Andy Hull talks About muziek in 'Swiss Army man' Starring DR (Fb.com/DanieljacobRadcliffeFanClub) 

The strength of Andy Hull’s work ethic cannot be questioned. As

Manchester Orchestra, Right Away, Great Captain and Bad Books, he’s released over a dozen full lengths and EPs not to mention the various guest spots he’s had on tracks. Add to that his own label (Favorite Gentelmen) and a home studio he built with Manchester Orchestra, and it becomes clear that Hull understands the importance of being involved in every aspect of the music he is releasing. At a recent stop on his first solo tour (co-headlining with Dustin Kensrue), we caught up with Andy to talk about what he’s learned about his various projects during one of the first stints of downtime he’s had in almost 8 years. Of course, downtime is never really downtime for Andy Hull.

EN: So this little tour you’re on with Dustin Kensrue is kind of removed from all of your projects. What instigated it?

AH: Well we finished such a busy year last year, and I had my first child and so I needed to be home for a bit and mentioned it to my agent, but I also told him I wouldn’t be against heading out a little bit and he mentioned that Dustin was doing this tour. It’s only ten days and I’ve never done a solo tour just as me, so I figured I’d give it a go. It’s cool because I can play stuff from all three projects and people have been receptive to everything.

When I’m home I forget, and sometimes convince myself that I don’t have any fans.

AH: Oh yeah! I don’t live in a place either, where anyone would know our band or what we do, so I just kind of fly under the radar. I can just be a dad, and walk around town, you know?

EN: For sure, and with this tour, it’s just a short trip, kind of casual, so it must be a nice change from what you’ve done for the last however many years.

AH: Yeah, like the last eight years! It’s great. I’m not really stressed about anything, I’m really enjoying playing.

EN: That’s great to hear. You’ve been a part of so many projects and so much music, but you’ve also dove heavily into the background part of the business, building your own studio and starting your own label really early on. Was a lot of that by necessity or did you know early on that you wanted to challenge yourself with other parts of the music business?

AH: I think once I started realizing that it was up to me, and I couldn’t bank on anybody else to help me with my success…you know we could get a great label, and I’ve had amazing people that I work with and that have worked for me, but if I’m not the main motivation and the main thing that’s pushing myself, I realized it wasn’t really going to go anywhere. It was actually sort of a defense mechanism. At the end of the day I can still have control over everything I do. Our keyboard player Chris Freeman said to me a long time ago, right before we made our second record, and it’s stuck with me. I said, “What are we going to do, people actually really like this record”, because we had no idea people would love the first record. Stuff was happening, it was in baby steps, but we could see it definitely moving, and I didn’t know what we were going to do, and Chris said “We’re never going to put out anything we don’t love.” And that was it, that sentence is what it had to be.

EN: Especially now, it can run away from you if you let other people have control of what you’re creating.

EN: I’ve caught up with Jesse and Kevin over the past two or three years and they pretty much said the exact same thing. It’s really refreshing to see you all doing things your way, and that you all have worked together and you’ve made it work. They are still so many artists trying to get signed to the major labels…I mean I get it, but at the same time I don’t because there are artists like you that are making a case for doing a lot of the background on your own.

AH: There are benefits to going from a totally unknown band to all of a sudden being in a machine, and that machine is working for you and doing things at all of these different levels. The problem is that now they take income from you in every area, and they are hopefully going to help you in every area, which is what should justify them taking from you in every area. That just never sat well with us, and then we met guys like Jesse early on in our career, and the advice was always, “Don’t, whatever you do, whoever you sign with…make sure you have complete creative control and you know who you’re working with and you trust them.” That was really helpful, so then we knew we weren’t going to be comfortable with someone telling us what to do.

We’re fortunate too because we have a high standard of what we want to do, because there are bands out there trying to do it on their own, but maybe they don’t have that person saying “Oh, maybe we need this”, or “No, we shouldn’t do that.”

EN: Well I have to congratulate you because I’ve followed your projects for a long time and what you are doing works.

EN: I think the path you’re taking keeps you humble. One of the most dangerous things, or maybe damaging things, is expectation…that you build something up and in your mind it has to achieve something or be something.

