Nov 4

Nov 4 Interview: Scott McMicken (The Hypos, The Ever-Expanding, Dr. Dog) — Part One

Since moving to Asheville in 2021, Scott McMicken’s musical universe has been “ever-expanding.”

McMicken and his wife, Leann Cornelius, relocated from Tucson, Ariz. at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic after Dr. Dog, the harmony-driven indie-rock group he co-founded nearly three decades ago, decided to temporarily stop touring. The couple was drawn to both Asheville’s natural beauty and density of creative talent.

“I was at a point when a lot of things were changing, so I knew I’d have time and space to try things I'd never tried before,” McMicken says. “I wanted to be playing and recording music with people who live in my town. And I've always had such positive associations with the Asheville area, creatively, from friends like Seth [Kauffman of Floating Action] and Evan [Martin of Floating Action and Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters] and Michael Libramento [Floating Action; Dr. Dog; Bonny Light Horseman, etc.] and Brian [Landrum, musician and co-owner of Heyday Musical Instruments & Repair].”

A year after moving to Asheville, he recorded Shabang, the debut album from his solo project appropriately dubbed Scott McMicken and The Ever-Expanding, in upstate New York with a curated crew of seasoned musicians he’d never met. For his headlining set at the inaugural AVLFest this summer, McMicken assembled a mostly Asheville-based ensemble for a traveling revue-esque iteration of The Ever-Expanding, an intentionally iterative and amorphous collective.

McMicken and two of the players with him onstage that night, Kevin Williams and Evan Martin, had been quietly working with fellow Asheville-based artist Greg Cartwright (of Reigning Sound and Oblivians fame) to hatch a new band called The Hypos. McMicken had been a fan of Cartwright’s brand of garage-punk for years.

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

The two songwriters quickly found a creative chemistry, thanks in part to their complementary tastes and seemingly polar-opposite approaches to gear and recording.

“It's almost like Greg and I are perfect partners because we match each other well in terms of where we're both at,” McMicken says. “I've been such a tinkerer for so long and he's been such a purist for so long. Now we're both seeking to let in more from those sides.”

Asheville Stages spoke at length with McMicken about all three of his projects and how Asheville has inspired a newfound appreciation for a minimalistic, hyper-local approach to making music. Part one of our two-part interview explores the origin story of The Hypos, who play their first show Saturday, Nov. 4, at the Double Crown and will release their debut album later this year.

Jay Moye: First off, is it pronounced Hype-Ohs or Hippos? And how’d you land on the name?

Scott McMicken: It’s The Hype-Ohs. Just random — it had a little snap to it. I think I was thinking about the word “typo.” Even after titling shit my entire life, I still can't speak to the weird, magical science of a proper title. It’s like an intuitive thing that either matches what you're trying to stick it on or doesn't.

JM: How’d the band come to be?

SM: When I moved to Asheville two-and-a-half years ago, I knew a handful of people, and Greg was one. I’d met him maybe 10 years ago on a Dr. Dog tour. We knew Brian from Floating Action [a frequent Dr. Dog opening act and collaborator] and found out that he knew Greg. So I asked him if he’d invite Greg to our show at The Orange Peel. Greg came and took a bunch of us out to dinner with his wife, Esther, who turned out was really into Dr. Dog.

JM: Were you a Reigning Sound fan?

SM: Yeah, Reigning Sound, Oblivians, his whole world. I've been into the Memphis rock ‘n roll scene for a while now, though I was a little late to that party. I love Greg’s music so much and was just in awe. The Oblivians album, Play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron, to me is in the top five greatest rock ‘n roll albums ever made. There's a quality to certain rock ‘nroll that actually terrifies me. And that album scares the shit out of me in the best way. I compare it to, like, the soulful power of Little Richard.

JM: You reconnected with him in Asheville in the fall of 2020?

SM: Yeah. My wife and I had seen Reigning Sound play in Tucson a few years after that Orange Peel show. We were thinking about moving to Asheville during the pandemic. We decided to drive out there, camp out, cruise around and just get a feel for it. During that trip, we both realized, “This place is so sweet. We should move here.”

