Country Fried Rock 1231: Derek Hoke From Rural South Carolina VFW Halls to Nashville
Summary
From 2012: Derek Hoke joins the Country Fried Rock crew for a chat that dives deep into his musical journey, with a special spotlight on his latest record, Goodbye Rock and Roll. He kicks things off by reminiscing about his punk rock roots, where he first caught the music bug, strumming guitars and belting out catchy tunes about World War III, classic teenage angst, right? As the convo unfolds, Hoch reveals how moving to Nashville was like jumping into the deep end, forcing him to shed his old skin and explore a more authentic sound that vibes with the city's rich musical tapestry. He spills the beans on the creative process behind his new album, highlighting how collaboration with pals like Dexter Green led to a unique blend of country and blues, all while keeping it refreshingly simple and relatable. With a wink and a nod, Hoke also shares the joy of fostering a community of artists eager to showcase their original tunes, making Nashville not just a backdrop, but a vibrant stage for fresh talent.
Links
- REMINDER: IGNORE ALL LINKS OR EVENTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE FROM 2012
- Toss a few in our Tip Jar!
- Derek Hoke
- Derek Hoke on Bandcamp
- You may also enjoy this conversation with The Famous from 2012
Show Notes
Finding His Footing in Punk and Beyond
• Derek Hoke looks back on his early days playing guitar and piano with a punk rock edge
• Shares memories of chasing loud, fast music and the energy that came with it
• Talks about the shift from covering songs in smoky bars to writing his own stories through music
The Move to Nashville and a Musical Reset
• Recalls the moment he knew it was time to take his craft seriously and move to Nashville
• Describes the challenges of carving out space in a city filled with talent
• Realizes that authenticity resonates more than nostalgia-driven covers
Birth of the ‘Quiet Billy’ Sound
• Introduces his unique musical identity, a blend of country cool and bluesy rhythm
• Talks about stripping songs down to their essence and letting the lyrics breathe
• Shares how simplicity became a guiding force in his creative process
Goodbye Rock and Roll and New Creative Horizons
• Offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of his latest album
• Describes the balance of upbeat energy and emotional depth in the new tracks
• Reflects on how the album captures both personal growth and musical exploration
Collaboration, Identity, and Creative Clarity
• Opens up about finding his voice after years of playing other people’s songs
• Talks about the push and pull between reinvention and staying true to his roots
• Highlights the joy of collaboration and how it keeps the process fresh
Connection Over Perfection
• Emphasizes the power of live shows, from cozy coffee shops to full-band gigs
• Shares how performance is less about polish and more about presence
• Stresses the importance of real connection with listeners and shared moments through music
Why This Episode Matters
• Derek’s story is about evolving without losing heart
• He brings humor, humility, and clarity to the winding path of a working musician
• It’s a reminder that sometimes the quietest songs say the most
Tune in to hear Derek Hoke reflect on his musical journey, the making of Goodbye Rock and Roll, and why honesty always wins in the end. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Chapters
- 00:09 - Introducing Derek Hoke
- 03:25 - Finding My Voice: The Journey to Songwriting
- 07:45 - The Evolution of Sound: From Rock to Country
- 12:54 - The Journey of New Music
- 13:50 - Exploring Musical Influences
- 18:31 - The Beauty of Vinyl and the Music Experience
Takeaways
- Derek Hoke's journey into music began with an early fascination for guitars and pianos, leading him to join punk rock bands where he discovered his passion for songwriting.
- The transition to Nashville was a pivotal moment for Derek, as it challenged him to refine his identity as a songwriter amidst a sea of talented musicians.
- Derek emphasizes the importance of live performances in shaping his music, revealing that direct audience feedback is crucial for artistic growth and self-discovery.
- He describes the unique atmosphere of Nashville's music scene, where collaboration and support among artists thrive, creating an environment conducive to creative exploration.
- Derek's latest album, Goodbye Rock and Roll, showcases his evolution as an artist, blending various influences while maintaining a distinctive sound that resonates with listeners.
- The conversation touches on the significance of simplicity in songwriting, highlighting how embracing straightforward narratives can lead to a more genuine and relatable musical experience.