AH: Absolutely, and then when you have people around you telling you…even when we did Simple Math, the head of Columbia, he’s a really sweet guy…everyone was really kind to us with that partnership. But you know, they were talking like we had written Clocks by Coldplay or something. And for a second I believed it, I was like “Yeah I did write that” (laughing), but then I was just brought right back down to Earth. No, that’s not the way it works. If people keep telling you that though, it’s hard not to believe it. Eventually you realize they tell that to everybody.

EN: I can’t imagine that being fulfilling, when it comes from somebody else but inside you don’t really know what it is yet.

AH: Exactly. I felt like Simple Math, I’m still very proud of that record, but I knew it was going to be a bit more difficult for people to process on first listen.

AH: Exactly, with multiple listens, because those are my favourite type of records. So we attempted to do that and I think it worked, but we also knew we wouldn’t see the immediate response, like with radio like we did with “I’ve Got Friends”. We got a really little taste of that with that song, but I knew I didn’t want to play the radio game, trying to write something specific for that or playing shows for free so they’d play our song (laughs).

EN: With Simple Math, you said you knew it would take people a while to catch on. Were you nervous about fans that had been with Manchester Orchestra since the beginning, or new listeners or both?

AH: Well it was a test for sure for the fans. I was a little concerned, but I also wanted to push our listeners. I knew it had to go there. I remember our manager telling us the sequencing was going to be a bit difficult, and that it didn’t really pick up to a certain point, but I would tell him that was the way it was supposed to be. It’s a story and it wouldn’t make sense if it wasn’t told that way. Then the record came out and exactly what I thought would happen, happened. People weren’t getting it right away and I was like “Ah, I fucked up!” even though I’d been preaching it the whole time.

EN: The video for Simple Math made it more accessible I think.

EN: It’s funny because there’s the discussion about what is the place of a video now, and that video did something pretty big for that song.

AH: Right. We’ve always tried to make sure that our music videos are something a bit different. And now the album has done what I thought it would do, in that it’s years later and I get a lot of people that come up to me and say Simple Math is my favourite album, and they totally get it.

EN: It’s the long pay off. You’ve collaborated with so many people…who’s on the wish list still?

AH: I’m producing the new O’Brother album. Tanner and I left for this tour but we’ll be right back at it when we get back to Atlanta. I’m also working on the new All Get Out album. And Robert from Manchester, and I are doing a movie score right now.

EN: Oh awesome! I know you’re really into movies so that must be a dream come true.

AH: That’s exactly it! I had no idea what I was going to do this year, which is weird because I’ve always had it planned out. And then my friends who did the Simple Math video, the DANIELS, they’re two guys named Daniel, got a movie deal. They did this Sundance Lab thing and they asked me to write all of the music for it. It’s kind of part musical and it’s a really crazy experience. We’re pretty deep into that.

EN: Wow that sounds really cool, I’m really excited to hear that. What is the movie called?

AH: It’s been the coolest music I’ve ever made, because it’s so out there. All we use is our voice and body, there’s like body percussion and stuff.

AH: No it’s not done yet. We’re going to be working on it pretty much all year. It hasn’t been filmed yet, so we have to write as they go along because the actors are going to be singing a lot of it.

EN: It sounds like a really immersive experience. A lot of times for score work or soundtrack work you get the scene already filmed and you write to that.

AH: Exactly, so this is cool because we’re like reading the first draft of the script and then writing stuff and then reading the second draft and we’re writing things that affect the script. It’s a total dream come true. It was like “What am I going to do this year?” and then this came it’s like “I’ll do the one thing I’ve been dying to do and just haven’t had the opportunity.”

EN: Well congratulations again, that’s amazing. What song or project, at the end of the process, caught you off guard the most by what it became? It always sounds like you go in with a plan and have an idea where it’s going, but have you ever gotten to the end and been totally surprised by it?

AH: I think when Cope and Hope were finally both out, and our dream had been fully realized, that was something I was very proud and separately proud of those two things. We didn’t know at the onset of that record that it would be two records done like that.

AH: Oh yeah a bunch of stuff. I’m always pretty surprised though. I mean we have a plan, but I’m mostly surprised and grateful when something comes out of my mouth and…for example the Cope lyric “And I hope that there is one thing that we let go, and that is the way we cope.” I remember hearing that back, I didn’t remember saying it and I kind of got teary and said and prayer and said “Thank you for that.” I needed something that say ‘Here’s where you’re going now.”