On our last day before driving back to Tucson, we were at Heyday Music [the Lexington Ave. store Landrum co-owns] and Greg walks in. At that point, I was still more the fan, less the friend. I was pretty amazed he even recognized me, especially with us all wearing masks. I felt so cool! We told him about our plans to move there, and that was the first time we actually exchanged numbers.

JM: When you moved here, how’d you and Greg strike up a musical connection?

SM: We got there about four months later. I called him up and we started hanging out, playing each other’s songs at his house. But it wasn't like we were thinking of starting a band. We decided at one point it'd be cool to add a drummer. I thought of Evan, who I'd known for years from the Floating Action universe, so he came over and jammed with me and Greg switching off on bass.

Then Greg was like, “This is cool, but we should add a bass player.” Evan plays in a few different groups with Kevin, who I’d never met before but felt immediately endeared to. He’s from Scranton, PA, and being from Philly, I’ve had a whole Scranton contingency in my life for years, so it holds a very warm spot in my heart. There's something in the water there, just a particular blend of weirdness. Kevin knows a number of my friends.

The four of us started playing together in a very casual manner, maybe once or twice a month, and there was an instant payoff. The vibe was and is so free and easy. I'm tempted to go bold with my declarations of respect and awe but run the risk of sounding overly romantic about it. Ultimately, I can only say the best things about working with each of those guys and about what The Hypos feels like to be in. It’s just been this amazingly inspiring, badass situation.

JM: What about the recipe makes it work?

SM: I think there's a factor of it being a bunch of middle-aged dudes who've been doing something a long time and who’ve been down a lot of different roads. There's a culmination of a lot of experience leading to a pretty seasoned situation — which ultimately is reductive. It’s like, “How about we play music and there isn't any bullshit?” That seems to be the unspoken understanding. There's a heightened awareness of the creative power of the positive vibe. And how the lower you set the bar, the higher the goal becomes.

JM: How did The Hypos evolve into more of a legitimate writing and recording project?

SM: Over the course of, like, a year and a half, we started setting up recording gear and having jams over at my house. I installed a little shed and slowly started putting recording equipment in there.

The Hypos have been the guinea pig for me getting my shit together with my studio. Our first album, which we just finished and will be putting out soon, is a document of the evolution of my studio. The last song we recorded for it was this past summer, at which point my studio had evolved to where I think it will stay for a while as far as my methodology and the gear I have.

JM: Everything was recorded at your home studio?

SM: Yeah, we did everything there in my studio, which is just like this little 10’x16’ yard shed with an eight-track [recorder]. In a way, it’s the ultimate symbolism for this kind of nuanced point of “not serious, yet serious” thing because what's less pretentious than recording rock music in a shed? You're not wearing headphones. There's no carpet on the walls, no glass windows. All of a sudden, you're the best version of yourself. You're free. You're playing and taking chances, and your sense of risk is gone. And I think it makes the music better. The Hypos have been a part of the engine towards that pursuit in music to liberate yourself to really do it, without all those relentless doubts and fears and shit. I think anybody in any sort of creative context knows very well how quickly all those voices can rise to say, “This isn't good enough.”

It’s a very interesting thing that I frankly have become fascinated with as an artist, fundamentally realizing that, at the base level, the source of it all is your level of comfort in the environment you're working in and the people you’re with. In my mind, it's the most ambitious move, and frankly requires the most of you because you need a lot of experience and be around a lot of people with experience to understand. And you need to do the more difficult work of being an open-hearted, available human being to your environment and surroundings. It's this delicate line between taking something very seriously and not taking it seriously at all. And I feel as though The Hypos has been a full-on immersive way to live out that experiment with some really great people.

JM: How would you describe The Hypos sound?

SM: I'm a huge fan of old Jamaican and blues recordings — Chess Records, Stax [Records], and Sun [Records]; that whole legacy of a very modest mode of recording. I feel like The Hypos are stepping into an aesthetic that feels similar to the naturalism and recording methodology of 1950s music, yet the band doesn't feel retro.

