Interview with Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis

Since early 2012, Northampton, MA indie rock act Speedy Ortiz has been leading the charge in a resurgence of musical creativity and innovation in New England. Powered by the songwriting skills of Sadie Dupuis, the quartet is rounded out by Darl Ferm on bass, Mike Falcone on drums and Devin Mcknight on lead guitar, producing a unique sound. This Sunday afternoon, August 30, head up I-95 where Speedy Ortiz will be rocking the seas around Boston Harbor as part of the Rock and Blues Concert Cruise with Providence punks Downtown Boys, Francine and DJ Michael V for what should be a rad time for all aboard. Dupuis and I had a chat recently about the band’s origins at a music summer camp where she used to teach, breaking into the Boston music scene, the process of creating their 3^rd full length album Foil Deer and what the rest of the year has in store.

Rob Duguay (Motif): Speedy Ortiz originally started as a solo project you started up while teaching at a summer camp. Where’s the camp located and how did Speedy Ortiz grow from your own little brainchild to the band that we know as it is today?

Sadie Dupuis: The camp is called Buck’s Rock and it’s located in New Milford, CT in the northwest corner of the state. Speedy Ortiz basically started out as a home recording project so I had something to do with all these songs I was writing as part of a songwriting class I was teaching. I was in a band in New York and had been for quite a few years but most of the stuff I was working on just didn’t seem right for that band. I just made these home recordings with banjo, cello and all this other stuff. A few months after I made around 20 recordings at the camp I moved up to Massachusetts and was looking to play music with some new people so we used those songs to start with and it sort of became a band from there.

RD: Do you still teach at Buck’s Rock?

SD: I haven’t since 2011 but I did teach a master class there this summer for a couple of days which was pretty fun.

RD: Do you plan on going back to being a music teacher later in your life or do you plan on just doing it once in a while?

SD: Right now I really don’t have time to do it, if it got to a point where the band wasn’t a full time thing I’m sure I would return to teaching. I taught writing at UMass Amherst for 3 years before the band started so I’ll probably try to find a teaching job along those lines when things aren’t so busy but that won’t be too soon.

RD: The band is based out of Northampton and you guys have got a really big following in Boston with recently selling out The Sinclair and doing a residency at Great Scott. When Speedy Ortiz first started playing shows in Boston, what was it like breaking into the scene there? Did it ever get difficult for you guys?

SD: At the time I knew a lot of bands already because of my old band Quilty and I already played with a lot of bands who were prominent in the Boston basement rock scene like Pile & Grass Is Green. So when I was starting a new project with other friends in bands that were basically in these same circles people kind of knew who we all were and what we were about so we were lucky that we already had friends in the scene, we already knew what bands we liked and we always were part of some pretty good shows. That’s straight from the first time we ever played.

RD: That must have been beneficial to start a new band off like that.

SD: Boston has always been the place where we’ve had the most friends and the most fans and I moved back there up until a couple of months ago. We’re sort of all spread out but I think we consider ourselves a Boston band more than anything because that’s sort of where we cut our teeth so to speak.

RD: This past April, Speedy Ortiz released in my opinion one of the best albums of the year so far with Foil Deer. It’s the band’s 3^rd full length and it’s the follow up to the band’s successful 2013 release Major Arcana. While making Foil Deer, did you feel any pressure to live up to the previous album that got a lot of press and a lot of people listening to it?

SD: We kind of consider Major Arcana to be our first full length … the Speedy Ortiz stuff that was coming out before the band was in it was really just demos from me. With Foil Deer, we were just trying to make something that we liked and what we thought was interesting. I don’t think we were thinking much about the last album at all because recordingwise that was sort of a hit and run. We spent like 4 days tracking 14 songs for that record and it was very much live sounding, we didn’t get a whole lot of chance to experiment and it was like basically playing the songs as we’d play them live. Whereas for this album we spent a lot more time thinking about how to arrange for a studio and we expressly didn’t want to sound live at all. We weren’t thinking about the last record, we were trying to do things quite differently.

RD: Where was the album made? Which studio did you use to make Foil Deer?

SD: Foil Deer was made in a studio In Brooklyn called Rare Book Room and the producer there is Nico Vernhes.

RD: After the Rock and Blues Concert Cruise on Sunday, what can we expect next from Speedy Ortiz? Are there any new releases in the works? Are there any big tours coming up?

SD: We’re doing a lot of festivals right now so our schedule has been mostly flying in and out of places. There’s going to be a lot more touring until the year is up, if we have any new music out I don’t know what it’ll be so we’ll see.

Tickets to the Rock and Blues Concert Cruise are still available: https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=b30b9937abdac6daf407e9a72270a50f

Purchase Foil Deer here: http://speedyortiz.bandcamp.com/album/foil-deer

Speedy Ortiz’s Website: http://speedyortiz.com