Mentioned in this Episode
- Nuci's Space
- Country Fried Rock
- Full Tones
- Steve Soto
- Twisted Hearts
- Raconteurs
- Chris Scruggs
- Lyle Lovett
- Jim Lauderdale
- Eric Brace
- Peter Cooper
- Jason Isbell
- Dexter Green
- Florence
- Nashville
- Columbia
- Spartanburg
- Charleston
- Magic Sam
- Sam Cooke
- Corey Chisel
- Patrick Keeler
- Jack Lawrence
- Collective Soul
- Ricky Skaggs
- Luke Bullo
Recommended If You Like
country music, Nashville musicians, Derek Hoch, Goodbye Rock and Roll, songwriting process, creative inspiration, indie music scene, live performance, music feedback, punk rock origins, country fried rock podcast, music collaboration, acoustic guitar, songwriting identity, music influences, R&B in country, album production, mental health in music, music samplers, Southern blues music
Transcript
Speaker A
Welcome to Country Fried Rock, where we talk with musicians to find out what inspires their creativity. Country Fried rock music uncovered.
My guest today on Country Fried Rock is Derek Hoch with his last record, Goodbye Rock and Roll has some brand new music for us this year. Looking forward to chatting with him today. Welcome, Derek Hoch.
Speaker B
Hey, Sloan, how are you?
Speaker A
Great. Thanks for being with us.
Yeah, I had the opportunity to hear you play a few times and the first thing I heard was that last record of Goodbye Rock and Roll, which was a great treat, but the bigger treat was getting to hear you a few times. Nashville over the last couple years. How did you get started playing music?
Speaker B
At an early age, I could hear hear music and started kind of picking up guitars and pianos and could pick out melodies on these instruments that I didn't know how to play very basic things and kind of kept learning the guitar and got okay at it and joined little punk rock bands and, you know, started writing my own stuff, started learning how to sing and play at the same time, which was very difficult at the time. Basically what happens is I fell in love with all of it and I couldn't stop doing it. I couldn't wait to do it. That was. You got the bug.
You got the bug.
Speaker A
When you were in your early punk rock bands, were y' all writing originals at that point?
Speaker B
Yeah. The first song I ever wrote was a song called say Goodbye, Punk rock song about like, World War III and whatever Reagan era paranoia was going on.
I was very proud of it. Like, it was catchy and fast and I wrote it.
Speaker A
Were you gigging then?
Speaker B
Yeah, we played all the little VFWs, church basements and wherever we could play and just had fun doing it.
Speaker A
Several great musician friends of Country Fried Rock generously donated songs for a free music sampler.
Download it at noise trade.com countryfriderock 19 songs to help raise awareness and money for Nucci Space, a nonprofit serving the mental health needs of musicians in the Athens, Georgia area.
Find out more about Nucci's at n u c I.org and so at what point did you move toward whatever form of music you were doing of like, this is what I'm going to do with myself.
Speaker B
That came, like, later in high school, starting to write my own stuff and not really having an identity though, with it. Like, I wrote all this music but, you know, one song that's like an RM song, some other songs on like a Chris Isaac song or something.
It was probably around my early 20s where I was like, I started kind of like, oh, that's a Derek Hoax song, you know, or I'd like. I like. It didn't sound like I was just totally ripping off somebody else.
Speaker A
Were you doing a lot of live performance leading up to kind of finding your own voice?
Speaker B
Yeah, that's how you find it. You have to do it in front of people to kind of get reactions and feedback.
Or you're just in your room thinking you're amazing, you know, playing and playing and figuring out what works and where it works, what to play at the loud, smoky bars and what to play at the quiet, you know, more intimate places, and how to get your own music in there amongst the Billy Joel covers or whatever it is. You want people to ask you about your music. Like, hey, what was that song about? Whatever. Like, oh, that's one of my songs. Right.
That's a huge compliment.
Speaker A
Early on, were you on the road or were you working from a home base?
Speaker B
Oh, that was all in Florence, South Carolina.
Speaker A
There were that many places to play?
Speaker B
Yeah, that's all I did. I played guitar with all kinds of people and got to be an okay guitar player and sang and played and did my own stuff, either solo or with a band.
You know, go to Columbia and Spartanburg and Charleston, stuff like that. But mostly around Florence.
Speaker A
What led to you moving on with your music?
Speaker B
I felt like I wanted to do more, and I had more to kind of figure out about my own writing and where I was going with it. And then I moved to Nashville, and within the first week, I knew whatever I was doing in Florence was not going to work here.
And so I got my butt kicked a little bit, which was the best thing ever.
And I went through a lot of, you know, self discovery and trying to figure out who I was as a songwriter and a performer, because gone were the Smokey Bars cover songs. Everybody's listening, you know, not ripping it apart or dissecting it, but they want to hear what you have to say. I didn't have much to say.