In today's world, there's a really fascinating merging of old and new. We live in a fascinating time where I'm not thinking about an old tube amp or guitar from the ‘60s as viable tools to replicate ideas and information of the past. I'm thinking of them as viable flavors on a palette that now involves decade's worth of technology, and it's all towards a goal.

I know at the end of the day, someone will say, “This Hypos shit sounds old.” And it does. It embodies the directness I associate with music of the ’50s. And frankly, Greg is a big part of that. Just being in his company, I've soaked up so much in that way.

JM: Do The Hypos and The Ever-Expanding flex different creative muscles for you?

SM: Yes and no. They’re not too far off, honestly. But Greg's presence in The Hypos definitely sets it apart. There’s less jamming and a real pop economy to our music. The songs are shorter and more concise, with sturdy bones. But the band is still evolving and doing some things in a more exploratory zone. But, I mean, The Ever-Expanding will play songs for, like, 18 minutes, and that doesn't happen with The Hypos.

JM: Are you writing all the songs for The Hypos, or is it more of a collaborative songwriting process?

SM: For the most part, Greg and I bring in completed songs we've written on our own. But our songs, so far at least, have undergone a lot of changes once they get into the band. It’s a strongly collaborative thing. There's very little dictation. No one's making demos. The entry point is getting a grip on the way the songs feel and staying open to the band's intuitive interpretation. The sound of the band and the sound of the record is very much the sound of these four people.

JM: Tell me about the fifth “honorary” member.

SM: Krista Wroten from Memphis, who will be with us at our first show. She’s primarily a violinist, but also plays keyboards and is an amazing singer. She's all-in-all just a complete and utter badass. There's very few people I've been as blown away by as quickly as her. Greg had made music with her before, so he brought her to Asheville at the tail end of wrapping up the record to add some extra things. We ended up recording four new songs with her live. She's so creative and enthusiastic, and works so fast and so professionally. She's open and easy to communicate and work with. There's no ego.

JM: Who mixed the record?

SM: An incredibly talented engineer named Matt Ross-Spang in Memphis, who Greg knew of. He did such an amazing job. We're making a Dr. Dog album right now, and as soon as it's done, I'm going to Memphis to mix it with him. I feel like he's the guy ‘til further notice. He worked at Sun Studios as a teenager and has an amazing pedigree. For years, he’s been working in a way that's very aligned with the way I've begun to focus and work, which is in a more modest way — trying to avoid too much post-production, manipulation, and editing. And leaning more into the live aspect of recording in increasingly lower-key environments. He's seasoned in the history of that way of working, yet also is a modern person with an amazing studio with all the finest gear. He’s well aware of what’s offered on the flip side of the coin.

Matt’s the icing on The Hypos cake. I’d always thought of it as a lo-fi janky thing because we recorded on an eight-track in a shed. And I'm down with that. But he took these recordings to a level I didn't know was possible. And it's completely changed my lens on my studio. Now I realize you literally can do anything in there.

JM: What role has Asheville played in your creative journey these last few years?

SM: I've been in one band my whole life and, as of about 15 years ago, we stopped living in the same town. It's gotten kind of prohibitive to do shit sometimes when you face the logistical reality and cost of travel and stuff. You start bailing on ideas or dreams. To be able to play with your band on a regular basis is something I haven't been able to enjoy in a really long time. And now I’m doing it with both The Hypos and the Ever-Expanding.

Moving to Asheville has been a huge character in what has been a wonderful period in my life in that there are so many amazing, kind, and open-minded people I know there, and I seem to be meeting more on a daily basis. Given that my goals are to be making music there with people from there, from start to finish, I don't know if I could have chosen a better place to move. And the results and what it's brought me in the last couple of years have far surpassed any of my expectations.

Stay tuned for part two of our interview, where McMicken shares what’s next for The Ever-Expanding and Dr. Dog.

IF YOU GO

Who: The Hypos with Steph Green and Duff Thompson
When: Saturday, Nov. 4, 8 p.m.
Where: The Double Crown, 375 Haywood Rd.
Tickets: $10 at the door

(Photos courtesy of Scott McMicken)