Rising Tides On The East Side : An Interview With Derek Hoke

Derek Hoke will probably get a statue in East Nashville someday…well, at least in our eyes he should. The singer-songwriter and community builder has been the curator of the renowned Two Dollar Tuesdays at East Nashville’s The 5 Spot for 7 years and running and embedded himself fully into the every expanding landscape of Americana and Roots music in town and beyond.

This month Hoke celebrated the release of his latest effort “Bring the Flood”, an introspective look at the world around him. An exploration in how an artist can make a shit storm of emotion and turmoil digestable to a broader audience and a success in the fullest extent of the term. Laying out a well balanced sonic palette of steel driven roots and tele twang, but its truly Derek Hoke’s voice that shines brightest across the breadth of its 10 tracks. Smooth but cutting in all the right ways, it leaves you with a lasting mark and begs for a revisit again and again.

We had the pleasure of catching up with Derek to talk about this latest release, the blossoming state of community through his eye’s in East Nashville and that special evening that went from tumbleweeds to top notch entertainment in his able hands.

Read on.

RLR: Hey man, how have you been?

DH: Pretty good, trying to stay relatively busy but so is everyone else in this town. Just got to fight it, run with the pack, all that jazz.

RLR: Of course, of course. Lets talk a little bit about the new record. ‘Southern Moon’ came out last April of 2016, this new record (Bring the Flood)  just released on Oct 13th. Before that you had a bit of a time pass between albums with ‘Southern Moon’ and your previous 2012 release ‘Waiting All Night’. What changed in the time between ‘Southern Moon’ and this record that made you want to space records more closely?

DH: I definitely didn’t want that amount of time to go by again. In the years that had gone by between Waiting all Night and that Southern Moon record I had kind of made several records that I had abandoned. Southern Moon was kind of like something to just get out of my system with some of the throwback country stuff that I was doing. Also I was opening up for a lot of people of on the road and I was like “I need to have a product”. In the back of my head were these little kernels of ideas that became this “Bring the Flood” record. I was kind of scared to do it back then, 2013 or 14, so Southern Moon was kind of me leaning on something I was comfortable with and to just put out a new record. After I did that, which is kind of like getting it out of my system, I was ready to move forward with some new kind of sounds.

RLR: The new record has all sorts of labels that I have seen on various reviews and features so far. Journalists love to use that “not quite country, not quite rock n’ roll” descriptor…

DH: (laughs) I think I have always been ‘that’, or something, because I have never been like ‘a country music person’ or this name where you have to label yourself and genres and stuff. I was like, ‘well this stuff has fiddles and pedal steel on it but its whatever you want it to be’. I always just thought of it as “music” and I always think of The Beatles White Album with all these different kinds of tunes on it. You would never call some of those songs ‘chamber music’ or whatever, its a rock n’ roll record with a bunch of weird shit on it.

I have always tried to do stuff like that. I write the songs and dress them up however they should be with instrumentation.

RLR: Yeah man, good music is just good music and you know it when you hear it.

DH: Yeah, cause I definitely don’t sing like a shit kicker, whiskey dude or whatever people do. I come from more Roy Orbison or Marty Robbins kind of singers and stuff. The “so country it hurts” kind of a thing. Thats for other people to do. I’m just trying to write a good tune and perform it well.

 

 

RLR: Do you find that, especially living in Nashville, in the industry today there is this push to force fit people into boxes or do you see any value in assigning genre?

DH: I don’t know if its forced into it, but a lot of people I think jump on little bandwagons. Something is working, theres a lot of people doing the same thing, you know? But they don’t do it for very long. Usually somebody punches through and then everybody realizes that they are doing what the other persons doing. I have always tried to steer clear of all that kind of stuff. Even looking like other people. I don’t have a beard and sleeve tattoos and all that. ‘You are committing to look like 50 other people in this room right now’.

Thats probably from my skateboarding punk rock childhood of trying to be an individual, non-conformity when some people try so hard to try and do that and they end up looking like everybody else. It backfires sometimes.

RLR: Yeah its interesting how all that has changed. People who were trying to emulate music by Hank and Johnny Cash, who were wearing broad rimmed cowboy hats and black suits and now its this entirely other way of dressing, but similar music.

