Why were we called The Lisps?

When I was a kid I had a very strong lisp, and when I was in 6th grade I smashed my two front teeth, which caused a lifelong complication with my mouth, teeth and sibilance in general. In 2003 posted some songs to a site where random strangers give feedback on your music. One of the anonymous commenters said something to the effect of, “I like this track but it sounds kind of lispy.” At first I was offended, but then I started to see the comment as a provocation. What is music that is lispy? Am I lispy? What’s so bad about being lispy?

When Sammy and I started singing together in 2004 I was fascinated by her voice, and thought there was a way that she sounded lispy like me. She disagreed, but we joked that if we started a band we could call it The Lisps. She maintains that it was her idea. I think it was mine. But we’ve agreed to disagree, and about a year later when we started recording and performing for our friends, we said we were The Lisps with out a lot of discussion.

Over the years the name felt like a drag sometimes, as people thought we were making fun of lisps, or they would use our band name as an opportunity to imitate a lisp, when really I was trying to confront my own self-consciousness about my speech, and to turn a perceived weakness into a calling card. The reason it made sense to me as a band name was that the project of the band was to lead with our soft silliness. To treat our shortcomings as strengths. At their best our songs were meant to be little pranks that sampled the nostalgia of Americana in order to unveil our vulnerability.

photo by Jeri Orling