You know, I was too busy kind of rocking and rolling. It would just kind of fly over people's heads and I'd get away with it. Or here they won't, you know, they want to hear a complete thought.
Had to go back to the drawing board for a couple of years.
Speaker A
Did you work with any colleagues to develop where you wanted to be?
Speaker B
I had some friends. I mean, mostly alone, but I had a lot of friends to bounce ideas off of.
And I had a lot of brick walls going through, like, an identity crisis with, you know, drum machines and with Acoustic guitars and trying to be very clever with all this stuff.
And I finally just sat down one day and started playing really quietly, some bluegrass music, very Mabel Carter kind of stuff, and singing very quietly.
And all of a sudden, this whole new thing started happening where instead of me trying to be loud and try to captivate the room or, you know, get everybody's attention, I could now kind of sing very politely, if you will, and kind of like, oh, well, that's nice. You know, get people's attention a different way, but the same. The outcome is the same.
So I started doing this really kind of sweetly singing croonery kind of stuff, and everybody loved it. And I loved it, too. It wasn't contrived in any way. It was just more like, oh, I just shut the hell up and sing and write some simple songs.
And that kind of started clicking pretty easily after that. This is Derek Hoch.
Speaker A
Kind of the plus and the minus of being in Nashville is that there are so many great writers, players. What helped you really solidify that?
Speaker B
Playing all the time here and not feeling like there was any competition or I had to do anything specifically to fit in rather than be myself playing out as much as I could and playing with different musicians and getting a sound together.
Started using a lot more upright bass, you know, brushes on drum sets and stuff like that, kind of developing the overall tone of the music, where when the band comes in, it's not Tom Petty's backup band. It's this quiet little shuffle and easy, breezy. I started calling it Quiet Billy.
Speaker A
Billy, that's a great name.
Speaker B
And I'd never really heard anybody do it. And so, yeah, people just started kind of gravitating or getting into it, and we started recording it.
You know, record 30 songs and get 10 pretty good ones out of it, you know, and go. Just keep playing them as you kind.
Speaker A
Of found this sound that was working. And with that much live playing, you were getting a lot of pretty quick feedback, at least from the audiences who were there.
What was your recording looking like? Was it kind of song by song just to see what.
Speaker B
What you had?
Yeah, just pieced together, you know, songs I had written when I first moved here, re recorded or reinterpreted, and songs that were brand new that were these kind of throwback country songs. I just write pop songs. That's all I really ever knew how to do was write melodies and stuff like that, or catchy melodies.
Some of these songs needed fiddles and steel guitar and all that stuff. They were begging for that stuff. And so Then it became like, very. Like a mystery. Am I playing country music now? I don't think so. It sounds that way.
And I didn't mind that at all either, because it was country music like, I'd never really listened to. Maybe my grandfather did, but I'd never heard anything like this. So I know I didn't invent anything, but it sounded all. It sounded very unique to me.
Speaker A
What you were writing was expressing the right feel.
Speaker B
Yeah, I mean, we're all writing songs about the same things, you know, some girl and some town and all that stuff. I think the simpler. I started stating all of those things, it became liberating to just be so simple.
Not think about anything too much and not worry about what somebody's going to think about these songs.
But kind of writing them for myself and being comfortable enough to, like, I can't wait to play them for people, because I'm pretty sure they're going to like them.
Speaker A
30 songs that were narrowed down to 10. Is that what led to Goodbye Rock and Roll?
Speaker B
Yeah, Goodbye Rock and Roll was me and my buddy Dexter Green, who produced it, kind of whittling away. I basically play. I had. We'd record some of it. Someone was like, well, that's way too George Jones, not me. Or one would be just way too sad.
And, you know, like, man, that's a little much. We kind of kept most of them kind of upbeat and fun, you know, some of the crowd pleasers.
Most of the stuff that represented me instead of, you know, trying to be all over the map with it.
Speaker A
Did you intend to work with Dexter?
Speaker B
Yeah, totally. He's from Florence as well. But we'd never. And we were in that punk rock band together back in the day.
It was the first time we had worked together and, you know, since we were teenagers then.
Speaker A
Having someone on a creative level like that that you also have history with, how did that help in ultimately getting to what became that record?
Speaker B
I think we knew each other so well that we could talk to each other very openly and fight and, you know, debate things. I mean, ultimately he was the boss and I totally trusted him. But, yeah, I think there's. The dialogue was very natural.
It wasn't two strangers in a room trying to be creative. You know, it was just two guys hanging out, and I'm kind of writing all these songs that he hadn't heard.