DH: I like the old classic. I am a fan of at least looking like you are supposed to be on stage. Some of the Bill Monroe class. But yeah, it becomes like a costume party, real quick. Its like everybody is doing it. Like “is this a 1950s country music photo shoot” or whats real about it? It is hard to tell sometimes where the honesty is.

RLR: Lets go into the new new record “Bring the Flood” . The arrangement on that tune (the title track) and across the board is pretty fucking killer. It kind of explodes with all sorts of swirling organs and harmonic guitar notes that ring forever.

DH: Thanks, man. Its like two chords I think. If I played it on the acoustic guitar you’d be bored out of your mind. Because we kind of kept going down that rabbit hole of sounds it just makes it kind of explosive. When you keep it that simple too, not beating people over the head with chord changes. You can take people in a different direction, sonically, just by changing up some instruments instead of changing the core of the song.

RLR: What was the mentality of using that tune as the album track, and you might answer my next question in answering this one, but do you feel it summates all you wanted to really put forth with this record?

DH: Yeah, you know if I was on a therapist couch or something like that it probably more entails a cleansing kind of a thing. Not a “bring the flood and everything is under water” kind of shit, but more of a wash away stuff. I was kind of going through some personal changes of the past couple of years with quitting drinking and stuff like that. I was like one off three dudes that wore a cowboy hat in East Nashville and had my little western suit. But underneath it I had a punk rock t-shirt. Then everyone else started doing it and I immediately abandoned it.

So a lot of it was more of bringing on a change. I knew I was changing musically and personally. Then with all of the news and the election it just seemed like changes were coming, good and bad. I feel like a better person and then everyday I wake up and read the news and am like “man, what is happening?” Its half exciting and then half terrible.

RLR: Yeah, that all can really fuck with you head.

DH: Yeah, I don’t know how to feeeeeeel anymore, man (laughs).

RLR: Dovetailing with that last question…“Theres no water in the kitchen since the well run dry” on ‘Love Don’t Live Around Here’, the title of the album, “now the rain is getting heavy/and thats what worries me” on ‘Heavy Weather’…water is kind of a metaphor embedded in some of your lyrics on a few of these tracks. What does the symbolism of water or weather mean to you as a writer and how do you feel you use it as a powerful tool for imagery?

DH: Yeah a lot of weather metaphors on there. Its kind of that “coming storm” kind of a thing. A lot of the songs were written pre-inauguration. This wasn’t supposed to be a “Trump record” or anything like that, but it was that feeling, you know, of a sort of doom. Thats not for everybody to feel that way and I didn’t want to alienate anybody or take a political stance on any of that stuff. But it was just an overall feeling of whats about to happen here? You know? A feeling of unease. Using that storm coming and rain is getting heavy and things like that, that all sort of rang true to how I was feeling and still am. I guess thats my way of saying something without saying something. I am not really that kind of songwriter that goes and name checks people and just verbatim quote newspapers. Make of it what you will.

RLR: “Destination Unknown” has really grown on me as one of my favorites from the album. Where it sits on the record is kind of a reprieve, from the vibe the first 3 tracks put off. Its a bit more relaxed and slow plodding.

DH: Uh huh. Most straight ahead song too. There’s no hidden meanings or anything behind it. But yeah, when we sequenced the record it was thought of that way. Relief. There is another song called ‘So Tired’ that is fun, well at least musically. But we weren’t going to put out this really depressing album. Don’t really want to do that.

RLR: There is a line “I need a little shelter, I’m just looking for a sign / been staring at my shadow, wondering what I left behind”. Lines that are just simple and to the point really cut in a special way for me. That to me is just one of those clever lines that I kind of wish I conjured up, its clever but it really is just like “this is me, this is where I am at”. Where were you at when you wrote that song?

DH: That was like 1 o’ clock in the morning. That was just one of those songs that just spilled out. Some of these others songs would have just a verse or maybe a chorus for months. I’d kind of hammer at it. Some songs are just like already there and you have to remember them. Then when you finish there is an ‘a-ha’ moment where you say ‘thats how its goes’. That song, a lot of it was just me kind of driving around at night and really early in the morning. Pre-dawn. That was really my favorite kind of way to write songs. Clear my head and be out and about when no one else is. So it was kind of about that process too. Also leaving behind some things I have done creatively and personally. Looking to the future but not knowing what I will find there.

