the radio but what could also be a throwback to really catchy music filled with hooks and depth”.

Well John, you sure is one of the few breed in the music industry.