If you’ve read our review of TRUSS’ new album FLUORESCENCE, maybe they need no introduction. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the review or the album yet, though – here’s a fine place to start, too. TRUSS is an up-and-coming hard rock trio based in Cleveland, and FLUORESCENCE is their second full-length album, mixed and mastered entirely by the band. Somehow, even amongst all their upcoming shows and album promotion, lead vocalist Hannah Crandall found the time to sit down and chat with me about the band’s history, her childhood love of Hannah Montana, their incredible new album, and what the rest of their summer looks like.

Fox: So I thought we might start by talking a little about kind of the history of the band and how you all know each other – I know you’ve said in other interviews that you and Holden (Szalek, drummer) have known each other since you were five? Is that right?

Hannah:  Yes. Since we were in kindergarten, which is so crazy to think about. Both of us are turning 28 this summer and I think Holden might be my longest lasting friend ever, which is crazy.

F: So between that and then the fact that the two of you have also been playing with Eric (Kennedy, bassist/guitarist) since high school, do you feel like knowing each other so well is a particular strength of your band?

H:  Oh, I definitely do. I did an interview the other day and I caught myself telling this woman that the most comfortable I am and the most at home I feel, outside of just being around family, is when I’m on stage with Eric and Holden. Like, if I’m ever nervous for a show or something is going on, those are the two people that I confide in and find strength in. I think the fact that we’re all best friends definitely is a very positive reflection in our music.

I can’t imagine being in a band with people that you aren’t that close with. I mean, you travel together, you see your most vulnerable points in a band. It’s kind of like a relationship, to be quite honest with you – but harder because being in a band is turbulent and especially being in an up and coming band, it makes it 10 times harder.

F: In another interview you did recently, I was interested to hear you say you didn’t get into rock music until you were older, so you didn’t really grow up on it the way your bandmates did. Do you feel like that gave you a different perspective on it compared to Holden and Eric?

H:  Yeah, I think it probably does! I remember the first time I ever saw Holden play drums. We were in third grade, and he played drums for our school dance or something. It’s a core memory that I have of Holden that I think is so funny – I think he played “Wipe Out”, and I was like, “What is this? Like how do I dance to this as a 10-year-old?” But that was the background that he had. That was what he grew up doing. Eric had a similar situation where his parents listened to AC/DC, all the classics. He listened to a lot of, like, Sex Pistols, classic punk music, that’s kind of what he grew up with.

I think, for me, I grew up listening to eighties pop, mostly. That was what my parents played around the house, you know, Michael Jackson and Prince, and Whitney Houston. My mom was a big Celine Dion fan. I grew up with that side of things, but then also Disney Channel – I’m a Disney kid through and through. I wanted to be Hannah Montana when I was 12. I think we all have very different backgrounds and perspectives that we bring to the table. 

Personally, I really focus on women in rock, you know? As cliche as it sounds, some of my favorite bands of all time are L7 and Paramore, and you know, there’s a reason why girls all name those acts – and Ann Wilson (of Heart) whose birthday is today! I think I probably have a little bit of a different perspective on it than they do just because it’s newer to me than them.

F: Do you think that’s specifically influenced your vocal style? That move from growing up on pop and Disney Channel to coming into rock music?

H:  Honestly, I do think it has. I mentioned Hannah Montana. It sounds like a joke, but Miley Cyrus is awesome. I mean, let’s just put it out there. She’s fantastic. When I was younger, I was striving to sing like her. I wanted to be like her. 

Hayley Williams is another one. The first time I ever heard a Paramore song, I wanna say I was between 11 and 12 years old and I was playing Rock Band 2 with one of my brothers, and the song “That’s What You Get” was on Rock Band.

I had no idea who Paramore was and I didn’t listen to that type of music at that age, but I was obsessed with that song. And once I found it, I kind of was striving to sing like that. So I think – maybe not so much in tone and the direction that TRUSS went, I definitely have singers from Disney Channel or from whatever games I was playing. I kind of took inspiration from people like that, especially because I didn’t really have any background or anyone showing me those types of songs. 

I think like my first real, true, woman in music that I admired was Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus. That was where I started. I wanted to be Hannah Montana. I think it still kind of shows a little bit in my live performances.

F: I love that, though. Honestly I was a Radio Disney kid, too, so I respect it. Moving on to your process as a band – you guys are totally DIY, you were for your first album as well. Do you feel like there are things you learned from recording your first album that you were able to apply to making FLUORESCENCE?

