They Are Family: The Hush Sound as Decaydance’s Congenial Children

The Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen family are TIGHT. This year they’re ruling three-fourths of the Honda Civic Tour, they constantly make cameos on each others’ albums, and a group of them even appeared together on MTV’s “TRL” earlier this month.

So how does the rock version of Def Jam make it work? Doesrecently hitched Decaydance patriarch Pete Wentz send them away to summer camp and make them do trust falls? Nah, he just sends them on tour together and the bonding experiences bloom themselves. Greta Salpeter of The Hush Sound chatted with us about it when she called Buzznet on Friday.

“We play a lot of Hacky Sack — at least on this tour,” she said. “Panic at the Disco started it — they started with this big circle and all of us we’re kinda like, ‘Oh, who are these hippies?’ And then we started playing, and we bought our own. Phantom Planet is playing now, too.”

As far advice given to her band by “family relatives,” Greta said, “When Patrick [Stump] produced our record, we became better friends with him and he kind of gave us a clue into how to make this all work — how to have fun and still stay true to what you want to do.”

Just like Panic rubbed off on The Hush Sound while on tour, the latter group might have some influence on its own underlings of sorts — whether either band likes it or not. This summer, The Hush Sound will tour with Decaydance newcomers The Cab, and although the Hushies are three albums and several tours their senior, Greta doesn’t see her band in a position to be mentoring anyone just yet, “other than just to relax, have fun, and write music that you want to write.”

While that attitude might be shared by many bands on the Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen roster, what sets The Hush Sound slightly apart from their label-mates is that the group’s front-person has yet to emerge. They consciously try to keep it equal, since writing songs is a joint effort. “If one of us wrote all the songs, then that person would become the frontman, without really trying,” Salpeter said.

Speaking of writing, although Goodbye Blues is still fresh in fans’ heads, the band is writing while on tour as well. It’s just have a little less to work with in this situation —”I was just jokingly thinking earlier that none of my songs on the next record are going to have piano on them, because the only thing I can write on when we’re on tour is a guitar,” Salpeter said.

It’s not just The Hush Sound who are doing the impressing, though — fans are certainly doing their part to make the bands’ jaws drop: “We’ve met a lot of kids on this tour who have tattoos. One girl came and had us write, ‘Don’t wake me up, I’m still dreaming,’ in all of our handwriting — and then she’s getting OUR handwriting tattooed on her, which is pretty insane.”

Read more about The Hush Sound’s next video and Greta’s collaboration plans in the interview we posted Friday!