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The Language Before Words
Photography by CAMERON MCCCOOL. Words by SOLANGE SMITH. Grooming by MIKE MARTINEZ.
Produced by OLIVIA ROSENBERG. Location courtesy of THE SUPLEX AGENCY.
FIVE DOLLARS
AND A PRAYER
I was sitting in Rome, in Piazza Navona, enjoying a Negroni after spending the afternoon wandering around the Vatican and listening to Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14, as I walked along the river while the sun disappeared behind the city. I’ve become convinced anything feels more profound with a piano soundtrack, by at the very least a good twenty-five percent. The Italians are also remarkably optimistic when it comes to alcohol proportions. Halfway through my third sip, and just as I’d decided I definitely didn’t need another, an old man wandered over, saluted me as though we’d known each other our entire lives, sat down at the table beside me and pointed at the cover of the book I was reading, Cathedral of the Sea. “Come il Vaticano.” I proudly attempted to explain that I’d just come from there. Whether he understood my Spanish, I understood his Italian, or we both simply decided confidence was enough, I’ll never know, but from that moment onwards he launched into a story.
Now, this was before I’d learnt some Italian. My Spanish helped but certainly not enough to justify a full conversation. And so I nodded along. Every now and then he’d stop, convinced I’d understood, and well, I’d nod with exactly the same conviction. When he laughed, I laughed too. It wasn’t until I stood up to leave, after he smiled, blessed me in Italian and sent me on my way, that I realised I hadn’t understood every word he’d said. Oddly enough, it didn’t seem to matter because somehow, I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me. I’ve thought about that afternoon more times than I’d care to admit, not because I suddenly developed a talent for Italian, but because it made me wonder whether faith has less to do with certainty than it does with trust. Trust that the person opposite you means well, trust that the road you’ve taken is leading somewhere, and trust that,even without understanding every step of the way, you will, eventually, hopefully, arrive.
A few days later, I was back in Spain, having just finished my pan con tomàquet for merienda, while Sawyer Hill was waking up in Los Angeles preparing for his day. I thought we were going to spend an hour talking about songwriting, Arkansas, and the peculiar experience of suddenly finding millions of people listening. Instead, almost every story he told seemed to revolve around that same small act of faith: a fifteen-year-old determined to play bars that wouldn’t book him, a grandfather piling his family into a car to preach across Louisiana for five dollars, and years spent writing songs because there was never really another option. None of those stories were really about certainty. They were all about continuing before there was any guarantee that continuing would amount to anything, and that gut belief that if you simply keep going, eventually something answers back.
Perhaps that’s why I understood the old man after all. I’ve often wondered why, but maybe there are certain things we recognise long before we can explain them. Sound reaches the body before words do. So does the joy in someone speaking about the thing they love. We don’t stop to analyse why a piece of music moves us before it does., We simply let it be, and only afterwards do we begin searching for the reasons why.
Maybe that’s why music and faith have always been such close relatives. Neither asks for certainty. I guess they simply ask us just to listen.
I was sitting in Rome, in Piazza Navona, enjoying a Negroni after spending the afternoon wandering around the Vatican and listening to Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14, as I walked along the river while the sun disappeared behind the city. I’ve become convinced anything feels more profound with a piano soundtrack, by at the very least a good twenty-five percent. The Italians are also remarkably optimistic when it comes to alcohol proportions. Halfway through my third sip, and just as I’d decided I definitely didn’t need another, an old man wandered over, saluted me as though we’d known each other our entire lives, sat down at the table beside me and pointed at the cover of the book I was reading, Cathedral of the Sea. “Come il Vaticano.” I proudly attempted to explain that I’d just come from there. Whether he understood my Spanish, I understood his Italian, or we both simply decided confidence was enough, I’ll never know, but from that moment onwards he launched into a story.
