Proudly wearing the suburban hardcore badge everywhere they go, Sir Echo arrived to Austin for their first SXSW with one goal in mind: to introduce Texans to the beauty of Hudson Valley’s DIY scene. Playing together since they were kids, the band has a chemistry most would envy, infecting every record they touch. Sir Echo has already solidified themselves in the history of their hometown, with diehards sending them off on their journey to the Live Music Capital of the World as the first band out of the Hudson Valley to play on a South By stage.
Starting off playing bare bones shows thrown in living rooms and makeshift venues, Sir Echo proudly serves as a love letter to DIY spaces everywhere. This sentiment of camaraderie and pure love for the art of hardcore carries throughout their sound all the way into their moral code. Much like lightning, Sir Echo’s electrifying live shows never quite hit the same spot twice, making their 7:45p.m. performance at Empire on Friday a must see for any rock fanatic.
Read our interview with the band below:
DJ Duderanch: Let’s start with an ice breaker. Tell me your name, your role in the band and your favorite song you remember playing on Guitar Hero.
Jeremy Stein: My name is Jeremy, I play guitar for the band, so by no surprise I picked up Guitar Hero 2 very quickly. I remember my mom was way into Guitar Hero, so when I got good grades she went out and bought Guitar Hero 2. She would play it all day when I was at school, and when I got home she’d ask me “Can you play this one song? I can’t seem to beat it. My favorite song would probably be “Laid to Rest” by Lamb of God. At a very early age I was already into metal, super early on.
Mike Hydos: My name is Mike, I play bass. I always watched my family playing because I was the youngest kid and they wouldn’t let me. But my favorite was probably Stellar by Incubus. That’s a good one.
David Stingle: My name is David, I play drums in the band. I didn’t actually have Guitar Hero, but I had a bunch of the Rock Band games. I loved Lego Rock Band. That was my favorite one. I ended up really loving Through the Fire in Flames. I thought I was so good because I played the drum part and it was way easier than the guitar.
Amelia Allen: My name is Amelia, I’m the singer. I did not have Rock Band, but I did have High School Musical: The Karaoke Sing Along on the (PlayStation) one or two. It came with a little microphone. My favorite song was Breaking Free.
MH: That’s very Amelia-coded.
Photos taken by Cam DeVogel 'Cool Ranch Cam' and Kacie Owen
DJ: How did you guys get started playing music before the band came together?
AA: We are all from the same hometown. Cornwall, in the Hudson Valley, about an hour and a half away from New York City. Because of that we’ve all played music together throughout high school, or for me and Mike since middle school. I got my start in music from the moment I arrived into this world. It was like, woah, this music thing really connects with me and makes me feel something. I should probably follow that.
DJ: What was the moment you guys realized this could be more than just a jam session with friends, that this could be something bigger?
AA: I was actually working for a live streaming company and they were sending me to Nashville to do some things at venues there. I didn’t really have a band, so me, Jeremy and David moved into a house together and the band just kind of formed from there. The moment we realized we could play more than just Hudson Valley was in Albany in 2021.
JS: The first Albany show we did was the second show we ever played together. It was received so well. This wasn’t just a show that our friends were putting on, this was something that we drove two hours for.
AA: They took a chance on us. They didn’t know us, we had no following.
DS: For me, a lot of the shows I had done prior to that, most of the people that were in the audience were our friends or people that came to see us. This was one of the first shows that I remember leaving with the feeling that we had picked up a fan or two. It was a new experience for me.
JS: That was the moment where we realized we could take this other places. If people liked us here they’d probably like us in Boston or Philly. So we started doing a lot of Boston, New York City, Lancaster, a bunch of little suburban areas. We’d play a couple times a year, and over time we developed relationships with people, promoters and booking agents. Even bands that were interested in playing with us. That was really big for us early on, the underground, DIY scene.
AA: We even had our own house venue for a little while. Threw a couple shows.
JS: VFW’s were big in that sense, of people just wanting to throw shows and invite other bands to come play.
DJ: VFW’s? Can you tell me more about that?
AA: It’s a Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall. People rent out the space for quinceñeras and stuff. Hayley Williams from Paramore, their first tour was a VFW hall tour.
