Greg Hoy is, by his own description, just a guy in a band; the reality however is that he’s so much more. He’s a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, recording engineer, and record label owner, among many other hats he wears in the music business. Ahead of his upcoming sixteenth album, ‘Hit Music’, he takes on yet another hat, swapping out his style and expanding beyond his usual three piece band, with sounds that truly speak to him in musical waters hitherto uncharted by him.
New single, ‘What, My People?’, loosely takes its inspiration from the sound of Jack White’s ‘No Name’ album. It’s percussive rock, with a garage edge that will have listeners immediately craving more where that came from.
‘What, My People?’ has a retro edge, and is driven by a steady rhythm supporting Hoy’s characteristic raspy vocals. It’s reminiscent of T-Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’, and that works well with the message of the song, which is a wry commentary on our modern technological reality. Too often today misinformation spreads like wildfire; we need to pay attention to what we’re doing and listening to, and do so carefully.
Having himself been previously immersed in the tech world, Greg Hoy’s approach is one of both reverence and critique, and with clever lyricism he implores his listeners to take a step back and look at their reality with more critical eyes and from an outside perspective, and ask, “What are we doing with our lives?!” Every aspect of the track has been done by Greg himself: self-recorded, self-produced, it’s all him.
Again, for the music video, it’s all Greg Hoy’s work. He shot, directed, and edited the visual for ‘What, My People?’. We are taken on a space-age adventure, and given a glimpse of what the world would look like if aliens wanted to grab our attention with the sound of rock and roll. Deceptively amateurish props – a school globe spinning against a galaxy backdrop, a cymbal on a string that he’s not even bothered to conceal – add to the overall nostalgic vibe of the song, while taking on a deeper meaning. You could read the battered globe as a metaphor about the state of the world, for instance, hanging on a thread, minutes away from destruction.
Check out the spacey video for ‘What, My People?’ below, and find out more about Greg Hoy and his music online on his official website, Instagram, and Twitter.