Now, this was before I’d learnt some Italian. My Spanish helped but certainly not enough to justify a full conversation. And so I nodded along. Every now and then he’d stop, convinced I’d understood, and well, I’d nod with exactly the same conviction. When he laughed, I laughed too. It wasn’t until I stood up to leave, after he smiled, blessed me in Italian and sent me on my way, that I realised I hadn’t understood every word he’d said. Oddly enough, it didn’t seem to matter because somehow, I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me. I’ve thought about that afternoon more times than I’d care to admit, not because I suddenly developed a talent for Italian, but because it made me wonder whether faith has less to do with certainty than it does with trust. Trust that the person opposite you means well, trust that the road you’ve taken is leading somewhere, and trust that,even without understanding every step of the way, you will, eventually, hopefully, arrive.
A few days later, I was back in Spain, having just finished my pan con tomàquet for merienda, while Sawyer Hill was waking up in Los Angeles preparing for his day. I thought we were going to spend an hour talking about songwriting, Arkansas, and the peculiar experience of suddenly finding millions of people listening. Instead, almost every story he told seemed to revolve around that same small act of faith: a fifteen-year-old determined to play bars that wouldn’t book him, a grandfather piling his family into a car to preach across Louisiana for five dollars, and years spent writing songs because there was never really another option. None of those stories were really about certainty. They were all about continuing before there was any guarantee that continuing would amount to anything, and that gut belief that if you simply keep going, eventually something answers back.
Perhaps that’s why I understood the old man after all. I’ve often wondered why, but maybe there are certain things we recognise long before we can explain them. Sound reaches the body before words do. So does the joy in someone speaking about the thing they love. We don’t stop to analyse why a piece of music moves us before it does., We simply let it be, and only afterwards do we begin searching for the reasons why.
Maybe that’s why music and faith have always been such close relatives. Neither asks for certainty. I guess they simply ask us just to listen.
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SOLANGE SMITH: It’s eight o’clock, I’m in Spain.
SAWYER HILL: Oh, wow.
SS: And you’re in LA, right?
SH: Yeah.
SS: I was there a couple of weeks ago. Do you go often?
SH: More often than I’d like to sometimes.
SS: You don’t really fancy it?
SH: I do and I don’t. I like the people, the talented creative people who are out here. But in terms of a place to live, I definitely prefer Arkansas.
SS: That’s where you grew up?
SH: Yeah, it’s where I live now.
SS: I’ve always found it fascinating asking people about childhood because nobody ever starts in the same place. What’s the first memory that comes to mind when you think about growing up?
SH: Honestly, playing with my brothers a lot, especially with my middle brother Steven. A lot of action figures, we would just make up crazy stories, learning and playing in bands, those are some good memories. It really depends on how you split it. Pre-pubescent memory, post-pubescent. Way different lives.
SS: Where do you fall in the family?
SH: Well, I’m the youngest, so all my brothers are older than me. I technically have two full brothers and one half- brother.
SS: Ah, I have three brothers too. Were you all quite close growing up?
SH: Yes, you know, it’s funny, I did do music with them, really just my oldest brother. I joined this band in high school. I must have been fifteen and started playing all the gigs with them. We had this drummer that we got off Craigslist who had one ear and was just a crazy guy. He was in his late thirties too and I was a teenager. Then we realised my oldest brother could play the drums, so we kicked out the Craigslist drummer and my older brother became our drummer.
SS: (Laughs.) Fair enough. Family comes first. When did you first get on stage?
SH: I would’ve been fourteen. We grew up in this town called Siloam Springs, which, in small Arkansas is a very small town. Then about thirty minutes away is Fayetteville, the university town. We were always like, “Dude, we’ve got to play Fayetteville. We’ve got to figure out how to play there.” We’d send endless booking emails, show up to places and call them. We finally got our first gig at this vegan restaurant.
SS: Fourteen’s young. What do you remember about that first gig?
SH: I remember being super nervous. The show was pretty mediocre and I just blamed it on the venue. Still, to this day, I’m like, “I’ll never show my face there.”
SS: A vegan restaurant’s a tough crowd.
SH: (Laughs.) It is. It was.
SS: And what were those first songs like? What were you writing about back then?
SH: I feel like the first songs were really dark and kind of edgy. But it’s funny because one of my most popular songs now is a song that I wrote when I was fifteen. I’ve been playing that song my whole life.
