Interview: Micah P Hinson, Part II.
Posted by: nick
One of the most endearing and chatty interviewees we’ve had the pleasure to interview, here’s some more gold from our original Micah P Hinson interview for those who haven’t had their fill. Hear one of our favourite performers on his early days, his new album, Fleet Foxes, his Native American roots and his recent work with U.N.K.L.E.
Micah Talks
On his early days:
I was signed to Sketchbook Records. They were really small, I was actually the first proper band they signed. Everything else had been licensing deals, they did Steve Merritt and probably the biggest name was Daniel Johnston. You know sometimes you get the idea you want to move on and do bigger and grander things but without saying too much, I miss them. But I guess a lot of musicians miss the older times when things were just a bit fucking easier.
I remember the first paycheque I got from BMG (publishing) in Manchester I spent on a big fucking bag of MDMA, needless to say I didn’t get a lot of sleep that week and I felt like a real asshole at the end of it, it was fucking terrible. That stuff sucks all the happiness out of you man.
We first saw you play in Bristol back in 2003, it was a Sunday afternoon audience and a large proportion of the crowd was being really noisy, you handled them by being noisier. Is that your normal way of dealing with troublesome audiences?
Those were the early days. As you’re speaking I can see inside my head on that day. I was getting pissed! I’ve seen people who stop and berate the crowd but I’ve never found it fun to do that. I prefer to fuck with them. When they’re talking I get loud as fuck and when they get quieter I get quieter. It’s amusing. People are like lemmings, they’ll all jump off the mountain if you go first.
But that show you’re talking about was back in the early days, it was a tour with Vetiver. I got totally sideswept on that tour. What they said all along was that it was supposed to be Vetiver then me then Devendra Banhart. A week before I got an email saying no actually Vetiver’s headlining and Devendra is in the band.
Veitver had just released their first album and had never done a tour over here. So the pecking order and perhaps my ego got to me and fucked me off because I’d been busting my balls then all of a sudden they were making a lot more money than me, and spending a lot more money. But Vetiver aren’t bad man, they’re really nice people. I kind of see them like the original Fleet Foxes.
On Fleet Foxes:
Fucking Fleet Foxes, people love that shit! I tried to get into it. I even went out and bought the EP and the full record and I just felt after listening to each song that I could just listen to My Morning Jacket and be just the same.
They were actually supposed to open up for me in Shepherds Bush (Bush Hall, July 2008) and then my agent called me a month before and told me they’ve gone gold already and they’re selling the fuck out of everything so they’re not going to be playing with you anymore.
In the five years or so I’ve been doing this you see a lot of people shoot past you but a lot of them you sit back and watch (makes a noise of a rocket launching and exploding). Slow and steady wins the race man.
Photos courtesy of Pedro Teodoro
On his new covers record ‘All Dressed Up and Smelling Of Strangers’:
I took the new record not strictly like a cover album. I tried to be more like someone like say A.P. Carter and take songs that have already been done and mix them up in my own kind of way. And we’ll see what people think of it because I’m covering some things which are pretty hard-hitting motherfuckers which I really have no business to mess with. But I guess the thing is that I’m not trying to be like them, I mean I cover ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra but it’s just a guitar and me, I didn’t try to create that grandiose sound.
On his origins:
I moved back home to Abilene, Texas after getting married (Micah proposed to his girlfriend in the Union Chapel at the end of a gig in Dec 2007). But it my parents ended up moving to Oklahoma right after we moved. My family are Chickasaw Indians and my father is developing a drug and family clinic, a physical place for the Chickasaws to go and sort through their drinking and meth and heroin problems.
The bloodline actually goes on my mother’s side though. My fifth great grandfather was head of the Chickasaw Nation, my fourth great grandfather was a guy named Levi Colbert who cut his hair and put on a suit and went to Washington DC to talk to the people. I guess you can sort of see that as pussying out but I think the end of the Native American states was inevitable so better to go in like that. But I can see both sides because I can also see the appeal of staying out on the range and dying that beautiful death. My brother is now third in the line for leader of the Chickasaw Nation.
On his work in progress:
So Tunng are finishing up a record just round the corner from here (East London) and they’ve asked me to come and sing some stuff. And I’ve been doing collaborations with U.N.K.L.E. recently, I’ll be on their next album. They sat me down with three tracks and I really struggled with them. So I listened to some of the old UNKLE shit like the Thom Yorke track (Rabbit In Your Headlights) and I saw that DJ Shadow was involved back then.
I used to take a lot of LSD and listen to DJ Shadow, he had a huge influence on me so I knew I had to produce something half way good. I took a 3 second vocal bit and started looping it into this big choral, psychedelic gospel effect and I sent it to them thinking they’d hate it but they liked it. It was an honour to be invited by a band like them that I’d been listening to years ago.
mp3: Micah P Hinson – You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice (By The Lovin’ Spoonful)
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mp3: Micah P Hinson – You Will Find Me
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buy: Micah P Hinson – All Dressed Up and Smelling Of Strangers