We had written ten songs and none of them ended up making it. I was in it and hadn’t found the thing that made me excited yet, so when I heard that played back I was very grateful.

EN: Getting back to the studio and the label, and you handle your own merch to. Do you find that background stuff rewarding?

AH: Totally. Every guy in the band goes to the house every day and we spend time collaborating musically or talking about ideas and we just now built our own screen printing, so we can do our own shirts and limited runs. I just saw a picture of the first one and it’s of the Virgin album artwork but it’s like a crude line drawing, it looks really cool. I love that we’re taken out all middle men. It’s right from our hands to theirs. Back when we all smoked cigarettes shirts would show up to fans and smell like cigarettes (laughs), which is shitty but cool.

EN: That DIY method has crept back into the industry.

AH: I think it has to if you want to make a living doing it, especially if you don’t have placements or sponsorships.

EN: And fans like to know that what we’re holding…your hands went into making it.

AH: Yeah! Like we starting doing those life advice notes. It was my wife’s idea and we had like a hundred orders for it!

EN: It provides a bridge for fans to you, and allows you to keep a safe distance but still be accessible.

AH: And the thing I think a lot of people don’t know about me, because I’m intense on stage and on albums, is that I’m very grateful and overwhelmed that people like our music.

EN: Everything that you’ve put out either as Manchester or Bad Books or Right Away, Great Captain…it never feels packaged. That you are a part of the process throughout the whole thing…it translates to the final product. You mentioned the sequencing of Simple Math. I think every Manchester album is incredibly well sequenced. Do you remember the first album that stuck with you as a complete experience, because of the sequencing and the way the full album played?

AH: Thank you. I think it would be Blue Album. The pacing of that record was perfect. Or Frogstomp by Silverchair…

EN: I just started listening to Neon Ballroom a lot lately.

AH: That’s a band that I look at and they always reinvented themselves and always did something different and always did a great job of it.

EN: Have you heard Daniel Johns’ new solo stuff?

AH: Yeah his voice is amazing. His voice is crazy, it’s like sexy R&B music. I’m like great, this is the guy who wrote Israel’s Son when he was 16.

EN: Simple Math was instrumentally and lyrically dense and that’s what the band set out to do, but it was really personal too. Did that make it easier to get so deep personally on the record?

AH: Well it all really came from my wife and I almost splitting up. We got married and had a really difficult first year of marriage. It was really a love letter to her and to our future. It was like here’s what happened, here’s how we fixed it and here’s how we have to keep working on it. I’ve never had a problem opening it up…I have closer connections to my songs that really dig in, stuff I almost feel bad saying, but that’s how I know I should say it.

AH: Right, and for me records I latched on to were honest ones always. Sometimes harsh, but honest. We were playing Simple Math for the guy who was mixing Cope because he hadn’t really heard it and he was like, “This is so wordy.”

EN: Well each song is like a document, whereas Cope is really concise.

EN: For the strings on Simple Math how much involvement did you have in laying out those sections?

AH: We kind of just pointed out the parts. This kid just randomly found the guy who was mixing Simple Math, this kid went to Berkley, and he played us this clip of something he wrote in his dorm room so we just asked him to help out. The strings on Cope were much different and we learned a lot from the Simple Math process, where instead of 12 strings maybe we only need 4 players. But that’s what Simple Math was supposed to be for us…how far could we push things?

EN: So then Cope was concise and loud and it seems like a vent. One of the greatest things we can do is make a choice, and a lot of times we make a choice and fear holds us back from living with it and the consequences. That theme almost seemed coded into the album.

AH: For sure, and to carry it ourselves. With previous records we’d be there for the mixing and stuff, but we’d get to like 75% or 80% and then let someone else help us take it to the finish line. With Cope we did everything on our own and that was an amazing feeling. And when we made the decision to write a completely non-stop, fast paced alternative rock record that was liberating, but also testing. We had slow songs that we really liked like “After The Scripture” and it as tempting to put that at the end of Cope, because it almost made sense. But I like to look at our album as how they’ll look in the discography…

AH: Right, and even the way the cover art looks, the entire thing is like this little punch. And after Simple Math, and realizing that people were down for us to do something like this, it was liberating.

EN: Do you think you could have made Cope as your second record?

AH: No. I think we tried to, we wanted to, but we had other things that had to come out.

EN: You’ve had a little more than a year now with Cope being out. What is the biggest thing you’ve learned from it?