It’s called “Look at the Time.”
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SS: That’s quite rare, though. Most people look back at what they made at fifteen and want to hide it somewhere. Which actually makes me curious, what were you like in high school? What was your favourite subject? What kind of person were you back then?
SH: That’s an interesting question.
I really liked writing, literature and reading. I should pick up reading again. I used to all the time. I was okay at maths but I just kind of didn’t apply myself because I stopped caring about school. I could get away with trying very little and just getting by, a lot of it was just to keep my parents from being mad at me. When I was in school, I was playing all these shows and my friend group was so much older than me. They had already graduated, so I felt like my social life during high school was mostly spent outside of high school. But in high school, I had my friends, girlfriends and, I don’t know, played Lunchapalooza a couple of times.
SS: Was there someone who made you think, “This is exactly what I want to do?” Or did music slowly become something that was always there?
SH: You know, I never really thought about it as pursuing music.
It’s funny, my best friend called me the other day. We were driving around and he said, “It’s crazy you never quit music.” I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, “You never stopped. You just kept doing it.” I never really thought about it that way, but he’s right. When I was younger I just kept making music because I enjoyed it. It wasn’t really about making it into a career. I just liked doing it.
SS: Yeah. It’s day by day, isn’t it? Even now. You have your goals, but you focus on what’s in front of you and then hopefully it just keeps growing.
SH: One foot in front of the other type of guy. For sure.
SS: That’s quite rare, though. Most people look back at what they made at fifteen and want to hide it somewhere. Which actually makes me curious, what were you like in high school? What was your favourite subject? What kind of person were you back then?
SH: That’s an interesting question.
I really liked writing, literature and reading. I should pick up reading again. I used to all the time. I was okay at maths but I just kind of didn’t apply myself because I stopped caring about school. I could get away with trying very little and just getting by, a lot of it was just to keep my parents from being mad at me. When I was in school, I was playing all these shows and my friend group was so much older than me. They had already graduated, so I felt like my social life during high school was mostly spent outside of high school. But in high school, I had my friends, girlfriends and, I don’t know, played Lunchapalooza a couple of times.
SS: Was there someone who made you think, “This is exactly what I want to do?” Or did music slowly become something that was always there?
SH: You know, I never really thought about it as pursuing music.
It’s funny, my best friend called me the other day. We were driving around and he said, “It’s crazy you never quit music.” I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, “You never stopped. You just kept doing it.” I never really thought about it that way, but he’s right. When I was younger I just kept making music because I enjoyed it. It wasn’t really about making it into a career. I just liked doing it.
SS: Yeah. It’s day by day, isn’t it? Even now. You have your goals, but you focus on what’s in front of you and then hopefully it just keeps growing.
SH: One foot in front of the other type of guy. For sure.
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SS: Correct me if I’m wrong. You went viral, but you weren’t really consistent online before that?
SH: No. Before playing music, I definitely wasn’t posting. I thought, like a lot of local musicians do these days, TikTok’s lame. You’re not cool. You’re not a real artist if you post your art. That was kind of the way I was thinking. Then I saw all these groups, some of which I’d played with when I was a kid, getting an audience. They were able to share their art and play big shows. I thought, well, I need to be doing that. I have a talent, I have songs and I have something to say. I’m working this dead-end job at a pathology lab. I’ll regret it forever if I don’t share it. I’ll also be really bummed if I end up working in the lab for the rest of my life. So I decided to be really consistent with it and shortly after that people started listening.
SS: Has your relationship with social media changed since everything took off?
SH: It hasn’t really changed. When I first started, I was really hungry and just wanted to make something happen. Then something finally got people’s attention and everyone started hating on it. It ended up on the wrong side of the algorithm. You refresh and it’s, “This guy sucks. This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” It was horrible. But I remember thinking, if I was genuinely bad, all these people would be right. But I don’t think I am. Now I have an opportunity to prove them wrong. A month later I post something else and it blows up because everybody loves it. The internet and social media are a reflection of human beings. We can be all one thing and we can be all another. It’s never really one thing. If you take either the hate or the praise too personally, you can get yourself into trouble. So I learned not to take either too personally and just try to share what I think is cool.
