Interview: Greg Cartwright (The Hypos)

When Greg Cartwright made the difficult decision in 2022 to retire Reigning Sound, the Memphis-born rock group he fronted for 20 years, he steered his creative scope to more collaborative endeavors.

Perhaps serendipitously, that was around the time Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog moved from Arizona to Asheville, where Cartwright lives part-time. The singer/songwriters, who’d met a decade prior when Dr. Dog played The Orange Peel and are mutual fans of each other’s music, started getting together to share drafts of tunes they were working on — without a specific goal or outcome in mind.

They  quickly found a creative chemistry, thanks to their complementary tastes and polar-opposite approaches to gear and recording: McMicken the tinkerer, Cartwright the purist.

“I always saw Greg as the guy who seemed to be still shooting from the hip and was actually soulful,” McMicken said in a 2023 interview. “No filters, no decorations — just plug your guitar into the amp and do something amazing.”

With the eventual addition of drummer Evan Martin and bassist Kevin Williams, The Hypos were born. The quartet recorded a batch of ’50s garage pop/rock-inspired songs that would become their self-titled debut album in a makeshift shed studio on McMicken’s property. The process was intentionally intuitive and organic; no demos, no dictation, no drama.

“I ended Reigning Sound for a reason,” Cartwright explains. “It just wasn't ever going to be new or different again. I’d fine-tuned what I could do to a degree that there was nowhere else to go. I was looking for other people who’d bring fresh ideas to the table. Scott happened to move here, so it felt like it was meant to be. I was wrapping one thing up, and he was about to have a long break from Dr. Dog, so he had the time. It seemed to work perfectly. 

Asheville Stages spoke with Cartwright about the origins and uniquely democratic dynamic of the band, which plays a rare local (and free) show Wednesday, Nov. 5, at Zadie’s in Marshall.

Jay Moye: I hear a second Hypos album is almost in the can?

Greg Cartwright: Yep, we're pretty much done. There are just a couple of background vocal overdubs to do, which we're intending to do this week. So, hopefully we'll be done really soon.

JM: Are you working in Scott's studio?

GC: We recorded the album in Memphis with Matt Ross-Spang [Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Al Green, John Prine] and did most of the overdubs there. But one nice thing about having Scott's shed is that we can remotely add finishing touches, which makes it much easier to finish the record. Once we’re done, we’ll go back to Memphis and mix with Matt.

We knew we wanted to do a Hypos record in a “real” studio, and there was really no one else to do it with but Matt. He loves the project, and we love him. I've known him for a while but had never worked with him before last year. He used to be the main engineer at Sun Studios, then moved over to Sam Phillips’ studio before building his own studio [Southern Grooves] a couple years ago. We mixed the first Hypos record there.

JM: It sounds like everybody speaks the same language in terms of what you’re going for, sonically.

GC: That's a great way to put it. The way we like to work is very live and very close, with not a lot of separation or isolation booths. We like to work standing in a circle, pretty tight. Matt, coming from Sun Studios, knows what that world is all about because that’s how things were tracked there back in the day. There’s a ton of [sound] bleed, so you have to be aware of that scenario going in. Matt’s probably more schooled in that kind of thought than any other engineer I've ever worked with.

JM: Why does that setup suit the project?

GC: I think it's a headspace and particular workflow. For many years, I was such a big believer in pre-production — playing and rehearsing songs and getting everything fine-tuned so you could walk into the studio, replicate it exactly as you want it, and get the take pretty quick. But with The Hypos, it's more about being in the moment. And when you're trying to really be in the moment and tuned into everyone, the closer you are to each other, the better you can hear, read body language, and get in a groove. That's the way to do it, especially if you haven't had a lot of rehearsal where everyone has the muscle memory of all the little notes and nooks and crannies of a song. It definitely helps to be in a very intimate space, especially with great players like Evan and Kevin.

JM: Reaching the studio not overly rehearsed: is that intentional or a logistical necessity?

GC: My wife and I spend half our time in Asheville and half in Memphis. Our kids are grown, so we can go back and forth a lot easier. I grew up there, but Asheville has definitely become home, as well. With [violinist] Krista [Wroten, now the fifth Hypo] living in Memphis, there's really no way to have full-band rehearsals all the time in either town, unless we really dial it in and navigate everyone's schedule to make it happen. So, part of it’s necessity, and part of it’s by design, just to not overwork the songs so they still feel playful. There's something about catching a song when it's still in its embryonic stage, and before it's firing on all engines, that feels really special. Generally, I've always thought the best way was to fine-tune to the nth degree before catching on tape. And that is really cool, but there's something different about doing it this way.