And, you know, we're both kind of flipping out over the people that wanted to be involved with the project and all these friends that we'd made.
Speaker A
Which of your friends Were you able to bring in that you were thrilled to be able to bring in?
Speaker B
Everybody we asked said yes. I kept calling it like coffee shop favors or it's just people that we always see everywhere.
And then all of a sudden I
Transcript
Welcome to Country Fried Rock, where we talk with musicians to find out what inspires their creativity.
Speaker A:Country Fried rock music uncovered.
Speaker A:My guest today on Country Fried Rock is Derek Hoch with his last record, Goodbye Rock and Roll has some brand new music for us this year.
Speaker A:Looking forward to chatting with him today.
Speaker A:Welcome, Derek Hoch.
Speaker B:Hey, Sloan, how are you?
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Thanks for being with us.
Speaker A:Yeah, I had the opportunity to hear you play a few times and the first thing I heard was that last record of Goodbye Rock and Roll, which was a great treat, but the bigger treat was getting to hear you a few times.
Speaker A:Nashville over the last couple years.
Speaker A:How did you get started playing music?
Speaker B:At an early age, I could hear hear music and started kind of picking up guitars and pianos and could pick out melodies on these instruments that I didn't know how to play very basic things and kind of kept learning the guitar and got okay at it and joined little punk rock bands and, you know, started writing my own stuff, started learning how to sing and play at the same time, which was very difficult at the time.
Speaker B:Basically what happens is I fell in love with all of it and I couldn't stop doing it.
Speaker B:I couldn't wait to do it.
Speaker B:That was.
Speaker B:You got the bug.
Speaker B:You got the bug.
Speaker A:When you were in your early punk rock bands, were y' all writing originals at that point?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The first song I ever wrote was a song called say Goodbye, Punk rock song about like, World War III and whatever Reagan era paranoia was going on.
Speaker B:I was very proud of it.
Speaker B:Like, it was catchy and fast and I wrote it.
Speaker A:Were you gigging then?
Speaker B:Yeah, we played all the little VFWs, church basements and wherever we could play and just had fun doing it.
Speaker A:Several great musician friends of Country Fried Rock generously donated songs for a free music sampler.
Speaker A:Download it at noise trade.com countryfriderock 19 songs to help raise awareness and money for Nucci Space, a nonprofit serving the mental health needs of musicians in the Athens, Georgia area.
Speaker A:Find out more about Nucci's at n u c I.org and so at what point did you move toward whatever form of music you were doing of like, this is what I'm going to do with myself.
Speaker B:That came, like, later in high school, starting to write my own stuff and not really having an identity though, with it.
Speaker B:Like, I wrote all this music but, you know, one song that's like an RM song, some other songs on like a Chris Isaac song or something.
Speaker B:It was probably around my early 20s where I was like, I started kind of like, oh, that's a Derek Hoax song, you know, or I'd like.
Speaker B:I like.
Speaker B:It didn't sound like I was just totally ripping off somebody else.
Speaker A:Were you doing a lot of live performance leading up to kind of finding your own voice?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's how you find it.
Speaker B:You have to do it in front of people to kind of get reactions and feedback.
Speaker B:Or you're just in your room thinking you're amazing, you know, playing and playing and figuring out what works and where it works, what to play at the loud, smoky bars and what to play at the quiet, you know, more intimate places, and how to get your own music in there amongst the Billy Joel covers or whatever it is.
Speaker B:You want people to ask you about your music.
Speaker B:Like, hey, what was that song about?
Speaker B:Whatever.
Speaker B:Like, oh, that's one of my songs.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That's a huge compliment.
Speaker A:Early on, were you on the road or were you working from a home base?
Speaker B:Oh, that was all in Florence, South Carolina.
Speaker A:There were that many places to play?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's all I did.
Speaker B:I played guitar with all kinds of people and got to be an okay guitar player and sang and played and did my own stuff, either solo or with a band.
Speaker B:You know, go to Columbia and Spartanburg and Charleston, stuff like that.
Speaker B:But mostly around Florence.
Speaker A:What led to you moving on with your music?
Speaker B:I felt like I wanted to do more, and I had more to kind of figure out about my own writing and where I was going with it.
Speaker B:And then I moved to Nashville, and within the first week, I knew whatever I was doing in Florence was not going to work here.
Speaker B:And so I got my butt kicked a little bit, which was the best thing ever.
Speaker B:And I went through a lot of, you know, self discovery and trying to figure out who I was as a songwriter and a performer, because gone were the Smokey Bars cover songs.