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SS: Someone has to be powerful enough to have people contradict them. Even the great rock stars had people who misunderstood them. Maybe it wasn’t through an algorithm, but there was always some kind of myth or contradiction around them. Is there someone who gave you that perspective growing up?
SH: Well, definitely being raised in church. Raised by my parents. I love my parents, they’re really great.
But when it comes to dealing with millions of people on the internet, no one I know knows anything about that. There’s no guide for it. My dad has given me a lot of general advice about life, but then I’ll tell him what’s going on in my job and this is normally a guy who’ll tell you every little thing and micromanage every little thing, and he’ll just say, “I have no idea what to tell you, son.” So you just learn as you go. I try to make what I like, put it in the best possible way, visually and musically, and everything else is just trying to be a human being.
SS: I was reading about your relationship with the church earlier. Are you still close to it?
SH: Not anymore.
SS: Sorry, may I ask how come? Or we can skip that.
SH: No, totally. I mean, the church that I grew up in was very strict Pentecostal. There are a lot of different variations of it. We were the very strict kind where women couldn’t cut their hair or wear makeup and dudes couldn’t show their knees or grow facial hair. A lot of these arbitrary rules, people speaking in tongues, kind of going crazy. That’s what I grew up around. When I was eight or nine, my pastor kept coming over to my house, talking to my grandfather, who was high up in the church and preached all around the country with Pentecostal stuff. I didn’t really understand it. Then one day, my mom cut her hair and started wearing makeup and I’m like, “What the hell’s going on?”
Then the whole church changed, my parents divorced and we stopped going to church. So that’s basically the story of it. I haven’t been to church in a while. The last time I went to church was for my grandpa on Father’s Day maybe four or five, six years ago.
SS: How was it?
SH: One of the ladies who was singing in the church worship group, at the end of the song, she starts going and she passes out on the ground. They just leave her there. Some guy comes over, takes his blazer off and puts it over her. I’m like, “What the fuck is this right now?” It just felt so performative. Not to say that’s all religion, but that specifically felt so goofy. That same pastor that would help me speak in tongues back in the day is now the one saying, “Alright, somebody quiet that lady down. She okay? Alright, moving on.”
SS: You know, quite a bit of that goes into your music, then. In a way it’s quite rebellious. You saw something so hopeful become something much more confined. Do you think you carried that into your music?
SH: Totally. I think that’s a huge influence for me.
Do you hear the weed eater?
SS: (Laughs.) No.
SH: Basically, I was only allowed to listen to country music, gospel music and Christian music. Growing up listening to Johnny Cash, that was one of these really cool things that I was allowed to listen to and that was super inspirational for me. Also, the act of Pentecostal preaching, where they’re stomping around with the hanky, they’re loud and they’re getting the people going. It's entertainment. It's a performance. You can debate the intentions of that or the genuine aspect of that, but it is a performance. Making this record, I was going deep within myself. I’m like, “Where do I come from? Why am I the way that I am?” I started looking at those Pentecostal preachers, looking at old videos of my grandpa preaching. One of the last lucid conversations I had with him before he got dementia and passed away was him telling me stories about piling his family into a car and driving around Louisiana preaching. He told me, “I got the people fired up for the Lord and afterwards, the sister comes by and tosses me five bucks. Five bucks? Are you kidding me?” I had those exact same experiences as a musician growing up. You sell a bunch of tickets, get the people fired up and then they literally toss you five or ten bucks. That conversation really made me think about the parallels between what I do and what he did and where I grew up. When I’m at the meet and greets, I’m shaking everybody’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming. ” I’m very preacherly in the meet and greets. That’s what my mom says, at least.
SS: Someone has to be powerful enough to have people contradict them. Even the great rock stars had people who misunderstood them. Maybe it wasn’t through an algorithm, but there was always some kind of myth or contradiction around them. Is there someone who gave you that perspective growing up?
SH: Well, definitely being raised in church. Raised by my parents. I love my parents, they’re really great.
