We Spend Our ‘Last Quarter’ And Chat To Greg Hoy About His Latest Single And Video

Greg Hoy speaks to us about his music-making process and latest release, ‘Last Quarter‘.

‘Last Quarter’ hits hard and feels totally alive. Where did that song start for you?

Like a lot of my songs, ‘Last Quarter’ started by accident. The studio where the album was recorded was a tiny (10 x 12) room in a bigger building of rehearsal spaces called Green Room Music Center in Pacifica, California. My recording method and lack of space meant keeping the drums set up with mics at all times.

By recording studio standards, and with this particular incarnation I’d nicknamed The Old Croft (after Phil Collins’ original home studio), this spot was tiny and minimal – a 4 channel API pre-amp for the drums, run into a Scarlett 8 channel preamp, and into my Mac. The standard mic setup for drums was 5, leaving two inputs for the Marshall guitar amp, and one mic left for a vocal. The drum throne had the kit on one side, and then the computer behind me. I could just swivel with the stool to transition from playing to producing. Standing space, too, was at a premium. I’d stand up next to the drums. barely move, then pick up the guitar and sing.

‘Last Quarter’ happened while I was just ‘chug chug chugging’ on the guitar’s low E string, trying to figure out which mics were hot. Then, that first line ‘I gave you my last quarter’ came out of my mouth. Listening back, all the mics in the room were on – even though I thought I was only recording the guitar and vocal! 

So I started a click track in my recording software, and wrote the whole song with just the guitar and the vocal live into the room. It was my version of some of my favorite guitar-playing singers – Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Frank Black, and Reid Paley. Then I added drums and bass. The vocal and guitar was done live in one take. Mixing on that song was a bit tricky due to the dynamics between the verse and chorus. Luckily, my engineer works very cheaply! 

You’ve got this knack for pushing rock forward without losing its soul. What made you want to throw horns into the mix this time?

Thank you for saying that. It was just how I was hearing things, you know? The songs without horns on the album could have had them, too, I suppose, but it didn’t feel as natural. But having our current live set charted out for sax and trombone for my songs from the last 20 years, then playing live with a horn section, has been great. The new ones off the record fit right in. Plus, it takes the burden and physical pain off of me to not always play guitar solos!

You played almost everything yourself on this track. What’s that process like when it’s just you building a song from scratch?

Yea! The whole record is my performance except for the horn parts: written, played, recorded, mixed, engineered, mastered. Recording as a joy started at a young age. My love of it started when my sister was deployed to Germany. I was 6 or 7. My dad and I would record cassettes on a little tape recorder, talking about things at home, and then would airmail it to their Air Force base. Then, she and her husband would record over it and send the tape back for us. (For any old tape heads, it was a Realistic / Radio Shack branded cassette – my dad’s cheap choice, and among the top of the heap of crappy tape!)

Song building alone isn’t that different from writing with others. There’s a kernel of an idea – whether it’s a melody, a loop, an instrumental part, occasionally a lyric – and then that becomes the scaffolding around which a song is built. Sometimes that initial spark doesn’t even end up in the final song! I’ve had songs that started with a theme or title that get so rearranged during the process that the initial spark gets 86’d. And that’s ok! The muse rarely comes with a roadmap.

The horns give ‘Last Quarter’ this big, loose energy, but it never feels messy. How did you find that balance?

I appreciate that recognition. Arranging and mixing is its own art. Living in NYC in the 00s, part of my hustle was mixing, production, and mastering for other artists. Fresh ears can be a godsend when you’re knee deep in the process. For my own work, I have developed the ability to ‘step outside my own process’, so to speak. It also helps to make a lot of rough demos and mixes of a song and take them to non-studio situations like the car or gym. Most of the songs on ‘Hit Music’ have a few versions sitting on the hard drive – some faster or slower, some with different feels or keys, etc. Prince supposedly only listened to his own music. While I wouldn’t go to that extreme, I do think repetitive, active listening before declaring something finished is the only way to go (at least for me). 

The unicorns in the video are hilarious and weirdly moving at the same time. How did that idea come about?