Speaker B:Everybody's listening, you know, not ripping it apart or dissecting it, but they want to hear what you have to say.
Speaker B:I didn't have much to say.
Speaker B:You know, I was too busy kind of rocking and rolling.
Speaker B:It would just kind of fly over people's heads and I'd get away with it.
Speaker B:Or here they won't, you know, they want to hear a complete thought.
Speaker B:Had to go back to the drawing board for a couple of years.
Speaker A:Did you work with any colleagues to develop where you wanted to be?
Speaker B:I had some friends.
Speaker B:I mean, mostly alone, but I had a lot of friends to bounce ideas off of.
Speaker B:And I had a lot of brick walls going through, like, an identity crisis with, you know, drum machines and with Acoustic guitars and trying to be very clever with all this stuff.
Speaker B:And I finally just sat down one day and started playing really quietly, some bluegrass music, very Mabel Carter kind of stuff, and singing very quietly.
Speaker B:And all of a sudden, this whole new thing started happening where instead of me trying to be loud and try to captivate the room or, you know, get everybody's attention, I could now kind of sing very politely, if you will, and kind of like, oh, well, that's nice.
Speaker B:You know, get people's attention a different way, but the same.
Speaker B:The outcome is the same.
Speaker B:So I started doing this really kind of sweetly singing croonery kind of stuff, and everybody loved it.
Speaker B:And I loved it, too.
Speaker B:It wasn't contrived in any way.
Speaker B:It was just more like, oh, I just shut the hell up and sing and write some simple songs.
Speaker B:And that kind of started clicking pretty easily after that.
Speaker B:This is Derek Hoch.
Speaker A:Kind of the plus and the minus of being in Nashville is that there are so many great writers, players.
Speaker A:What helped you really solidify that?
Speaker B:Playing all the time here and not feeling like there was any competition or I had to do anything specifically to fit in rather than be myself playing out as much as I could and playing with different musicians and getting a sound together.
Speaker B:Started using a lot more upright bass, you know, brushes on drum sets and stuff like that, kind of developing the overall tone of the music, where when the band comes in, it's not Tom Petty's backup band.
Speaker B:It's this quiet little shuffle and easy, breezy.
Speaker B:I started calling it Quiet Billy.
Speaker A:Billy, that's a great name.
Speaker B:And I'd never really heard anybody do it.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, people just started kind of gravitating or getting into it, and we started recording it.
Speaker B:You know, record 30 songs and get 10 pretty good ones out of it, you know, and go.
Speaker B:Just keep playing them as you kind.
Speaker A:Of found this sound that was working.
Speaker A:And with that much live playing, you were getting a lot of pretty quick feedback, at least from the audiences who were there.
Speaker A:What was your recording looking like?
Speaker A:Was it kind of song by song just to see what.
Speaker B:What you had?
Speaker B:Yeah, just pieced together, you know, songs I had written when I first moved here, re recorded or reinterpreted, and songs that were brand new that were these kind of throwback country songs.
Speaker B:I just write pop songs.
Speaker B:That's all I really ever knew how to do was write melodies and stuff like that, or catchy melodies.
Speaker B:Some of these songs needed fiddles and steel guitar and all that stuff.
Speaker B:They were begging for that stuff.
Speaker B:And so Then it became like, very.
Speaker B:Like a mystery.
Speaker B:Am I playing country music now?
Speaker B:I don't think so.
Speaker B:It sounds that way.
Speaker B:And I didn't mind that at all either, because it was country music like, I'd never really listened to.
Speaker B:Maybe my grandfather did, but I'd never heard anything like this.
Speaker B:So I know I didn't invent anything, but it sounded all.
Speaker B:It sounded very unique to me.
Speaker A:What you were writing was expressing the right feel.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, we're all writing songs about the same things, you know, some girl and some town and all that stuff.
Speaker B:I think the simpler.
Speaker B:I started stating all of those things, it became liberating to just be so simple.
Speaker B:Not think about anything too much and not worry about what somebody's going to think about these songs.
Speaker B:But kind of writing them for myself and being comfortable enough to, like, I can't wait to play them for people, because I'm pretty sure they're going to like them.
Speaker A:30 songs that were narrowed down to 10.
Speaker A:Is that what led to Goodbye Rock and Roll?
Speaker B:Yeah, Goodbye Rock and Roll was me and my buddy Dexter Green, who produced it, kind of whittling away.
Speaker B:I basically play.
Speaker B:I had.
Speaker B:We'd record some of it.