But when it comes to dealing with millions of people on the internet, no one I know knows anything about that. There’s no guide for it. My dad has given me a lot of general advice about life, but then I’ll tell him what’s going on in my job and this is normally a guy who’ll tell you every little thing and micromanage every little thing, and he’ll just say, “I have no idea what to tell you, son.” So you just learn as you go. I try to make what I like, put it in the best possible way, visually and musically, and everything else is just trying to be a human being.
SS: I was reading about your relationship with the church earlier. Are you still close to it?
SH: Not anymore.
SS: Sorry, may I ask how come? Or we can skip that.
SH: No, totally. I mean, the church that I grew up in was very strict Pentecostal. There are a lot of different variations of it. We were the very strict kind where women couldn’t cut their hair or wear makeup and dudes couldn’t show their knees or grow facial hair. A lot of these arbitrary rules, people speaking in tongues, kind of going crazy. That’s what I grew up around. When I was eight or nine, my pastor kept coming over to my house, talking to my grandfather, who was high up in the church and preached all around the country with Pentecostal stuff. I didn’t really understand it. Then one day, my mom cut her hair and started wearing makeup and I’m like, “What the hell’s going on?”
Then the whole church changed, my parents divorced and we stopped going to church. So that’s basically the story of it. I haven’t been to church in a while. The last time I went to church was for my grandpa on Father’s Day maybe four or five, six years ago.
SS: How was it?
SH: One of the ladies who was singing in the church worship group, at the end of the song, she starts going and she passes out on the ground. They just leave her there. Some guy comes over, takes his blazer off and puts it over her. I’m like, “What the fuck is this right now?” It just felt so performative. Not to say that’s all religion, but that specifically felt so goofy. That same pastor that would help me speak in tongues back in the day is now the one saying, “Alright, somebody quiet that lady down. She okay? Alright, moving on.”
SS: You know, quite a bit of that goes into your music, then. In a way it’s quite rebellious. You saw something so hopeful become something much more confined. Do you think you carried that into your music?
SH: Totally. I think that’s a huge influence for me.
Do you hear the weed eater?
SS: (Laughs.) No.
SH: Basically, I was only allowed to listen to country music, gospel music and Christian music. Growing up listening to Johnny Cash, that was one of these really cool things that I was allowed to listen to and that was super inspirational for me. Also, the act of Pentecostal preaching, where they’re stomping around with the hanky, they’re loud and they’re getting the people going. It's entertainment. It's a performance. You can debate the intentions of that or the genuine aspect of that, but it is a performance. Making this record, I was going deep within myself. I’m like, “Where do I come from? Why am I the way that I am?” I started looking at those Pentecostal preachers, looking at old videos of my grandpa preaching. One of the last lucid conversations I had with him before he got dementia and passed away was him telling me stories about piling his family into a car and driving around Louisiana preaching. He told me, “I got the people fired up for the Lord and afterwards, the sister comes by and tosses me five bucks. Five bucks? Are you kidding me?” I had those exact same experiences as a musician growing up. You sell a bunch of tickets, get the people fired up and then they literally toss you five or ten bucks. That conversation really made me think about the parallels between what I do and what he did and where I grew up. When I’m at the meet and greets, I’m shaking everybody’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming. ” I’m very preacherly in the meet and greets. That’s what my mom says, at least.
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SS: Do you feel like there’s a message you’re trying to convey?
SH: No, I don’t really think there’s one specific message. I feel like if you were to come to my show, artistically there’s something, for lack of a better word, kind of lame about standing on one hill and being so overt about it. Definitely have the things you care about and the things that are important to you, but be artful about it. Be poetic about it. There’s a certain vagueness that I think is cool. Every artist has a message, whether it’s direct or indirect. I just don’t like beating people over the head with what I think is important.
I think the main thing about live music is that people have their jobs. They’re working, they’re only given permission to be a certain version of themselves every day. Then they come to a show and they don’t know how to have a good time. I feel like my job, or anyone performing, is to take someone out of that everyday feeling they’re in. To let them know it’s okay to have a good time. Bring them out of their normal shell.