DS: Since they were, like, 15, they couldn’t play anywhere. They couldn’t get into a lot of the clubs.
JS: It was a thing early on for us too, because Amelia wasn’t 21. We had to navigate that. You wouldn’t think as a performer people would give you any crap for that, but there were a handful of times where it was a problem.
AA: I got kicked out of our own show!
JS: It happened. We would soundcheck, then we’d go outside and try to come back in and some door guy with an ego is like, “Can’t let you guys back in.” We were just on stage!
AA: My wallet was still inside, I couldn’t even give him my ID. He says, quote verbatim, “I know girls like you who try to sneak into the shows for free.”
JS: We had to deal with that for a little while, so we wanted to really make sure we could throw shows that were all ages.
AA: It’s still very important to us.
DS: We still try to make sure we have a show or two on any tour that are all ages.
AA: Both our Texas shows are all ages.
DJ: Wow. That really is something I hadn’t considered, the inaccessibility for younger folks to get involved in their local music scene.
JS: Especially in New York City, all ages shows are a dime a dozen.
DS: There was actually a DIY space run by a bunch of high school kids that we got to play a couple of times. It was really nice getting to play to a younger audience. I remember being a 16 year old kid looking at all the older kids and feeling like, wow, that’s awesome. I want to do that one day. It’s nice being on the other end of that.
AA: They featured us in an article for their high school. Very sweet.
DJ: Are there any differences you’ve noticed when playing an all ages show versus something 21 and up?
AA: It’s pretty much the same. I think, especially in this post-pandemic atmosphere, everyone’s just looking to get out and mosh and sing and scream and dance. That’s pretty universal.
Photos taken by Cam DeVogel 'Cool Ranch Cam' and Kacie Owen
DJ: Switching gears a little bit, tell me about your journey of getting your first double single released, “Obituary / Raven”?
AA: “Raven” was the first song that people sang along to at the shows without it being released. So we realized we had to put that song out there. And it rips!
MH: That was actually one of the first songs that we all wrote together.
JS: Funny enough, Mike wasn’t the bassist at this point in time but he helped us write that first song. It came from a jam session. We were hanging out before a house show and it just happened.
MH: All of our singles up to this point have been released in a very experimental, “going with the flow” kind of way. We want to keep the momentum, see what works and what doesn’t, what we like and don’t like. And also work on songs that fans ask for too.
DJ: So would you say that a majority of your setlists usually consist of unreleased songs?
MH: Yeah, most of the time.
AA: I think right now we’re only playing three released songs in our set, out of a total of six songs.
JS: It’s been like that since the beginning, to be honest. We didn’t realize how weird that was. It’s the underground, DIY in us — that’s just how it’s always been.
DS: We’ll start practicing for something, and then one of us will have an idea and it’ll just snowball.
MH: And we’ll be like, “well, we have a new song and we have a gig tomorrow. Let’s try it out, see what happens.”
AA: Another part of it is the DIY circuit up where we live has a really devoted following, so it’s boring to see a band play the exact same set two weeks in a row. Playing unreleased songs keeps things fresh.
DS: The first year of Sir Echo, we played 70 shows, and a lot of them were within a four hour radius of where we live. Releasing enough music to be able to fill that many shows just isn’t practical. We weren’t a cover band...
AA: Never.
DS: ...so we just kept going. This is what we love to do. It came so naturally to us to just want to play and write songs.
Photos taken by Cam DeVogel 'Cool Ranch Cam' and Kacie Owen
DJ: What do y’all have planned for your two Texas shows, one at Empire Garage and the other at Tantra in San Marcos?
JS: Energy. It’s gonna be loud, it’s gonna be awesome, it’s gonna get people moving. We’re doing the same set of mostly new songs that we did at New Paltz before we came.
AA: At the New Paltz show I told the crowd, “We’re really excited to go to Texas, but you guys are not in Texas.” I’m nervous because it’s easy for us to play a whole set of new shit that people are singing along to back home, but here it’s all about that first impression.
JS: That New Palz send off was so needed. You’re always a bundle of nerves when you go to a new place and it’s all new faces.