One of the themes of the video is value: what we hold sacred, and how that evolves as we grow older. The simplicity of a quarter and a video game at a young age might give way to a pile of cash in a limo in later years. Sure, the elements change, but is there really a difference in that feeling?

It also helps to have a roommate who is 5 years old and obsessed with rainbows and unicorns. Since she loved the video we did before this one with the alien mask (‘What, My People?’), and because this song is partially written about her, the unicorn masks and idea became apparent.

There’s humor in the video but also something real underneath it. Were you trying to sneak in a bigger message there?

Capitalism has been getting away from us for quite some time now. It hurts me inside every time I break down an Amazon box. My father used to call it ‘Conspicuous Consumption’. How much stuff do we really need? (Short answer: Very little). There was a bumper sticker back in the 90s that said ‘Whoever dies with the most toys wins.’ Regardless of the poor grammar, that flippant phrase has become the de facto mantra for ‘success’ in the last decade. (I’m looking at you, Elon). 

Here’s a real kicker I discovered in making the video: I ordered a bunch of prop $100 bills for the limo shoot, and they came wrapped in packs of 100 with a rubber band around it. And both before and after the shoot, I’d hand a wad of these hundreds to friends and say, ‘Here’. The look on their faces *even as they assumed it was fake* was telling. This green paper with no inherent value still perceptually gives you a happy lil jolt when you hold it in your hand. Of course, these people were all of a certain age – one where physical, tactile money still holds a high regard. Having said that, my daughter digs holding on to cash, too, so..

You’ve spent time in both tech and music. How does your tech background shape the way you approach making art?

Designing systems has been in my mind even as a young kid. I remember trying to make a board game in like 2nd grade about the planets and astronauts, and spaceships. It never did get off the ground! My tech career happened later in life for me, post NYC starving-hustling-artist mode, and it revolved around building teams. 

My strength is in using both ‘quant and qual’ data, as they say in that world. You could also call it using both the art and the science. It’s not unlike DJing, or mixing, or cooking – finding elements, putting them together, creating something new. These days, it seems there’s a lot more science than gut instinct being shoved into the processes. My take has always been about keeping the human element alive within it. As things like automation and AI infect our creative processes, protecting the ‘humanness’ within art has never been more important. As the great artist and polymath Jack White just said in his speech at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony ‘Get your hands dirty.

These days a lot of people lean on software to make music. You go the opposite way. Why stay so hands-on when it would be easier not to?

Haha! I actually *don’t* find using software or fake instruments easier! Spending years learning to play guitar, and drums, and piano, and whatever else… if there’s something I’m hearing in my head, I’ll just play it. The same goes for combining multiple takes. Why bother? My idea of performing music means… you know, *performing* music. If there’s something that’s off on my own stuff, 9 times out of 10 it takes less time to replay it than it would for me to hit copy-paste + find a plug-in to fix it, etc.

You called this new record a “greatest hits from scratch”. What did you mean by that?

A musical peer of mine was chatting with me about having so many albums over the last 20 years, it would be easy for me to do a ‘Hits’ or compilation for the streaming services. This was before making this record became viable. I’d told her I was thinking of taking some time off from playing guitar because of my back issue, so she suggested putting out some sort of compilation to keep my name out there!

By the time I’d figured out that playing drums would not only help my injury heal but also be an interesting way to write songs, the ‘Hit Music’ sign I passed every day on my way to the studio became my mantra. Why not try to write what could be a greatest hits album? That kept the North Star of quality very high, and listening to the album almost a year after starting it, it still feels fresh to me.

When people walk away from your shows or this record, what do you hope sticks with them most?

With my recordings and live shows, it’s like that old hippy camping mantra: ‘leave it better than you found it.’ People spend valuable time with my songs or at our gigs, and that offering is not lost on me. I hope that the dopamine and the excitement generated by my art is infectious, that it inspires others to create, to think, and to evolve. 

Check out the music video for ‘Last Quarter’ below and find out more about Greg Hoy and his music online on his official website, Bandsintown, Instagram, and Twitter.