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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Thursday, 31 January 2008 |
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If you go see a Will Hoge show, do yourself and everyone around you a favor: don’t be “that guy.”
In a recent entry on his blog, the southern-fried singer jokingly wrote about renaming his tour the “Shut The F*** Up Tour,” as he and his band have periodically been doing battle with loud, drunk people talking throughout their quieter songs. His latest release, “Draw the Curtains” still features rocking songs with a southern twang and a healthy dose of Hoge’s raspy blue-eyed soul vocal style, but there are some quieter numbers too—which seems to be confusing the drunk talkers.
“There’s a person every third or fourth show who is drunk and yakking to their friends,” Hoge said. “I don’t think we realized it so much until this record, which has a quieter tone to it. These days other people in the crowd help out a lot in quieting them down. I guess that’s why they don’t serve alcohol at the movies. No one would go see the new ‘Rambo’ movie if there were going to be a bunch of drunk people talking the whole time. Well, maybe ‘Rambo’ is a bad example…”
Hoge’s latest release is his first on Ryko, and it marks a new chapter in his career. After fighting with Atlantic over the course of two albums about how best to not only market his songs, but how to write them, Hoge is relieved to have found a label that is willing to treat him as an artist, rather than a commodity. “When you start making records you have to just make records,” he said. “You can’t chase records. You can’t chase after hit songs. We had more of that at Atlantic. Everybody started second-guessing what was going to work for so-and-so, this demographic or that demographic. You can’t paint a picture thinking that way, or sculpt, or do any kind of art. It’s nice to make a record and then figure out where you’re going to take it. It’s more conducive to making good records.”
And “Draw the Curtains” seems to have benefited from getting rid of the committee, and getting back to basics of songwriting. Hoge partnered with producer Ken Coomer, former drummer for Uncle Tupelo and a mainstay on the Nashville music scene. Instead of the usual approach of trying to write the songs from the ground up with the whole band, Coomer and Hoge sat down as a duo and worked out the skeletons of the songs first, and gradually layered in more instruments. The result is one of Hoge’s most intimate, natural-sounding records to date.
“Working with Ken was great,” Hoge said. “At the time we didn’t even have a band together. It was me playing guitar and singing, and Ken playing drums. We’d been friends for a long time and finally got together and did (Hoge’s 2003 release) ‘Blackbird on a Lonely Wire’ together. And it went so well we went in and started working on ‘Draw the Curtains.’”
On Hoge’s tour he is partnered with Jason Isbell of Drive-By Truckers, and despite the occasional loud drunk in the crowd, he says it’s a match made in heaven.
“Drive-By Truckers is one of the more kind of ‘kindred spirit’ bands for us,” Hoge said. “We’re all from the South, we all have the same accents, we all get the same jokes. The great thing about working with them is there’s no ego involved. Depending on the town, sometimes I open, sometimes they open. Well, I won’t say there’s no ego involved because we’re all in bands. But there’s just the right amount of ego. Everybody seems to be cool with the whole thing. I haven’t been this excited about a tour in a while.”
And if a guy who plays 200 shows a year can still get excited about touring, it must not be such a bad job.
“It beats paving roads,” Hoge said.
TO GO
• Will Hoge with Jason Isbell of Drive-By Truckers
• Doors 8 p.m.
• Monday, Feb. 4
• Fox Theater in Boulder
• $15. Ages 21+
• Call 303.443.3399 for more information.
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