Artist on the Rise: The Hush Now

Just a few years in and The Hush Now is already showcasing their musical range. With three albums under their belts, their self-titled debut, sophomore effort “Constellations” and their brand-new album, “Memos” (released back in September) the Boston indie rock quintet shows no signs of slowing down.

The band whose name derives from the ‘sense of anticipation’ the phrase suggests, as the band explained during their recent stint at this year’s Big Picture Media CMJ showcase, was on the second to last date of their seventeen-day tour. “This is day 16 of a 17 day tour,” revealed lead guitarist Adam Quane. “We’re ending up back home in Boston; we came up from Philly so unfortunately we’re in and out from this year’s CMJ and haven’t had the chance to hang out more,”  he said.

“We’re kinda walking [around] the city like zombies today,” added vocalist and guitarist Noel Kelly. Something that you may have not known from just looking at them, they seemed upbeat and ready to take on the evening. But perhaps it was the previous gig that almost did them in, “We kinda had a fun approach last night,” said Quane with a chuckle. “We got to the venue and the stage was just so small we had to improvise. There was no way [we were gonna fit] we have 5 guys and a sound guy that travels with us so then you have 6 guys onstage. So as we started pulling out elements…we ended up hooking up this Hannah Montana guitar we had bought earlier, a half-sized guitar, and just played this acoustic set. Barry, our drummer, played on the snare drum. We approached it differently and had a bit of fun with it.”

“We had to do a radio show and we needed an acoustic guitar so we bought this cheap Hannah Montana guitar…” explained Kelly and since bassist Pat MacDonald wasn’t around for the interview the guys decided to ‘out him’ as the band’s “closeted Hannah Montana fan.”

While performing in front a new crowd can be exciting it also can be a little frightening especially in front of a CMJ crowd, “It is nerve wrecking because you have a short time to perform. You have 6 songs to make some sort of impact also being in front of media…you wanna do well. You want to impress but at the same time stay true to yourself,” said Kelly.

The band calls Boston home but its roots were planted in Portland Oregon where Kelly first began writing new music for his next musical venture. “It started as a project about four years ago,” he explained.  “I was living in LA playing with another band [that] broke up so I moved over to Portland, lived in a basement for 6 months, went back to school for poetry and started writing new music and figured that I wanted to get a band together so I moved up to Boston. And now we got a whole cast of characters involved and we feel like we have a good band to move forward…”

The Hush Now plans to take time off for the holidays and work on new music for their next album. For more on the band visit http://www.thehushnow.com/

The Hush Now is: Noel Kelly (vocals/guitar), Adam Quane (lead guitar), Barry Marino (drums), John Millar (Keyboards) and Pat MacDonald (bass).