TLOBF Interview // Micah P Hinson

19 July 2010, 12:00

Micah P Hinson has just come off the backend of his European tour, following the release of his latest studio album, Micah P Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs. Through seeing him play live and talking to him on the phone, one thing I noticed was just how honest and helplessly controversial he is. There’s something extremely endearing about those two personality traits when paired together and talking to Micah on the phone was like chatting to an old, but wild, friend.

The appointment of Barack Obama signals a big step in American politics; a theme that many singer-songwriters seem to indulge in. Do you feel that protest songs still have their place in society today, or is that something of the past? And how do you see his appointment affecting your music?

I’m not sure it can go down like it did in the 60s; some of the most amazing music in the fucking history of time…it couldn’t fucking crush…it couldn’t crush what inevitably ended up crushing the American dream, what I see now crushing the world dream and then the human dream. So, as far as Obama now, people won’t sing against him because he’s a fucking celebrity, man. He doesn’t have to wear a fucking tie, or a coat and all that shit…he’s the fucking president, motherfucker! Put your fucking tie on correctly.

I’m guessing you didn’t vote for him, then…

No, even though I have a lot of very anti-Obama feelings, which is very bad to have in America because you’re viewed like a fucking traitor and even though I am a patriot to the end and I would die for my country, as far as me singing about Obama; that will never in a fucking million years happen because I’m not going to waste a second of my fucking god-given time on such a fucking fascist motherfucker, man. And I don’t have to waste my words on him, you know? I can speak how I feel but as far as the music’s concerned…oh man I feel so strongly about that man that it’s going to get me in so much trouble one day, oh my god. I was on the cover of some Italian magazine and they called me ‘The Poet of the Revolution’ and I thought, ‘fuck man!’

When I saw you recently in Manchester, you sung a very dark song about the USSR and claimed, ‘this needs to be sung about’. You chose to voice an opinion on something you clearly felt strongly about. Why then, do you avoid writing about Obama and the internal politics of America?

Oh man yeah, the Ruby Lounge! Every time I play there I feel like I’m in some bad 80s movie or something. But that’s such a fucking grungy…I fell like I should be wearing tattered pants and old-skool flannel shirts and shit. It’s amazing. That was a really fun show. But yeah, I get you. The thing about Dimitri and telling his story of evil is that, although I guess it’s a political thing, it’s not based on any political thought. I hope people from that part of the world who hear it don’t get upset at me or shit. It’s like, the Italian men that were actually buying the videos and were pissed because the old videos weren’t good enough and Dimitri asked the guy in an email, ‘Well, what do you want to see?’ and the Italian wrote back, ‘I wanna see the motherfucker die’. And so I felt bad about that stuff. And I wrack my brain about it because it had to be fucking told, you know? I’m not sure if that’s connected to anything like Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ or maybe ‘The Ballad of Hattie Carrol’ – some stories that humanity kind of needs to know and that’s not a thing I usually do. You hear C, G and D so many fucking times, you’ve gotta kind of figure out a way to play C, G and D a different kind of way.

You mentioned the possibility of having a band next time you tour. Do you think playing with a band adds or detracts anything from the overall songs for you?

It’s a really difficult thing. Playing with a band, for me, is really less about the musicians and more…it matters more about the heart of the individual and less about the talent of the person. There’s always been something about that’s very fucking amazing and very attractive to me outside of the music and so, to be on stage with those people you really were connected. It got to the point where they’d know my time, you know what I’m saying? I don’t feel that I’m like a metronome – it’s a bit more kind of moving and shaky, and they can just pick up on that shit, it’s amazing. And so yes, I think there’s a time and a place for both. To be solo and be able to talk and speak…I think to play solo is the proof of what I’m actually doing is songs. You get any song and you take away all the extra crap – all the strings and the horns – and you get one guitar and one voice and if it still sounds good, well then you’ve got a fucking song and if you don’t, well then you have music. And I want a fucking song. Everybody can fucking play music but not everybody can write a song. That’s not to say that I do it well but I’ll go to my fucking deathbed trying, man.

You explained almost every song live when I saw you, which seemed rather odd, as a lot of musicians tend to hide behind some veil of mystery by leaving the ‘true’ meaning hidden. Is there a reason for this?

I’m playing these songs about all these things that have happened to me and I guess that’s really personal and the meaning for me is always going to be the same but the listeners who are kind enough to listen to my stuff, I think it’s great for them to know, if they want to know, where it came from. But I hope that I have the power to write in such a way that is personal to myself but also simultaneously universal and personal to other people and I think that’s why I have fans from like 3 years of age to teenyboppers to 80 year old Italian communists, man. It’s just this huge perspective of individuals, people that speak English and people that will never speak English, and it still comes across and it’s fucking gorgeous, I don’t know how it happens but I’m very, very lucky, man.

Having originally recorded on 4 track machines with little to no money, how does it feel to be recording in a studio with other musicians and producers?

Well yeah, back then I got taken to Manchester like a frightened rabbit, I got thrown into the studio with all these fucking people in The Earlies who I didn’t know and I think you can hear on the record how quiet the guitar is, how timid I sound. I don’t feel like I felt comfortable but gradually you can hear me creating my own space and finding my own sound and nowadays, with the Pioneer Saboteurs, it was really all recorded in my house. So we did all that there, with the strings done in Spain and other strings done in Colorado and some of the piano stuff was worked on in New York but yeah, other than that it’s all done at home. So that’s really where the recording process has taken me.

I think at the studio you often risk losing the textures of the music, with the different microphones for the different sounds and the noise of the house – your dog barking, your girlfriend making too much noise – and all these things like putting Crickets into a song – I put one microphone in the yard and I just sang. But still, I think when you go into a studio you miss out on all of that and you have to kind of artificially make those things if you want them.

For me, it’s important to record at home but then I’ll take all the shit to different people and that’s when the real process begins, taking those recordings and the mixes of my ideas and making what is to be a painting, almost. That’s how I see this record, especially; it’s just a massive fucking piece of oil, man…it’s just a goddamn oil painting, man. There were so many things I was able to acquire at home but when you’re at a studio it’s different; if you’re working with one guy that’s one thing but if you’re working with another that’s something completely different. It’s very interesting and I bet everyone will have his or her own different taste. Like Emmy the Great, when she made her last record apparently she wanted it to sound like The Gospel of Progress and it’s a good record, I like it and I love Emmy the Great but I’m thinking, ‘Why didn’t you come to me! If you want it to sound like The Gospel, why didn’t you come to me!’

Seeing you live, one thing I noticed was that playing your songs on that stage seemed necessary, more so than with other musicians. Do you ever see yourself moving away from playing music? Or is your future firmly set in playing and recording your own songs?

Yeah man, music, whether it’s my profession or not, I need to do. I always perpetually need to tell stories about myself, so whether people are paying me money to write these records or not I think I’d still be doing it, man. It’s something inside me that I feel like I need to create and I think that in some way was why I was put here, I don’t know why. And so if all this doesn’t work and gets taken away, I’d still be fighting.