RLR: Can you maybe talk me through a bit of what your songwriting process looks like? I am always intrigued how different folks write? On a guitar, on a piano, on something else? Do you have notes scribbled on paper in your pocket that get compiled later on?

DH: Yeah I don’t do the blank page with a guitar thing. That’s just instant failure for me. There are a lot of people in this town who get paid good money to fill that page up with hit songs. I’ve always been like, something will pop into my head and I have the little voice recorder on my phone and I just sing it. I have no idea what key its in. Sometimes I’ll just mumble…something. Like a melody with a couple little lines. I think about it like I know it already. I can have a hard time remembering it and it comes out kind of jibberishly, so I will listen to it over and over again. To try and figure out what I am really saying.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it really is just jibberish that I am saying. A lot of it is me in the car, just acapella, or kind of singing a little guide structure. Rock song. Whatever. ‘Starts like this’…I almost give myself directions into the little dictaphone thing. Then I come home and try to decipher it. If its good it will jump out immediately, kind of like I am just singing a song I have always known acapela into the phone and I am just transcribing it with a guitar into GarageBand or a better way to record it and remember it. Its a process for me. A lot of it isn’t “sit down and write song” its “come up with idea. Mull it over. Is this worth finishing?” I will run it by a few people and ask “is this worth a shit?” and sometimes I’ll just have a guitar riff, like this is a really cool riff and won’t know what to do with it yet. Some songs are written around that, an idea where a guitar riff or piano riff or whatever it is, is the central point and you have to make the song as cool as that is. Or as strong as that is. You can’t have a cool guitar hook over a lame tune. Its a waste. Its like puzzle pieces. Sometimes I put them together pretty easily and sometimes I put them on the shelf.

 

 

RLR: Moving away a bit from the songwriter aspect, I wanted to call attention to the fact that your voice is really incredible across the board here. People seem to always ask songwriters you know, who is your biggest influence in writing or what were you listening to early on and latching onto the lyrics of. I would like to ask who you were into as you were blossoming into a songwriter and performer. Folks that might have impacted your sound in terms of singing and the way you perform a song vocally?

DH: Thanks man, I really appreciate that. You know what, I never thought about it. When I was growing up and playing in bar bands and stuff like that. You are playing top 40 songs or whatever, so your voice, or in my case, my voice didn’t matter. I’m just kind of singing somebody elses tune. It took me moving to Nashville to even think about that kind of stuff. “Oh, what do I sound like” you know? Even when I wrote my own songs I was just singing them, I wasn’t really thinking about how I was singing them. I was still singing them as if I was playing at sports bars and getting drowned out by people yelling and screaming and stuff. Thats a hard way to grow up and try to identify yourself as an artist. It like chaos. Chaos that you get paid for. So its very jarring.

But you come here and the people you are playing for, you can hear a pin drop. Therefore you can hear yourself. So I had to kind of go back to the drawing board a little bit. I realized singing softly, not having to yell, there is no reason to yell over anybody, everybody is listening. What do I have to say and how do I want to say it?

A lot of its old bluegrass type stuff. I got into Vince Gill and Lyle Lovett and stuff like that. Not necessarily the sound of the voice, but the way that it comes across. I don’t mind that comparison cause I understand where its coming from and I like those dudes a lot too. But theres more of a laid back approach to it instead of trying to sing down your throat. You don’t need to sing something really loud and ‘in your face’ to mean it, you know?

RLR: The line up of friends and contemporaries you have on this record is pretty incredible. You have folks like Elizabeth Cook, Langhorne Slim, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and Luther Dickinson on the record. It would seem, being someone a bit on the periphery of your music community in Nashville that community is a huge thing of importance for you. How important was it for you to have folks you admire and care about to be a part of this record? Also, how much input did they give to the final outcome, if any?

DH: A lot of those people are my neighbors. Langhorne lives next door to me so that was more like asking for a cup of sugar. But it was a lot like “I think he would be good on THIS song” instead of just ‘lets have him on this track just to have him on this track’. Thats too easy and it might not even work. The stuff with Aaron Lee, we wanted his guitar input so it wouldn’t just be me and Dex playing guitar. We wanted some different flavors. He sings softly, in a good way, too so he wouldn’t overtake the mix. So we kind of just put people on this record that we are friends with and we enjoy their company. Everybody was just happy to do it. It makes everyone feel like they are a part of each other’s worlds, you know? Especially, it means a lot to me because I respect a lot of these people and am privileged to call them friends. I think Luther was the only person I didn’t know before. The producer, Dex Green, brought him on.

