Street Hearts prepare to steal show at JazzReggae

This article was updated on May 24 at 11:44 a.m.

The Street Hearts may have won JazzReggae Festival’s Battle of the Bands, but they almost didn’t even make it into the competition.

“A half hour before the whole thing was due we were like ‘Oh, yeah, let’s record a video of us and send it in,” said Nicholai Hansen, a second-year civil engineering student and the band’s bass player. “And then we played it back and you can’t hear us because the video was too far away. So we ended up sending in an iPhone recording of us from when we first jammed.”

The band, comprised of Hansen, Andrew Giurgiun, Nick Valentini and Sarah Summers, will take the stage together this Sunday as the opening act for JazzReggae Festival’s Jam Day. The Street Hearts are coming off big wins as “Best Band” and “Audience Choice” at Spring Sing, where Summers, performing solo, won “Best Solo/Duet Entry.”

It was Spring Sing that brought the young band, fully forming barely three months ago, together in the first place.

Hansen started playing and writing songs together with Giurgiun, a second-year English student who plays guitar in the band, after they both separately auditioned for Spring Sing 2012. Giurguin had also met Valentini, a second-year cognitive science student, around the same time, but it wasn’t until this year that he asked the keys player to join him and Hansen.

The three were accepted to compete as a band in this year’s Spring Sing, and soon met solo contestant Summers, a first-year dance student, at one of the competition’s first information sessions, where they were immediately taken with her talent.

“I was blown away when I heard her voice and I was just like ‘you need to jam with us,’” said Giurgiun. “And then we performed coincidentally together at Camp Kesem’s (Make the Magic Fundraiser). We were jamming with her before in the waiting room and it felt so natural to have her play with us.”

The ability to sing was key for the band, which Valentini said favors using and combining the differences in each member’s voice to make unique harmonies for its songs.

“We won’t add someone to the band unless they can sing,” Hansen said. “When we added Sarah to the band, we weren’t just going to add any girl that could play banjo or whatever, we wanted a girl that could sing.”

All four members of the Street Hearts were exposed to music and instruments at an early age. Hansen’s parents took him to the famous four-day Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee when he was 12.  Valentini said he was playing the piano by the age of 6, and soon wanted to explore something different from classical pieces.

“You get ‘Chops’ down and from there you kind of just want to start writing your own stuff because it becomes so structured and you need to express yourself in a different way,” he said. “(So I) started with blues, where it’s a simple scale, but it’s enough that you can do your own thing.”

Every member in the Street Hearts contributes to the songwriting, whether it be in the lyrics or the music.

Valentini said the band’s ability to vibe off each other, for one person to play something and then for another member to react with something else that fits just right, is essential to their music-making process.

“I remember with (the original song) ‘Dog Gone Days,’ I played one or two notes at most on my guitar, not even a chord,” Giurguin said. “and Nick was like ‘Wait, wait, wait, do that again.’ And then we came up with the verse of that song, and it sort of just evolved.”

The band said they’re not any one genre, instead introducing each other to and combining individual tastes in blues, indie-folk, and singer/songwriter acoustic for a raw sound. For Summers, the exposure to the various sounds and skills within the band has been one of the best parts about joining the Street Hearts.

“It becomes a community process, and you have more experiences to draw from when it comes to writing lyrics,” she said. “What else is interesting too is, everyone comes from a different musical background, and we all have slightly different tastes, so our sound is something that’s a little bit more nuanced than our solo stuff is individually.”

Even with all their recent success at UCLA, the band said their focus has never been to win competitions.

“(There’s been) all the fun stories about Spring Sing and we’re doing shows, but it really comes down to the music,” said Valentini. “Just the feelings that you have and putting them down.”

But as their audiences and gigs get bigger, including a planned small summer tour in Boston, the Street Hearts have begun seriously considering the possibility of pursuing their future as a band.

“I came into college with that mindset, ‘Oh that will never happen, I’ve got to be serious about my future.” Giurguin said. “But now my life is sort of completely up to me, that’s when I sort of realized I should do what means the most to me.”

It’s this idea of following one’s own journey that inspired the very name ‘Street Hearts,’ which was thought up on a night during winter quarter finals week, when Valentini woke up to 60 group text messages between Giurguin and Hansen trying out different ideas.

Giurguin said the name comes from recognizing one’s potential to succeed in their passions.

“We have all this potential to be successful, but some people have the dreams but not the means, the will but not the way,” Giurguin said. “That’s kind of what our band is all about – it’s going to sound corny but, following your heart, listening to your heart, listening to your dreams no matter what, ’cause that’s the only thing that matters and makes sense.”