SS: Or almost let them step into your world for a little while. Even when I’m listening to music with my headphones on, I feel like I’m stepping into somebody else’s world of emotions.
SH: Exactly. And there’s something spiritual about that, whether it is legitimately spiritual or whether it hijacks the spiritual elements of our brains. The first time I ever spoke in tongues, I was maybe nine years old. It sounds hard to believe people are being genuine because it seems so insane, but it felt so real. They did the altar call after the service and I went up. This pastor got right in my face saying, “In the name of Jesus, ” and then this nonsense phrase over and over again. Before I knew it, I repeated it back. Then there were ten people touching me and everyone was saying it. Before you know it, I’m just losing it. Whatever the hell it was, it felt real. There’s this collective unconscious experience that comes with human beings in a group, let alone human beings in a group listening to music or being directed by a preacher, a frontman, whatever it is. So there is something spiritual about that, I think.
SS: I wonder if it’s because sound reaches us before language does, maybe it’s not about understanding the words at all, maybe it’s about feeling something first. When you’re writing, what do you find yourself coming back to? What are the experiences or ideas you keep wanting to explore?
SH: I mean, sometimes I’ll tell you what the message is, depending on the song. Sometimes the message is really overt. One thing I like to do in writing, at least right now, is I don’t like using overly complicated words. If you can convey an idea simply without over-editorialising it or making it seem really complicated, then you understand it. A lot of the time, something complicated explained simply is deeper that way. It makes me feel something a little bit more. There are things that are easy to write about, and there are things that are much more difficult. A heartbreak song, they’re deep, powerful, emotional and we’ll never run out of them. But then there’s a song like “Jimmy’s Gone Numb”. Those are really hard songs to write.
SS: Was there a moment that made you want to write Jimmy’s Gone Numb? It’s quite a specific song.
SH: Yeah. I feel like it was really a combination of things. It wasn’t one specific moment. It was talking to a lot of people around the country, talking to a lot of my friends, a lot of my family. There seemed to be this common thread through all those conversations:,Nothing is getting better and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s such a cynical thought and I don’t like to be cynical. I think there’s always something we can do about it. and there’s always hope.
One thing I love about music is that you can take an emotion and make it into a painting. You put it on the wall and say, “This is rage. This is betrayal.” I wanted to take that feeling everyone seemed to have, that numbness, and write about it. Certain things keep happening in the world and, in any other society, we’d all be out in the streets. Now people just seem numb to it. I was sensing that from everyone I was talking to, on either end of the political spectrum. A great riff came along and it felt like, “Yeah, this is the one.”
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SS: It’s brave. It feels like it’s becoming harder to write songs like that because there’s always the fear they’ll be misunderstood.
SH: Exactly. That’s when I say some songs are harder to write than others. It would’ve been really easy to write a big “fuck you to the man” song, but that felt cheesy. The way we approached it was by talking about real people and real problems. Not a Twitter headline, not whatever was trending, just the things ordinary people are dealing with every day.
SS: Are there any other songs you feel particularly strongly about? Maybe they were difficult to write, or maybe they came easily but said exactly what you wanted them to.
SH: I might have to think about it. It’s really a mixed bag. Sometimes songs come out really fast, and they’re really great and well received. Sometimes they come out really slowly, and they’re also really great.
SS: I think knowing when to stop is one of the hardest parts of creating anything. How do you know when a song’s finished?
SH: Usually a deadline helps. All of my artist friends in Arkansas are like, “Yep, still working on that EP.” It’s been two years, dude.
SS: (Laughs.) I know the feeling.
SH: It can get really easy to overthink things.
Something I love about the Beatles is they were just like, “Alright, let’s do it. Get it over with. Move on to the next one. ”There’s something about just doing the thing and moving on. Be a perfectionist, but not to the point where it totally paralyses you. You write the verse, you write the chorus, maybe it doesn’t need a bridge. Then you go to the microphone and sing it the way it’s meant to be sung. You ask yourself, “Does this word still fit? What if it was this word?” Then it’s a minor editing process once I’m on the mic. After that it’s production, then a deadline because I live in Arkansas and it’s like, “Yo, I gotta leave. Goodbye.” A couple rounds of notes and that’s it. You know it’s done when it makes you feel something and you’re not listening to it pissed off because of that one thing that isn’t there.
