Photo by Peter Romano

De facto high school law implies freshmen have hardly accomplished anything worth acknowledging. However, this year’s batch of freshmen contains three unassuming kids that have made many accomplishments already.
Freshmen Cooper Avery, Sam Griffin, and Griff Nelson are each one third of the band Secret 77. These three may be young and some may think they look too inexperienced to be calling themselves a band, but Secret 77 is no joke.
The band was formed two and a half years ago by drummer Cooper Avery and guitarist/vocalist Sam Griffin. The pair later recruited Griff Nelson to be their bassist and lead vocalist.
“I didn’t [join] until the summer after our sixth grade year,” Nelson said. “We technically met over Xbox Live and Facebook. [Sam] said ‘Oh, hey I need a bass player for my band. Would you wanna play bass?’ and I was like ‘Sure’ and we just went from there.”
The band did have other members at the beginning, but those few did not end up working out.
“They didn’t really [know how to play] the instruments they said they did,” Avery said.
The band began with one member doing most of the writing work, but once the members settled into their duties and were more comfortable working with each other, it truly became a group effort.
“It used to be where I would pretty much write the whole song, but then it became more of an us thing instead of just a me thing. Which is good so we get more ideas put into one song.” Nelson said.
All their hard work has paid off. The band started playing at local venues and even at venues out of Lawrence before they were out of middle school.
“We drove like two hours to Riley, Kan., once to play at something called the Riley Resurrection Festival,” Griffin said.
Avery noticed that the people of Riley were not accustomed to the kind of music they were playing.
“It was really awkward because no one there liked us,” Avery added.
The question that Secret 77 has had the most trouble answering is what kind of music they play. With all the influences the band draws on, the sound is a little out of the ordinary.
“We’ve been told it’s like a mix of pop punk, metal core, hardcore — stuff like that,” Griffin said.
Now when band members are asked the difficult question of what genre they are, they no longer have to try and explain with words. Secret 77 recently released its first full-length album that they recorded and mixed.
“The new album was made completely independently by us,” Nelson said.
One of the biggest challenges the band faces is being so much younger than almost every band in the music scene. The bands they have played with do not think too highly of Secret 77 at first glance.
“No one takes us seriously,” Nelson said. “[The other bands] are like ‘Oh! Little kids? What are we going to do with these guys? These guys are going to be awful.”
Band members knew going into the music scene that they would have to deal with the obvious age difference. They knew other bands can be discouraging, but the young Secret 77 musicians did their best to keep the negative comments from getting them down.
“[It discouraged us] a little bit at first, but now we just don’t care anymore,” Griffin said.
“We got over it,” Nelson added.
Despite all the challenges Secret 77 faces with being a young and new band in a constantly changing music scene and industry, they push on.
“We started the band because we all love music and just wanted to get on a stage and have a great time,” Nelson said.