H:  Very much. I actually think there’s a huge, huge difference between our first and second record. I love our first record, we still play those songs and they’re still special to us. Just being our first record, how could you not still love it? From a songwriting perspective and also from a production standpoint especially, the growth has been just astronomical since the last album. Especially Eric and Holden, everything production-wise is mostly them. Eric is kind of in the driver’s seat and Holden’s in the passenger seat for a lot of it. I learn and do what they tell me with production stuff ’cause it’s not my forte, but it’s so cool to see. 

If you listen to RESET MY HEAD and FLUORESCENCE, you can hear such a drastic difference in my opinion, in terms of the production quality. Even something as small as, like, we didn’t really put backup vocals on the first record. It was something that we never really tackled because we were still learning. In this record, it’s the complete opposite. There’s a lot of sprinkles on the record – cool little effects in the back, some harmony work. There’s some Easter eggs if you notice them. I think the growth has been really huge and it’s really cool to kind of look at, back to back, our first and second record and see that.

F: Coming around to FLUORESCENCE specifically, I really love the album cover – can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind it or the process of creating it?

H:  Nobody’s asked me yet! I’ve actually been kind of waiting for it. What ended up happening was – as I’m sure a lot of bands do, we were scrambling to meet deadlines for this record, and we hit a wall of realizing we don’t have album art, you know? So we started brainstorming things ourselves.

FLUORESCENCE, lyrically, is a very introspective record, if you wanna put it that way. It’s a lot of things that are just reflective of what I was going through in 2024 just by being the lyricist on these songs. I wanted that to be portrayed in the album art, but I didn’t want it to be too on the nose – I feel like you can make something like that kind of cheesy if you don’t do it right. I had this idea of getting an old computer monitor and basically having a girl kind of looking back at herself in this monitor. It was a whole reflection thing. We had a model that we were working with, we had all these things, but the plan kind of fell apart and we were up against the deadline, so the boys decided I was gonna be the girl in the photo instead. 

I actually work at an old Masonic temple. It’s a repurposed Masonic temple that is a venue and there’s a lot of weird, creepy stuff in that place. Underground tunnels and dungeons, the whole nine yards, it’s there. So we were like, you know what, let’s take the computer monitor that I took from my grandma (shout out, grandma, thank you), take me Holden and Eric, and we showed up at the Masonic temple and we just started messing around with ideas and pictures and toying with the lighting. We actually have a photographer and videographer, Geno, that usually handles everything for us, but this was a situation where he wasn’t available and we decided to just wing it.

What’s cool about the photo that we ended up going with, though, is that we were probably there taking photos for two hours, just trying everything that we could think of, trying to figure out what to make the final album art, but when we were going through the photos, we ended up liking that one the most, which was not our original plan. It ended up being kind of a different concept by the end of it. The photo that was used as the album art was actually the test shot that Holden took by mistake! That wasn’t even supposed to be a shot in the photoshoot. It ended up being the practice shot. That’s why I’m not paying attention in the photo. I actually think I’m, like, actively talking to Eric. The lighting on the computer monitor’s kind of weird, we were still setting up – so I think it’s kind of cool.

The shot that wasn’t supposed to happen ended up being the one that we went with. It’s very truly a candid, DIY photo.

F: “SELFISH” was one of your earlier singles for the album – I saw Eric had said at one point that he felt like it was a good “representation of the direction of the album” – was that why you selected it as an early single?

H:  To be honest, I think we chose “SELFISH” as a single because it’s our favorite TRUSS song, as a band. I guess I haven’t asked the guys since we put out the record if their favorite song has changed, but “SELFISH” has always been my favorite song that we have, and it’s our favorite to play live, too. 

Honestly, that was really all that it was. We wrote “SELFISH” and we thought it was really special. We also hoped it might encourage people to check out the songs maybe they don’t know as well or that they haven’t heard on the record, because they know “SELFISH” is gonna be on there.

F: I also saw you said “SOILED,” your first single for the album, was something that felt “outside of your comfort zone” as a band – can you say a little bit more about that?

H:  Yeah! “SOILED” is, at least vocally for me, it’s a little bit different than all the other songs on the album. It’s a lot more punk-coded to me. There’s some chanting in that song, there’s a lot of weird little whisper parts. It was a bit of a challenge for me vocally. It’s a lot of jumping around, melodically, but it’s also one of my favorite songs to play live. There’s a pre chorus in there where I say, “See what you did to me?” And on the record, I whisper it. Live, you don’t hear my whispers, but that’s the part where the crowd always sings it back to me. It’s become one of my favorite songs to play. 