Speaker B:Someone was like, well, that's way too George Jones, not me.
Speaker B:Or one would be just way too sad.
Speaker B:And, you know, like, man, that's a little much.
Speaker B:We kind of kept most of them kind of upbeat and fun, you know, some of the crowd pleasers.
Speaker B:Most of the stuff that represented me instead of, you know, trying to be all over the map with it.
Speaker A:Did you intend to work with Dexter?
Speaker B:Yeah, totally.
Speaker B:He's from Florence as well.
Speaker B:But we'd never.
Speaker B:And we were in that punk rock band together back in the day.
Speaker B:It was the first time we had worked together and, you know, since we were teenagers then.
Speaker A:Having someone on a creative level like that that you also have history with, how did that help in ultimately getting to what became that record?
Speaker B:I think we knew each other so well that we could talk to each other very openly and fight and, you know, debate things.
Speaker B:I mean, ultimately he was the boss and I totally trusted him.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I think there's.
Speaker B:The dialogue was very natural.
Speaker B:It wasn't two strangers in a room trying to be creative.
Speaker B:You know, it was just two guys hanging out, and I'm kind of writing all these songs that he hadn't heard.
Speaker B:And, you know, we're both kind of flipping out over the people that wanted to be involved with the project and all these friends that we'd made.
Speaker A:Which of your friends Were you able to bring in that you were thrilled to be able to bring in?
Speaker B:Everybody we asked said yes.
Speaker B:I kept calling it like coffee shop favors or it's just people that we always see everywhere.
Speaker B:And then all of a sudden I was like, hey, man, do you want to play on this record?
Speaker B:And this would be like Chris Scruggs I just see in the neighborhood.
Speaker B:And everybody basically, to me was like, it's about time.
Speaker B:You know, we've been all waiting on you in a way.
Speaker B:And so they.
Speaker B:Everybody showed up, these amazing musicians and they just killed it.
Speaker B:It was awesome.
Speaker A:And that's one of those things that makes Nashville just kind of crazy.
Speaker B:It really is.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, the best singer in town probably just served me coffee 20 minutes ago.
Speaker B:It's crazy.
Speaker B:Hey, everybody, this is Derek Hope.
Speaker B:Check out my newest record, Waiting All Night on Derek Hoek dot com.
Speaker A:You've since become the guy giving a stage to a lot of other people who are wanting to find their own independent voice.
Speaker B:Yeah, the Tuesday thing, I guess that's like a.
Speaker B:Almost two years old that, you know, came out of nothing at the neighborhood hangout, the five spot.
Speaker B:But yeah, that was the thing.
Speaker B:Like, it would be kind of quiet up there on Tuesday nights and everybody in the room is a bad.
Speaker B:But nobody's playing.
Speaker B:We're just kind of hanging out, jukebox or whatever.
Speaker B:So there was kind of like, why don't we get up there and, you know, basically play for each other.
Speaker B:That's kind of how it all started.
Speaker B:Trying to get people to play some new songs that nobody's heard and try stuff out, do something different.
Speaker B:Let's all try to wow each other, be a part of it.
Speaker B:Instead of an open mic, it's really.
Speaker A:Become giving stage to some of these newer songs for people.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:It's not a brand new idea.
Speaker B:This happens over, you know, all over town.
Speaker B:This unique neighborhood that I live in is just filled with musicians.
Speaker B:And this is venue in this area to play so they can drive down the street every Tuesday night, see a good show for, you know, bad ma jamas that show up in there.
Speaker A:So who has been in there?
Speaker A:Just had a night that just blew it up.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker B:Corey Chisel came in there and he was a mutual friend.
Speaker B:He's on Brendan Benson's label now, I think from the Raconteurs.
Speaker B:Nobody knew who he was and he kind of did the quiet.
Speaker B:Him and a guitar and.
Speaker B:And everybody flipped out and you know, like, who is this guy?
Speaker B:There's a lot of blinking.
Speaker B:You'll Miss it.
Speaker B:Like, Jason Isbell's done some stuff up there and you know, where nobody can believe that, that, you know, there's no, I didn't.
Speaker B:I don't introduce some of these people.
Speaker B:I'll just keep it under the radar.
Speaker B:Like, hey, man, was that Jason Isabel?
Speaker A:I'm like, yeah, but you know, in some ways it's also a treat for the artist.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:There's no stress, there's no poster being made.
Speaker B:There's no.
Speaker B:You get to the core of it all.
Speaker B:Just get up there and sing a few songs because that's what you do and that's what I like about it.
