Today we’re bringing you a full stream of Oh Ho, the palindromic debut full length from Vegas singer/songwriter Joey Hines. We also spoke with Hines about his life and career up to this point.
Hi Joey! Let’s start with musical history. How did you first become interested in creating music?
My brothers are musicians, a drummer and a guitarist. I felt a lot of pressure to play music too, but for a long time I wasn’t interested at all. I didn’t want to fail at it. I was forced into piano lessons when I was ten, and reluctantly began enjoying them. I played viola at school too, but it wasn’t until I was twelve and started messing around with guitars that I thought, “Okay, yeah, this is me.”
Do you remember how you ended up with your first guitar?
I started on a Hofner nylon-string classical guitar. My brother gave it to me, and our Uncle Jimmy had given it to him, and I’m pretty sure someone else had given it to Uncle Jimmy, so it had a really old, mysterious aura to it. It’s in my closet and I still pull it out once in awhile. Just the scent of it kinda takes you away to another time.
What bands and musicians inspired your songwriting on this album?
Daniel Johnston is the big one. He’s been a game-changer for me. I never knew music could be so emotionally direct and devoid of pretension until I heard his stuff. I figure if I can tap into the same kind of extreme, radical honesty — without the mental illness that accompanied his career — I might be onto something. Also Robert Ellis and Frank Turner. I’m a folkie, but I prefer these new-school, progressive types to the traditionalists. My philosophy is, just say whatever the hell it is you mean. If it’s something you’ve felt, people out there will connect with it.
Bo Burnham! He’s a comedian, but he’s also one of the best songwriters working right now. It’s weird because the Beatles, probably the most influential band ever, were so funny. So much of their songbook is just utterly silliness. But the humorous element hasn’t carried on in mainstream rock as much as other aspects of their music. These days, if someone writes a funny song, it’s automatically niche, it’s not “real” music that people take seriously. To me, humor is just another rhetorical tool, and I use it frequently in my songs.
I can’t get enough feminist punk, either. I love Girlpool for their minimalism. The interplay of the guitar and bass and vocal harmonies is so compelling, and their heartfelt lyrics really shine. I love Childbirth too, again, for how they use humor to make their points.
You mention having an affinity for humor in your music, but many songs on your earlier releases are a bit more morose. Did you make a conscious effort to move away from that on Oh Ho?
My previous records had a lot of unrequited love songs, sad bastard-type stuff. But now my love life’s in a really good place, so I’m like, what can I write about now? So this album has some happy love songs, but it also has some protest-style songs. I find my heart being pulled in a more political, socially conscious direction, which is exciting because I used to find it hard to write in that mode and feel sincere about it.
Oh Ho sounds very professional in its recording. Who did you record with and where?
The album was recorded at Mike Ziethlow’s home studio. He’s the guy behind Vegas on the Mic, which was my stomping ground in the local scene. He went out of town and let me have my run of the place, in return for taking care of his cat Pumpkin. So I holed up and tried to record as much as I could. About half of what I laid down ended up on the album.
What was the recording process like?
The band tracks were easy. It’s my first full-band effort, with my brothers Mike Hines on bass and David Hines on drums. We used to play in a band together when I was in high school, but that eventually ended because of college and marriage and life stuff. So it was super exciting for us to be rehearsing again and to finally make a record together. We knocked those out in one day.
The solo acoustic stuff sucked ass, because I hate recording myself. I have to do 100 takes of everything before I’m happy with it. Toward the end of the week, I went into this obsessive frenzy and pulled an all-nighter, determined to record everything that I had planned to. The last thing I recorded was the kazoo solo on “Getting Drunk and Eating Pizza” at like 3 am. After a week of intensive singing, my voice was too tired to play the kazoo. So I had to keep taking breaks. I’d drink a bunch of hot tea and go play with Pumpkin for a while, then head back to the studio and try again. I was immensely relieved when it was all over.
I know you studied theatre in college. Did that background have an impact on your music?
Studying acting definitely helped me with vocals. Not even necessarily singing, but just breath control and enunciation. I had to take a bunch of voice/speech classes where I had to learn to speak so that an entire theater full of people could understand me. And that helped me realize, hey, people really like it when they can understand what a person is saying/singing. I like impressionistic music, shoegaze and lo-fi stuff, where the vocals act more as another one of the instruments. But lyrics are probably the strongest part of my songwriting, so I figure why not keep them at the front of the mix and be confident about them?
For people who don’t know, we met through our jobs at the library district where we often sing to kids, “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes” and things like that. How has that influenced your songwriting?
Singing for kids isn’t as different as you might think it is [from singing to adults]! It’s true that almost none of my original music is family-friendly. But working in a children’s library has been a way for me to avoid the process of growing up. My musical pursuits perform the same function. I’m just trying to stay creative and alive, rather than getting stagnant and burying my emotions or whatever it is that adults do. Whether I’m singing for adults or for kids, I just try to be as genuine as possible. The first song on the new album, “Timmy’s Discovery”, is like a children’s story gone horribly wrong. It’s demented, but I also probably would’ve loved it when I was a kid. I loved Weird Al records and they’re full of stuff like that.
Kids are awesome because they’re like truth magnets. They feel all their emotions times infinity and call you out if you’re not being real with them. It’s way more fun to play “Old MacDonald” or “If You’re Happy and You Know It” to a room full of excited kids than to play original music to a bar full of people too cynical and jaded to care about anything. I try to impart a message of positivity to them, that it’s okay to just be yourself.
Thanks, Joey! Oh Ho will be available this Saturday, June 25, at the release show at The Hard Hat Lounge. Details for that show are below. You’ll also be able to pick up the album digitally from Hines’ Bandcamp page on the same day.
Oh Ho release show:
Lineup: Joey Hines, Sonia Seelinger
Date: Saturday, June 25, 8:00 p.m.
Location: Hard Hat Lounge
Admission: 21+
More info
No Comments