“SOILED” was a huge, huge turning point in TRUSS and from a writing standpoint, it was a challenge in a good way. I think that when we wrote it, it was kind of the turning point of starting to figure out what we should sound like and what we want ourselves to sound like. It also marked a change in our live performances. We started using in-ears around that time – we just kind of started taking things up a notch, so “SOILED” was a challenge and it was very much needed. It was a huge stepping stone for us as songwriters. It was actually the first song we wrote for the record.

F: Oh, that’s very cool to know! One other song I wanted to ask about – “concession stand” was another standout for me on the album but I hadn’t really heard you talk about it much yet – I was just curious if you could talk a little about the inspiration or writing process for that song.

H:  So I think “concession stand,” at least personally, I think it’s kind of the dark horse on the album. I think it just feels good. It kind of has that Deftones undertone to it – kind of like the nineties, post-grunge feel. I like the story behind “concession stand,” too. Eric and Holden actually wrote Concession Stand without me. They wrote it at a practice where I wasn’t with them. When they brought the song to me. They had the music, they didn’t have lyrics, that was for me to fill in, but they had a name for the song, which I thought was very weird.

They had never done that before. They came to me and they’re like, “Here’s the music for this song, go write some vocals for it. It’s called ‘concession stand.’” I was like, “How did you guys name a song that we don’t have lyrics for?” They were like, “That is the theme. It’s ‘concession stand.’ There you go. Here’s your starting block.” And I was like, “What do I do with this? Do I write about food, like fair food? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this.” It took me a couple weeks to kind of figure out what they were talking about.

I just wasn’t getting it, and Holden was like, “Yeah, this song just kind of feels like when you’re little and you’re at a concession stand.” I was like, “Okay, I think I’m kind of getting the picture.” Ultimately, it’s a song that I really, really love. It’s probably in my top three favorite TRUSS songs now. “concession stand” ended up being a song all about nostalgia. It ended up being a song about when you’re a kid and you wanna grow up, but then you grow up only to wish that you were a kid again. You just see how quickly life goes by, and you would do anything to go back to being, you know, a little kid at the fair with your friends and your siblings.

I don’t know if that’s what the guys meant by “concession stand,” but that’s how I interpreted it.

F: I love that. You guys are opening for Winona Fighter on July 15th at the Rumba Cafe in Columbus, Ohio – how did that happen? Because a lot of us at the magazine are big fans of both of you, it’s cool to see you on the same lineup.

H:  I reached out to their agent and I pretty much just tossed TRUSS’ hat in the ring. I sent him our material and told him who we were and who I was, and I kind of just left it open-ended of, “If you need an opener!” And sure enough he hit me back and he was like, “Congrats!” It was really that plain and simple and quick. He just was like, “Yep, you guys make sense. You’re in.” I’m like, “Great.” That’s July 15th, and I’m so excited.

One of the best fits for us, I think, that’s out there right now is Winona Fighter. I’ve seen so many videos of them, and they’re just absolutely wild on stage. I don’t know where they get the energy from. I’m gonna have to drink a lot of caffeine the day that we play with them to keep up with her. They’re amazing.

F: One other show question – TRUSS is also playing a show at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on August 7th. That sounds really cool to me, as someone who’s not local, but is that as cool if you’re a part of the Cleveland scene?

H: It’s super cool. Anyone who pretends like they’re not freaking out is lying, because it’s really cool.  I remember going to the Rock Hall as a kid and the fact that my name is on the Rock Hall website is really cool.

F: Awesome. I love that. One last bonus question, then – when I was looking into your work specifically, I saw that you actually put on an annual benefit called Rock the Halls every December – could you tell us a little about that?

H:  A couple years ago, in light of political climates, we’ll say, I wanted to do something to raise awareness and help causes that I personally believe in. I organized a show called Rock the Halls. It was around Christmas time, and I rounded up eight female led bands in Cleveland, and I went to the House of Blues and pitched them the idea of raising money for women’s rights. They backed me a hundred percent, and the show played off. It was awesome. We were able to donate thousands of dollars to the nonprofit that I had picked out. It was a really, really surreal and wonderful experience to be the organizer behind it, and then also TRUSS got to headline it,  so that was pretty cool. 

I’ve done the event for three years in a row, two years in a row now. It’s really my way of trying to make a difference and donating money to places that I thought needed it. So, you know, we donated to the women’s shelter and a reproductive rights organization. It was a really cool event. I got a lot of support from the city. I got a lot of support from the music scene, the venues, my band members, all of our friends and family.

It’s been very rewarding and well worth it. So I’m just looking forward to seeing it grow.

You can find TRUSS on Instagram, or be sure to catch them at one of their shows later this year if you get a chance!