Hush-Hush Brings London Club Scene to SU: A Convo with the Co-Founders

Two seniors came back from a semester in London eager to emulate a European clubbing experience in Syracuse. With a night full of EDM sets on October 20th, Hush-Hush Fall Festival accomplished just that.

Words By Nehilah Grand-Pierre / Photos by Nehilah Grand-Pierre/ Graphic by Griffin Turner

It’s no secret that music brings people together. Yet, even in the unity of dancing in a crowd, the universal language of dance serves different purposes across cultures.

“In Europe, the clubs are so much different than in the U.S.”, said Joe Lauria, co-founder of Hush-Hush, the EDM festival that took place at Syracuse University on October 20th.

Lauria spent the spring semester of his junior year abroad in London, where it did not take him long to fall for the European house music scene. During his time in London, Lauria met Max Lehouiller, another junior in the program with a love for live music. Lauria discovered a plethora of genres in London’s party spaces, hearing music that he hadn’t been exposed to much in America.

“We got really into house music, drum and bass, UK garage, all types of different electronic music,” Lauria recalled.

Coming back to SU for their senior year, Lauria and Lehouiller reconvened at The Cage’s first event of the year this September. That’s when the spark returned.

“I just remember I went up to him and I was like, ‘I want to do a festival and I want your help cause I know you can help me with this,’” said Lauria.

Now seniors, the two have developed a niche for putting on shows throughout their college experiences. Lauria worked for The Cage and did promos for The Harrington, while Lehouiller was a member of University Union and worked at New York City venues like Brooklyn Steele and Terminal 5. Naturally, Lehouiller was on board.

The preparation began promptly and the two already knew their intentions: to make a London club vibe possible for a Syracuse audience. Lauria and Lehouiller sought to college-ify the event by making it an experience with food trucks, multiple venues, and a variety of performers. Still, they wanted to find a creative way to spread the word on campus.

“That’s when the idea of keeping it quiet at first was brought up. It created this buzz,” said Lehouiller.

Hence, Hush-Hush was born. Leaning into the mysterious element, tickets weren’t released until four days before the event. They also kept the venue a secret, which worked to their advantage since it switched five times before they could make something work.

Part of the vision was also making the event accessible, not only in proximity but also to as many SU social scenes as possible. The organizers hoped to use music as a universal language at the university like clubs in Europe do, uniting different sections of the student body in the spirit of dance. For Lauria and Lehoullier, the key to making this happen was diversifying the DJs they recruited.

“We made sure we weren’t just picking the DJ from the frat that gets the most people. We also tried to get DJs who aren’t in the frat scene because this wasn’t supposed to be Greek life-only,” said Lauria.

Overall, they looked for people with passion, regardless of their experience level.

“I spent the entirety of last week learning how to DJ from scratch essentially,” said Ashley Girouard, who opened at Hush-Hush.

Like Lauria and Lehouiller, Girouard also spent her junior spring semester in London, where she met the co-founders and grew her enthusiasm for London’s electronic music. When she came back to campus and followed the Hush-Hush Instagram account, she threw herself in the running without prior familiarity with DJing.

“I posted in this subReddit called Beatmatch on Monday, and I was like ‘If you have to learn how to help someone learn how to DJ in 3 days, what would be the most important skill to learn?’ Everyone was flaming me like, ‘Learn how to call out sick.’”

Within three days and countless YouTube tutorials, Girouard successfully curated her hip-hop-inspired set, featuring tracks like “Rich Baby Daddy” by Drake, “Location” by Playboi Carti, and “SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY” by Lil Yachty.

The crowd at both the Lucy Blu and Orange Crate Brewing Company tent venues didn’t let anything rain on their parade despite the gloomy weather.

With the line wrapping around the block, the turnout was larger than expected. For students like Izzy Kaufman, the decision of whether to come or stay inside was simple.

“I came because I really like the live music scene, and I’ve been to other places like Redgate and Cage. I think it will be a cool collaboration of a bunch of different people and artists in the area.”

According to Lauria and Lehoullier, over 1,000 tickets were sold on the day of the event alone. Hands were in the air and there was plenty of dancing as DJs like Mark Samuel and Gavin Mitchell brightened the dreary weather with summertime energy.

Throughout the sets, the audience danced along to tracks like, “Satisfaction” by Benny Benassi & The Biz, and remixes of “Just Like That” by Macca Girls” and Karma Kid’s “LVL”.

“Obviously there were no food trucks like we promised. The rain was something we couldn’t control and it turned off a lot of vendors and food trucks from coming” explained Lauria.

Sure, everything did not go as planned, but Hush-Hush went better than the two originally imagined. Though another event can’t be promised yet, the future is bright for the seniors who orchestrated the festival.

Reflecting on the night as a whole, the duo was proud of its accomplishments. To Lehouiller, it was a job more than well done.

“We wanted to bring everyone together through music, and we did that.”