Greta Morgan has come a great distance. Because the vocalist/pianist of the Hush Sound, the band got here up alongside fellow Fueled By Ramen alumni like Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and Yellowcard within the mid-2000s. In reality, Pete Wentz recruited them to signal to the label after inviting the band to open for Fall Out Boy in northern Illinois. Within the years since, Morgan has gone on to develop into a touring member of Vampire Weekend, carried out (and created a deep friendship) with Jenny Lewis, and garnered recognition along with her personal weak solo tasks. Nonetheless, after contracting COVID-19 in 2020, she was identified with spasmodic dysphonia, a dysfunction that made her unable to sing. Along with her voice stifled, the way forward for her profession was unknown — a interval of grief, neighborhood, and resilience that’s brilliantly documented in her new e book, The Misplaced Voice: A Memoir.
“Scripting this e book was my roadmap out of the darkish,” Morgan tells AP. “It saved my spirit at a time after I was so depressed that I felt like I used to be disappearing. It allowed me to know my previous in a method that may create area for a wholly totally different future. I wanted to jot down this e book for myself, whether or not or not it might be printed. Expensive readers, please belief your singular voice, each actually and metaphorically. In case your life falls to items, that is perhaps a uncommon likelihood to construct one thing new. Your therapeutic won’t appear to be anybody else’s therapeutic. Nobody can create the proper path for you. Comply with your instinct. Grief is the tax we pay for loving effectively.”
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The veteran musician doesn’t lack any recommendation for these looking for or reclaim their very own voice, both, saying, “Play, play, play. Give your self permission to make the worst artwork doable. Delight your self, enchant your self, crack your self up, make your self cry. If you happen to change your life by making your artwork, it’s doable you’ll change another person’s life, too.”
In an unique excerpt from the singer’s heart-on-sleeve memoir, she provides us an inside take a look at the Hush Sound’s first present with Fall Out Boy in Could 2005 — and the way it set them on the trail for better acclaim.
HarperCollins
After that present, buzz about our band reached Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy, who invited us to open for them in northern Illinois. A couple of weeks later, we pulled into the backstage car parking zone of the Forest Hills Lodge in Rockford, Illinois, parking my mother’s SUV subsequent to Fall Out Boy’s shining silver behemoth of a tour bus. Pete swung the door open and invited us in. The bus jogged my memory of summer season camp—bunks stacked atop one another, three on both sides, affected by denim jackets, sweatshirts, and sneakers. It smelled like stale pizza and sweat. Within the entrance lounge, Pete stated he’d been listening to “Crawling In direction of the Solar” on repeat. His thick black eyeliner made him look sleep-deprived.
Of the 4 bands, I used to be the one lady on the invoice. Backstage, the throng of male musicians wore skinny denims, studded leather-based belts, and the emo model of a mop prime—overgrown, uneven hair swept mysteriously over one eye. As I took within the scene of all these boys milling about, I questioned, Is he cute? Is he cute? Is that one cute?
We arrange our tools and sound-checked earlier than the viewers arrived. As soon as the theater doorways opened, I peered out from the side-stage because the room flooring full of Fall Out Boy’s followers. They appeared like a cult—a large sea of dyed-black hair and black Fall Out Boy sweatshirts with huge white printed hearts. Whenever you unzipped the sweatshirt, the guts was meant to interrupt in half.
They’re gonna hate us, I assumed, particularly my piano ballads. My nerves had been on hearth as Darren counted off the primary music, “Crawling In direction of the Solar,” and I plunked the piano chords. I stared at my fingers, not capable of bear seeing the viewers’s response.
Fortunately, Bob carried out with a assured, visceral power. He took jerky steps backwards and forwards whereas strumming to the beat, bobbing his shoulders aspect to aspect. My thoughts repeated, Don’t mess up, don’t mess up, don’t mess up, which made me so inflexible that my physique was barely transferring, aside from my fingers. By the second refrain, I glanced up and seen folks within the entrance row mouthing the phrases. By the final refrain, much more folks had been singing. Pete and Patrick Stump, the lead singer of Fall Out Boy, had been watching side-stage, nodding their heads.
Subsequent, we performed my music “Weeping Willow.” It started with one verse that was simply my comfortable voice and piano. The snow received’t keep on with the weeping willow, I sang. Some of us within the entrance row appeared confused, like they had been tyring to unravel an algebra equation of their heads, however when the boys kicked in for the second verse, the viewers began transferring, shoulders swaying to the beat. By the point we reached the final refrain, folks had been additionally singing alongside. Tune by music, refrain by refrain, we received them over. The remainder of our set whirled by in a blur. By the tip, I used to be having a lot enjoyable that I broke by means of my shyness and shoulder-danced a bit bit behind my keyboard. After we completed, I used to be so charged up from the gang’s power that I felt like I may’ve single-handedly pushed Fall Out Boy’s tour bus up a hill.
As we walked offstage, we exchanged sweaty high-fives with the Fall Out Boy guys and Pete advised us we had been his new favourite band. “You’ll most likely promote out of T-shirts tonight, however save a pair for us, are you able to?” he requested.
I hadn’t heard a lot of their music, so I used to be stunned by what showmen they had been. Onstage the band thrashed round at excessive pace and their mosh pit was a cyclone of flailing limbs—it appeared extra like an exorcism than a live performance. Pete windmilled his bass in circles, then climbed on prime of the bass drum and leaped off it ten toes to the bottom. Seeing them create such a euphoric pandemonium made me ponder whether our music, too, may excite a crowd like that sometime.
On the merch desk, somebody requested for my autograph for the primary time. I reached for the marker and hesitantly printed my identify on their arm. When somebody requested me to signal a T-shirt, I attempted writing my initials in cursive. For the following autograph, I drew a smiley face and wrote GRETA curved upward on both aspect because the smile.
Excerpted from THE LOST VOICE by Greta Morgan and reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2025.
