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"Will Hoge makes major return to Nashville"

The hardest working man in show business may be James Brown, but it’s hard to find a harder working band than Will Hoge. It’s a Nashville-based ensemble that goes by the moniker of its lead singer/songwriter and hopes to be the first Music City rock group to make a sustained commercial impact on the national music map with its Springsteen-meets-Elvis Costello sound.
Hoge recently signed to Atlantic Records after the 2001 release of his independent CD Carousel to critical acclaim. The battle for the right to record and distribute the 26-year-old’s music was intense and came down to Nashville’s Lost Highway Records and Atlantic Records in New York.
"Atlantic seemed like the right fit," Hoge said. "Lost Highway would have been a good choice, but it was just a gut thing. Luke Lewis, [president of Lost Highway,] and the guys are just getting their thing started, and they’re having great success with Ryan Adams. But it was just a gut thing."
Pointing to Atlantic’s track record of breaking artists skewed from the mainstream music scene, Hoge explained what galvanized the band’s record company decision. "Atlantic pushed Jewel when angst-ridden rock was all you heard. They did the same thing with Hootie and the Blowfish. Not that we want to sound like them, but we have to be somewhere that allows us to be uniquely our own. And Atlantic is going to let us do that and have the muscle and history with the rock side to pull those strings and get things done."
Amusingly enough, one of the standout tracks on Carousel is "Rock and Roll Star," a blistering middle-finger flip at the callousness of the music industry. When asked why he signed with what seems to be his enemy, a major label that relies on bottom-line numbers more than music, Hoge dismissed the comment and justified himself. "It comes down to people you’re dealing with more so than the entity. It’s about people doing this for the wrong reasons at major and smaller labels as well. It was actually written about a bad deal here in Nashville I had."
Primed to return to the studio for its debut major label record, the process should be significantly easier for the band this go round. "[Carousel] was really a stealth record," Hoge said. "We were sneaking into studios and calling on every favor we could to scrape together a record."
Time and money are the easy aspects of the next project. According to Hoge, the difficulty is choosing a studio and producer, which has been narrowed down to a list of five, though he declined to name them.
Since Hoge’s independent release has such standout tracks, receiving radio play as far away as Philadelphia and Connecticut, there was a question of whether Carousel would be the foundation of the new record. But Hoge has no intention of taking the easy road. "I wouldn’t be morally opposed to any of those songs showing up, but we don’t want to re-release or re-cut Carousel," he said.
Part of what makes Carousel such a rare listening treat is the energy captured by engineer John Hampton, who has worked with artists as diverse and notable as Gin Blossoms and the Replacements, even when recorded in a confined and sporadic studio environment. It helped that the group’s first guitarist was none other than Dan Baird of Georgia Satellites fame, who brought multiple decades’ worth of experience and talent to the lineup.
Though he has been replaced by Brian Layson on guitar, the group, which is rounded out by bassist Tres Sasser and drummer Kirk Yoquelet, continued to develop a powerful, cohesive sound that has broadened over the course of 2001 thanks to extensive touring.
This summer found Hoge and company opening for John Mellencamp, Rod Stewart and a fall tour with Midnight Oil. According to Hoge, it was a period of growth and learning. "Over the last six to eight months, we’ve really gotten to play with the caliber of bands we have a lot of respect for, not only musically but bands that have been able to establish careers and have some longevity, which is what we’re all after."
Midnight Oil proved to be of particular inspiration. "They come out and put on an amazing show every night whether there were 800 or 2,000 people," Hoge continued. "It’s the old cliché. It doesn’t matter how many people are there, you have to put on a great show. The fans felt like a part of that band, and it was very inspirational."
Not to say that Will Hoge didn’t put out 110 percent on every show already. His energy is legendary, evoking Otis Redding and the Boss himself, and is the reason for the band’s grassroots following from Memphis to Massachusetts. That same down-and-dirty style is what Hoge believes will keep the band viable for some time.
"It’s not like we’ve signed with Atlantic and totally changed everything we’ve been trying to do," he added. "We’re not all of a sudden making all kinds of money, riding around in a bus. We’re still doing the van and doing the things with hopes of establishing something long term."
Will Hoge rolls into Nashville Saturday for a highly anticipated show at 328 Performance Hall. After finishing up its scheduled tour dates, the band will enter the studio in January, return to the road through the spring promoting Carousel, then gear up for a summer release of their new CD, though this remains a tentative schedule, according to the gravel-voiced singer.

Will Hoge
9 p.m. Saturday
328 Performance Hall
328 Fourth Ave. S.
$10
For more information, call 259-3288