We did all the stuff at my house.

RLR: Wow…

DH: I have a living room with the ceiling knocked out. It kind of works as a great room to do drums. I did vocals in a little side room I have. We did a couple things outside of here. I just tried to make it real welcoming and keep an open invitation and an open mind of “who can we get to come over and do this without it being a political move?”. Not putting a sticker on the cover “featuring…”, so its kind of like you have to open the record to even know its there. Subtle.

RLR: Take me through the early days of Two Dollar Tuesdays. It is now a huge success and sees the likes of a broad array of talent both in town and nationally touring through, but what were the first couple weeks or months like? Maybe it was a huge success from the beginning? I feel like something like this (from personal experience) takes a shitload of work and love to make it successful.

DH: No, no it was not. There were tumbleweeds at the beginning. But I was hard headed. I had this feeling like “I know this will work” and at that point this place, The 5 Spot, which is very popular now was not popular 10 years ago. It was one of the early 2000s bars that was open in East Nashville. They would have shows occasionally and it was more like a hangout place. It still is that, but now people show up. And those early days of Two Dollar Tuesdays was kind of like convincing your friends to get on stage and sing. Putting the out of their comfort zone a little bit. The more you did it, the more it was like “this is fun”. Then out of town bands would come through and play at this place that is really fun to hang out at too. It all became this sort of thing that was like my living room. Trying to make it a house show inside of this big bar. Once everyone started to get the hang of that feeling and that vibe and the show is the show. Not who is playing it. People could play under the radar without big posters and Facebook invites and all that stuff. It became synonymous with fun and a good thing to do. That took about a year. Then it kind of had a life of its own.

Is this an open mic night? No. Is this a songwriter’s night? Fuck no. We have enough of those things. It was sort of a variety show. There would be a bluegrass band and then a rock band and then I’ll play and then maybe a comedian or something like that. Then maybe an instrumental group or something. You see a little bit of everything in a short amount of time.

But yea, it started with a lot of people scratching their heads and saying “what is this?” Now I couldn’t imagine not doing it. Its a great little neighborhood night.

RLR: You have really managed to foster a community within that whole thing at the 5 Spot. When people are touring through its like “man I gotta make sure I am in Nashville on a Tuesday so I can play this”. Has it been a challenge for you to reign it in and always book solid acts? Whats that process like?

DH: No, no. I have a lot of people who either know what it is or don’t know what it is but know that they should play it. So they email me and I have to describe what it really its and I have to explain that you are going to come to Nashville and play five songs for little money…and there’s no sound check. Its like if you have ever played at Rockwood up in NYC, its kind of churn and burn. But I am the MC and I introduce everybody and there is a DJ that plays records between acts. There is this whole, well oiled machine. So theres still those people who know they are supposed to be there, but they don’t know why but at the end of the night they get it.

So when they do play their five songs I tell them “play your best stuff”. Open with ‘Stairway to Heaven’, go right into ‘Hotel California’…and they get it. Its not about you, its not about me, its about all of us and for the audience to have a great night out.

RLR: Thats the perfect way to transition into this question. You have really created and fostered this sense of community in East Nashville but it has already stretched far beyond. On a personal level, what does community mean to you as an artist, but also as a human?

DH: It means a great deal to me. I like that word a lot. I like when its put into true practice. I think East Nashville is a great little pocket of that. I always think of this thing. Theres a lot of us who are a lot more successful than others. But we are all in this together. We are there for each other. There are not little cliques of “this rock band doesn’t hang out with this crew that talks shit about this other rock band”. That doesn’t work here. You all need to play a show together and get on board or you aren’t going to last very long.

There is not a lot of friction and a lot of open mindedness over here. It all creates better music and better art. It keeps people pushing limits instead of just trying to write a truck song to get a cut. Thats a different world. So I think East Nashville is more artist centric and forward thinking folks that love Nashville for its rich history but want to try to be a part of its future too.

RLR: So, what comes next man?

DH: I think maybe record a little this winter. Thats kind of my new thing at this house I live in now. Its very conducive to hold up and be creative. And tour next year on this record and keep it alive as long as I can…until the next one.

 

Photo: Scott Simontacchi