Speaker B:I think the highlight though was Peter Buck from REM Played there and I got to play with him.
Speaker B:And that was like the childhood.
Speaker B:Everybody was into Led Zeppelin and everything else.
Speaker B:And I just wanted to play guitar like that guy.
Speaker B:Very unique.
Speaker B:And then here he is on stage, some new ideas I didn't want to make.
Speaker B:Goodbye Rock and Roll Part two.
Speaker B:We kept jokingly referring to it like, let's call this record hello Heavy Metal and just be the opposite.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But I started writing a lot of blues songs and a lot of more rhythm based tracks.
Speaker B:You know, there's still a little bit of some country element to it, but that's when, you know, Dexter got Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence with the Raconteurs to come over and do a couple of rhythm tracks that sound killer.
Speaker B:And we got Corey Chisel, some of these people that I just kind of met along the way to come over and sing.
Speaker B:And so it kind of became a big kind of special guest record.
Speaker B:But it still showcases me not doing duets with anybody or Jason Isabel plays guitar on it.
Speaker B:He does not sing, you know, to be a part of him play these new songs and people that love the other record.
Speaker B:But this is a step in a direction that I'm very excited in or hopefully people will really get it, understand it and get into it.
Speaker A:As you were developing these new songs, are they things that you've been testing out live?
Speaker B:Yeah, I've basically played this new record in some form or another, you know, for the past few months out and about, just to kind of see what people think of these new songs.
Speaker B:That's what we did.
Speaker B:We played the Music City Roots thing where Jim Lauderdale is introducing me and he's talking about Goodbye Rock and Roll and all this stuff.
Speaker B:And we play five songs off of the.
Speaker B:Off the new record.
Speaker B:You know, nobody knew really, but it worked.
Speaker B:That felt so good and it worked out really well.
Speaker B:So I knew that it was going to be.
Speaker B:Everything was going to work out.
Speaker B:You know, it's not any kind of 180.
Speaker B:It's just more.
Speaker B:It's less fiddles and it's a little more like dirty electric kind of Memphis guitar stuff going on.
Speaker B:You know, just a hint of it.
Speaker B:A little more down and dirty on some of the numbers.
Speaker B:A little more.
Speaker B:A little more expressive singing on my part.
Speaker B:So it's not, you know, kind of going back to the quiet rockabilly thing.
Speaker B:It's a little.
Speaker B:We got a little bit looser on this one too.
Speaker A:Where was that coming from?
Speaker B:Me listening to a lot of kind of old music, old R B and stuff, and seeing people, you know, like one of your other guests, Patrick Sweeney and his band play around town.
Speaker B:It was a lot of white people talking about black music at one in the morning, you know, wherever we are and really kind of geeking out on everything.
Speaker B:And especially the people that people haven't heard of are less popular still phenomenal musicians and music.
Speaker B:So there's a little bit of that.
Speaker A:When you talk about R and B.
Speaker A:What R and B were you listening to?
Speaker B:The first intention of this new record, there's some of it in there.
Speaker B:But I told, you know, Dexter I was like, let's make a Sam Cooke country record.
Speaker B:And that just sounded so cool.
Speaker B:Like, yeah, let's do that.
Speaker B:And then I guess I wrote like two songs that might.
Speaker B:Could be interpreted as that it was almost too cool to actually happen.
Speaker B:So some of the other ones just kind of ended up being some bluesier, you know.
Speaker B:And lyrically, like talking about, you know, kind of roadhousey kind of stuff.
Speaker B:Definitely like Southern.
Speaker B:Southern blues was the overall influence.
Speaker B:Something you could kind of dance to a little bit.
Speaker B:Not two step to, like some of the other stuff.
Speaker B:Like let's not two step to every song on this one, you know, hey, this is Derek Hoke on Country Fried Rock.
Speaker A:If you could geek out.
Speaker A:What do you like to talk about?
Speaker B:Just guitar players mostly and some people know like bass players and drummers and people's names and stuff like that.
Speaker B:But I think there's this guy named Magic Sam that we kind of talked about a lot.
Speaker B:But also like singers like Sam Cooke and stuff like that and how just nobody does that or can do that and how amazing all that stuff was.
Speaker B:When I try to play guitar now, I try to play.
Speaker B:I used to play very kind of Eric Clapton and very polite, you know, white guy, white guy music.
Speaker B:And I slowly was like, I want to learn how to not Be white when I pick up a guitar, especially an electric guitar, and be a little more soulful with it.