AA: I mean, SXSW is huge. We’re not signed. We’re just a bunch of kids from Cornwall. We are for sure the only band from our town to ever play SXSW.
JS: People back home are rooting for us. That’s an amazing feeling. It feels so good to get to share the space we’ve been occupying the last couple of years. And we’re going to do it all in 30 minutes.
MH: There’s an energy in the northeast you can’t really find anywhere else. It gets so cold there, there’s not much to do, so you go to a DIY show and get all your energy out in the warmth of the mosh pit. You get really close to people. There’s a really tight knit, high energy community in the Northeast that I think is very organic. Sir Echo kind of encapsulates that. It feels good to be representing that energy here in Texas.
DJ: How has Sir Echo’s start within your local DIY scene affected the way you approach the band, and especially the way you approach performing outside of the Hudson Valley?
AA: For example, yesterday here in Austin, we ended up having a really good conversation about the bands with the person running the door at Parish. We were talking about Texas, and I mention something about being DIY and he was like, “You guys are DIY? I used to run a house venue!” It’s like dude, you get it. We see each other.
It’s this mutual understanding, kindred spirit sort of thing. In DIY, you sacrifice so many things for what may or may not be a good show. Sometimes we’ll drive for seven hours and eat nothing but McDonalds four days in a row, just to get to the show and realize, “Oh my god, there are five people here.” It’s this mutual understanding of everything you did to earn your stripes, and we all love it. I’m not trying to complain whatsoever.
DS: I’d do it all again.
AA: It’s why we’re playing San Marcos on Saturday. I knew we were coming to Texas and we were going to play this really official thing on a big stage with industry people. That’s cool, but I need to see what’s really happening in Texas. What’s happening at SXSW isn’t the best representation of the Texas community, so I DM’d a bunch of Texas bands asking if they could help us book something.
Now, the band we’re playing with on Saturday, they’re taking us around the Square afterwards. That’s what DIY is about — you can be anywhere in the country and if you say the words “house show” or “DIY,” there’s an immediate understanding.
DJ: I love the way you guys talk about the DIY scene with so much love.
JS: It’s all we had. There really aren’t venues in the suburbs, and those that were there aren’t very conducive to rock music. We’d sell out shows with 200 people at a church, and it’s like, the need is here so why aren’t there venues? It’s always been that, at any cost, we’re going to have punk shows.
MH: We wouldn't be here without that scene.
JS: They're the same as us, and we're the same as them. We just happen to be playing one night, but on any other night we'd be on the other end of it, in the audience.
Photos taken by Cam DeVogel 'Cool Ranch Cam' and Kacie Owen
DJ: Amelia, you've got a very big, theatrical voice. Who are some of your biggest inspirations, and how did you go about finding your personal singing style?
AA: When I was in voice lessons as a kid, they would always tell me I was too loud. It always felt like they were putting me into a box. I felt embarrassed that they had to do that to me. I started listening to these emo bands that had a very theatrical element to them that they were able to turn into their sound. One of the first that stood out to me was Brendon Urie. His voice was so unconventional at the time. Him and Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy.
DJ: One last one for Amelia. I've noticed you talk a lot about female vocalists and female-fronted punk bands. I wanted to know, how has your experience as a woman in this scene led to you becoming a sort of advocate for more women in hardcore?
AA: We live in unprecedented times in our country, and I think that it is going to be more important than ever to be as loud as we can to unify all of us. Like that one Instagram account that blocks out all of the names of bands without women or non-binary people on festival posters, some of them only have three on the lineup that fit the criteria. It's infuriating.
I think this want to advocate stems from being a young girl into emo music when I was 13, and not being able to really find a lot of emo music that was female-fronted. There have been moments where I'll look in the crowd and there's a little girls in a tutu, dancing to our music. That rocks. My hope is to inspire other girls to be loud, to dance on stage and be unapologetic. Say what you have to say.
DJ: What's your biggest piece of advice for women looking to get their start in the emo scene?
Do it, and do it different. If you have a story to share, share it. Find what you have to say, what's important to you and what you wish you would have heard when you were younger.