Fusing the emotional honesty and twangy accents of alt-country with the angular, insistent guitar attack of indie rock, Spanish for 100 was formed in Seattle, WA, in the spring of 2002. Corey Passons and Ross McGilvary had recently retired their regionally successful group Preston Mill and were interested in a project that would give them more room to explore their interest in rootsier artists such as Neil Young, the Jayhawks, and Wilco. Passons and McGilvary met Aaron Starkey, a musician and songwriter from Chicago who had recently relocated to the Pacific Northwest. Starkey hit it off with Passons and McGilvary, and the first edition of Spanish for 100 was born. In late 2003, after becoming a potent live attraction in Washington state, Spanish for 100 released their first album, Newborn Driving, which was recorded and produced by Phil Ek. An EP, Metric, was recorded in the summer of 2004 (also with Ek at the controls) and issued in early 2005, and after going through a disproportionately large number of drummers, Spanish for 100 teamed up with percussionist Chris Crumpler, who finally gave the group a steady lineup. More touring followed, with the band spreading the word out from the Pacific Northwest into the Midwest and East Coast, and in 2007 they released their second full-length album, Say What You Want to Say to Me, distributed by the independent Fish the Cat label. ~ Mark Deming