Speaker B:And that's how, you know, start writing on the electric guitar a little bit for this record.
Speaker B:Just come up with some.
Speaker B:Some riffs and stuff like that.
Speaker B:Where I believe.
Speaker B:Like, I think that sounds great.
Speaker B:You know, it'll sound like me and Dex trying to play the blues or whatever.
Speaker B:This sounds right.
Speaker B:Or pretty close, you know.
Speaker A:What do you think would be a good fit for you in terms of crafting the ideal kind of opening tour?
Speaker B:My dream would be to open for Chris Isaac and then other people, like, you know, like Lyle Lovett.
Speaker B:He doesn't have opening acts.
Speaker B:You know, a lot of people are Dwight Yoakum or something.
Speaker B:They don't.
Speaker B:It's just Dwight Yoakum.
Speaker B:The festival thing we've always been good at.
Speaker B:In front of large crowds that don't know who I am.
Speaker B:And then by the end of it, they freak out.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:That's always a nice experience.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So we always want to get in.
Speaker B:Into those scenarios.
Speaker A:Which ones have worked well for you?
Speaker B:The best one has been.
Speaker B:It's called Bristol Roots up in Bristol, Tennessee.
Speaker B:I got to do a.
Speaker B:Like a songwriter in the round with Jim Lauderdale and Eric Brace and Peter Cooper.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And I look at it like I'm one of four people on stage, the least known.
Speaker B:You know, Jim Lauderdale.
Speaker B:I've met him before, but he'd never heard my music.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And everybody dug it to the Paramount Theater there, and it was amazing.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I go over well when people aren't like, we're not here to see this guy, but we're glad that we got to see him.
Speaker B:And that's kind of been the beauty of my little, you know, second wind musical career or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker B:So where it works out.
Speaker A:It sounds like you've got a nice ongoing both communication and working relationship with Dexter Dex.
Speaker B:I mean, he's my best friend, and he's killer at this stuff.
Speaker B:He's always been a.
Speaker B:You know, when we moved here, I think he moved here about a year before I did, you know, making records.
Speaker B:And then he made a collective soul record, which was amazing, and all kinds of other projects.
Speaker B:And it was just so bizarre that, like, I'll be one of his clients, you know, kind of on the under the radar and friendly.
Speaker B:It was total freedom.
Speaker B:And with.
Speaker B:Cause we're totally spoiled with all these people that we know.
Speaker B:Well, who can we get to come over and play harmonica or whatever?
Speaker B:Oh, let's call Pat Bergeson, you know, and he plays with Lyle Lovett, whatever.
Speaker B:And he's sick.
Speaker B:And the fiddle players is like.
Speaker B:Because when I moved here, I worked for Ricky Skaggs for a while for like three years, I think, selling merchandise on the road.
Speaker B:And I'm still friends with that band.
Speaker B:Like, I need a fiddle player.
Speaker B:I call Luke Bullo, who used to play with Ricky, and he just crushes it in the studio.
Speaker B:I've never seen people that can play.
Speaker A:Like this just kind of make you be like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Because that's the other, like, the technical end of it.
Speaker B:Like, the mastering and the mixing stuff I have zero idea about.
Speaker B:And like bouncing it off of a tape machine, kind of delay effect where it sounds like classic.
Speaker B:I can't wait to drop a needle onto it.
Speaker B:Like, man, that just oozes cool, you know?
Speaker A:Well, and there's that whole tactile thing about music, you know, I think vinyl is the way to do it.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:You want the liner notes, you want the.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:You want to hold this thing and you want to hear every.
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker B:You know, we're too accustomed to the MP3 computer speaker music.
Speaker B:And like, that's not how it's supposed to be done.
Speaker B:Until you hear, you know, like a Radiohead record on your stereo with a, you know, phono and everything and on an album, it's like, this is amazing.
Speaker B:Play through your computer speakers or your ipod with your earbuds.
Speaker B:It's, you know, the songs are there, but the whole experience is not there.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker A:I really appreciate.
Speaker B:Yeah, this has been fun.
Speaker A:All righty.
Speaker A:Bye Bye.
Speaker A:Country Fried Rock Find the full playlist from this episode on countryfriedrock.org check us out on itunes.
Speaker A:No music, just talk.
Speaker A:Our theme music is from the Full Tones.
Speaker A:Our Country Fried Rock stinger is from Steve Soto in the Twisted Hearts.
Speaker A: Country fried Rock Copyright: Speaker A:All rights reserved.
Speaker B:Have a he been helping us some Country Fried Rock.