AH: Hope was such a huge thing, because it felt like we were able to say “We can do both.” There’s still power at the core of the song, either way that we dress it. I go back and forth between which I like more, and it also cleansed our pallet as a band. Now we’ve made the loudest and softest full length of our career, and now what we do next is exciting.

EN: For sure…it allows you to redefine the spectrum. Just moving on to Right Away Great Captain for a bit, one of the things that works so well is that it’s grounded.

EN: Well the story, the narrative comes from a possible real place. A lot of times concept or narrative albums have the sci-fi or fantastic elements to them and the RAGC trilogy comes from a real time and real possible scenario. You mentioned that there’s the possibility of taking that project further with another album, maybe exploring the afterlife or something like that, but you’ve earned that now. Was it important to keep it grounded and real at least until some type of conclusion?

AH: Yeah, because when you write something like that a lot of times you’re becoming a character but you’re still the person building that character. I was still working through a lot of personal stuff when I was writing those songs. I was very connected to that character.

It would have to be something really proud of and the story would have to be really good before I’d ever go back there, and it might be a really long time before I do it. I could see myself doing an Andy Hull solo album before anything under the Right Away, Great Captain name. At the time I was 19 and a trilogy seemed like a really good idea, until your 25 and the story isn’t done.

EN: And you’re wondering, what have I gotten myself into and how do I finish it?

AH: Exactly, but now to have something that is a stand-alone body of work, that’s like 37 songs or something.

EN: I notice with RAGC you experiment with your voice more, with growls and whispers. Is that something you felt more comfortable with as that project?

AH: I’m not sure if it’s because of the character work, but with Cope and Hope I’m in a place where I feel the most comfortable with my voice being loud and up front, that I’ve never been at before. With RAGC, it was my voice from the beginning up front, and it was the first chance I got with that.

EN: Did you ever feel snagged by the story. I mean, with a concept album, or a narrative across multiple albums, I would think you run the risk of being caught up on theme and recurring motifs.

AH: For sure, and especially with the first album it was contained. So he leaves and has no way to communicate this thing that his wife and his brother did, other than living with it in his own head. We went to a cabin and recorded that thing with barely any electricity. No cell phones, we just made it in total isolation and it kind of mirrors that.

Even with the second record and him becoming an opium addict, I could write that and spread because I still wasn’t at the end. It was in the third album where I was like, how do I put this to rest in a respectful way without overreaching. So, like the first record it’s bare on purpose because he’s in jail waiting to die and coming to terms with the fact that he’s found peace and forgiveness and he deserves what he deserves. I just listened the third record for the first time last week and I’m really proud of how it wrapped up.

EN: With Bad Books, it seems like you have an outlet to write stand-alone stories like “Pytor”. I know that you’re a fan of The Weakerthans…I’m a huge fan of The Weakerthans and John K. Samson. Do you think he’s inspired you for those stand-alone story songs?

AH: I’m a huge fan, that’s all Dustin and I have been talking about for the past two days. We’ve been listening to his solo record he put out a few years ago. Thank God an older friend told me when I was like 18 years old, listen to this album Reconstruction Site, for sure he’s an inspiration.

AH: Criminally underrated, for sure. He’s been influencing me since I first heard his stuff. Going back to Bad Books, Kevin and I feel that Bad Books, is just, just getting started. That’s going to turn into a serious band. Whatever we do next will be a step up, and we’re going to go for it as a band. He’s become one of my absolute dearest friends and closest confidants. We’ve still yet to sit together in a room and write a song. We’ve brought parts to each other and collaborated, but we’ve yet to properly write together and that’s going to be really exciting when that happens.

EN: For sure. My last question, and this might be hard to answer now, but out of this whole experience, playing and making music, what is the primary lesson you’ve learned that you’ll pass on to your daughter.

AH: Musically, there are so many things. Lately I’m realizing, I only want to write and sit down and write when I really feel like it, like when’s it’s calling me to. I don’t force it. I want to make sure that whatever I invest my time in when it isn’t with her, that it is important to me and it holds weight. It’s made my work, and when I’m working way more productive because I want to do the best work I possibly can and go see her.

#Andy Hull  #Interview  #Manchester Orchestra  #RAGC  #Bad Books  #Luke C  #Right Away Great Captain  #Simple Math  #Cope  #Hope