SS: It’s brave. It feels like it’s becoming harder to write songs like that because there’s always the fear they’ll be misunderstood.
SH: Exactly. That’s when I say some songs are harder to write than others. It would’ve been really easy to write a big “fuck you to the man” song, but that felt cheesy. The way we approached it was by talking about real people and real problems. Not a Twitter headline, not whatever was trending, just the things ordinary people are dealing with every day.
SS: Are there any other songs you feel particularly strongly about? Maybe they were difficult to write, or maybe they came easily but said exactly what you wanted them to.
SH: I might have to think about it. It’s really a mixed bag. Sometimes songs come out really fast, and they’re really great and well received. Sometimes they come out really slowly, and they’re also really great.
SS: I think knowing when to stop is one of the hardest parts of creating anything. How do you know when a song’s finished?
SH: Usually a deadline helps. All of my artist friends in Arkansas are like, “Yep, still working on that EP.” It’s been two years, dude.
SS: (Laughs.) I know the feeling.
SH: It can get really easy to overthink things.
Something I love about the Beatles is they were just like, “Alright, let’s do it. Get it over with. Move on to the next one. ”There’s something about just doing the thing and moving on. Be a perfectionist, but not to the point where it totally paralyses you. You write the verse, you write the chorus, maybe it doesn’t need a bridge. Then you go to the microphone and sing it the way it’s meant to be sung. You ask yourself, “Does this word still fit? What if it was this word?” Then it’s a minor editing process once I’m on the mic. After that it’s production, then a deadline because I live in Arkansas and it’s like, “Yo, I gotta leave. Goodbye.” A couple rounds of notes and that’s it. You know it’s done when it makes you feel something and you’re not listening to it pissed off because of that one thing that isn’t there.
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SS: I know we have to let you go soon, so I’ll finish with this. What are you most looking forward to over the next year? And when people listen to your music ten years from now, what do you hope they take away from it?
SH: I’m excited to play a lot of shows around the world. I’m excited to go to Asia at some point.
That’s been a lifelong dream of mine. I’m going to get to go to some cool places this year and I’m super excited about that. I’m excited to keep speaking from my heart. I have my dream job. Every day is a dream. If the next five years were exactly like this, I’d be totally chill.
As for what I hope people take from the music, I think that’s a funny question because you could listen to a song with the windows down driving along the highway and it could make you really happy. I could listen to that same song and cry because it fills me with sadness or nostalgia.
That’s the beauty of art. It’s mine while I’m making it. Then I give it to everyone and it isn’t really mine anymore. You might play it at your wedding, you might play it at your funeral. As long as it makes you feel something, I think that’s the most important thing.
SS: Well, thank you so much. This has been lovely. We’re very lucky to have you on our cover and I hope I’ll get to see you play live one day.
SH: Absolutely. Thank you, guys.
SS: I know we have to let you go soon, so I’ll finish with this. What are you most looking forward to over the next year? And when people listen to your music ten years from now, what do you hope they take away from it?
SH: I’m excited to play a lot of shows around the world. I’m excited to go to Asia at some point.
That’s been a lifelong dream of mine. I’m going to get to go to some cool places this year and I’m super excited about that. I’m excited to keep speaking from my heart. I have my dream job. Every day is a dream. If the next five years were exactly like this, I’d be totally chill.
As for what I hope people take from the music, I think that’s a funny question because you could listen to a song with the windows down driving along the highway and it could make you really happy. I could listen to that same song and cry because it fills me with sadness or nostalgia.
That’s the beauty of art. It’s mine while I’m making it. Then I give it to everyone and it isn’t really mine anymore. You might play it at your wedding, you might play it at your funeral. As long as it makes you feel something, I think that’s the most important thing.
SS: Well, thank you so much. This has been lovely. We’re very lucky to have you on our cover and I hope I’ll get to see you play live one day.
SH: Absolutely. Thank you, guys.