Scottsdale indie pop duo 76th St.

76^th Street

Writer Lynette Carrington gets to know a local young indie pop duo.

Haley Gold and Spencer Bryant know each other so well that they can finish each other’s sentences. What has been a nearly lifelong friendship has grown into the dynamic indie pop duo known as 76^th Street. The two 18-year-olds are studying business communications at ASU and manage to keep up with their burgeoning music career. Living together as roommates on campus makes everything from studying to songwriting that much easier for them.

“We met in fifth grade at Grayhawk Elementary School in Scottsdale,” Bryant says. “When we hung out for the first time, we realized that we both liked music. Right off the bat, we started singing together.”

The girls performed together in theatrical productions and eventually formed their band, starting in coffeehouses and other smaller venues to get their foot in the door. Bryant plays a powerful guitar as well as many other stringed instruments, and Gold plays piano and percussion. Their soaring sound is powerful, mesmerizing, and beautiful.

Of course, every great band needs a great name. “76^th Street is the street between both of our neighborhoods in Grayhawk,” Bryant explains.” It’s the road that kind of brought us together and connects our houses.”

Most of the duo’s music is original, but they also like to do the occasional cover for audience appeal. Songwriting, they say, comes pretty easily to them. “We found that we work so well together when it comes to writing music, and people are always asking us who writes the music. It’s 50-50,” Gold says. “We’ll compose together and write lyrics together. We can just sit down in our studio and write the songs in a few hours if that’s what we want to do.”

Gold’s parents help with managing and booking. “They’ll do a lot of that for us,” she says. ”But it basically just started with us just having to contact different venues and letting them know who we are. A few months later, it was us receiving the e-mails from people asking, ‘Hey, are you guys available?’ After that, we started booking shows so quickly that now we’re doing three shows every weekend.”

The girls went out on a short tour recently and singled out Boulder as a favorite stop. “We like playing new places because we can meet an entirely different audience,” Gold says. “We played a location in Boulder, Colorado, called the Laughing Goat. That was probably one of our most favorite shows because it was so intimate and it was more like a storyteller situation. I think that is our favorite way to play—to talk and have a conversation with the audience in between songs. Background music isn’t our favorite thing to do, so we like the storyteller situation where we get to know our audience as much as they get to know us.”

As 76^th Street, Gold and Bryant have performed across the Valley and beyond. Recent gigs include San Tan Village, Desert Ridge Marketplace, Boondocks, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Flagstaff Folk Festival, Taos Mesa Brewing in New Mexico, and Tarahumara in Utah. The duo hopes to travel and take their act to an even wider audience in the future.

To learn more about 76^th Street, visit 76thstreet.net.