With Reigning Sound, there was always a lot of pre-production. I was the sole singer/songwriter, producer, and sound architect, so it was about pulling other people in line to get the effect and overall end-result I wanted. [The Hypos] is more about me giving control to the players and seeing what they bring to the table. And that's so exciting to me.

JM: Scott, with Dr. Dog, has spent his entire creative career in a multi-songwriter setting. Is this your first experience sharing writing duties with another member of the band?

GC: It's not my first, but the first in a long time. With Reigning Sound, I was in the mode of making most of the decisions. Control is intoxicating. Having full control over a song, a project, a band, or sound of the production is so satisfying. For a long time, that was mainly what I was searching for. But in a collaborative situation, you have to let go of that full control. You have to be open to investigate the skill sets of your fellow musicians and learn what they can bring to your songwriting. 

Getting into a more collaborative headspace, especially sharing songwriting duties with Scott, has been super fun because he's such a musical person. I don’t know of a better way to put it. He thinks about music all the time. And he’s just so easy to work with. We bring different sets of skills to the table, in that a lot of what I do is intuitive and based on the music I listened to growing up and where I’m from. For so long, I was used to playing with people with the very same aesthetic and same musical goals as me. 

JM: What about the recipe works? 

GC: I think my unpredictable-ness as a player and a musician keeps things interesting. I'm not thinking about a particular melody; I'm thinking more about mood and feel. Scott has a lot of that as well, but he has more technical knowledge than me. For instance, when we're doing background vocals, he seems to know almost immediately what all the harmony parts should be. That's the kind of thing I have to sit down and really think about. But he's thought about it so much over the last 30 years that it’s a palette he can reach for immediately. Having someone like that in the mix who can immediately steer the ship in one direction or another when needed is a skill I don't have. Plus, we both love each other’s music.

JM: You guys have also done some co-producing. You did the [Amanda Anne Platt & the] Honeycutters last record [The Ones That Stay] in Scott’s shed. Is your dynamic as co-producers similar to the way you write and make music together in The Hypos?

GC: That was really interesting, because it was the first time I’d tried to co-produce something that wasn’t my own music. I’ve produced records for other artists, but I've never co-produced with anyone. I think what made it work, again, is our complementary skill sets. It's nice to have two minds on a project. Scott’s a fantastic engineer. We used all of his gear, so he could sit at the console and be buried in that world while I’d be talking to the band, helping navigate the feel. I'm listening to takes, telling the band what I hear, and throwing out ideas for what sound we might try to steer towards.

Although with Amanda, she came in with everything ready to go. She’s just a natural. I think any space would have served her, to be honest. A lot of singer/songwriters go into a studio and get in their head, because it can be scary. But she seemed so intuitive about what the experience was going to be and how to just be in the moment. It’s one of my favorite records I've ever worked on. [Note: Martin and Williams are also members of The Honeycutters.]

JM: How would you compare the second Hypos record with the first?

GC: The first record feels embryonic, in a way. It literally feels like something that's just beginning. Some parts of it are loose, some parts are just jams, and some parts feel more like songs. It was pretty bare bones, then we added overdubs and fleshed out the world of The Hypos. With this record, there’s less overdubbing because there were five players in the room, which filled up the space so much better. There wasn't as much space for overdubbing. It was already complete when we finished the basic tracks.

I feel like this new album is a continuation in the sense that the vibe is the same, but the structure is starting to pull together in a more dynamic way. And that’s just what comes with playing with people over time, as you get to know each other better as players, you can anticipate each other more.

Also, Krista was on the first record, but she wasn't live tracking. Her violin parts were overdubbed. Live tracking with us for this record has changed the dynamic because it brought her voice into the process. An extra person in the room brings another pool of thoughts into the whole thing. It changes the songs, ever so slightly and subtly, because there's someone else with melodic ideas to bend and work around. To me, that’s the mortar and glue that helped us push into Hypos 2.0.

IF YOU GO

Who: The Hypos with Becca Leigh
When: Wednesday, Nov. 5, 6 p.m.
Where: Zadie’s (inside the Old Marshall Jail), 33 Baileys Branch Road, Marshall, oldmarshalljail.com/zadies   
Tickets: Free

(Photo by Jamie Harmon)