Nov 29

Nov 29 Interview: Scott McMicken (The Hypos, The Ever-Expanding, Dr. Dog) — Part Two

Just after 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 4, the five members of The Hypos — Scott McMicken, Greg Cartwright, Kevin Williams, Evan Martin, and Krista Wroten — shoehorned into the front corner of the Double Crown for their first public performance.

Though they’d played the night before at Eulogy’s invite-only soft opening, the West Asheville dive bar was a fitting venue for the proper debut of a band that recorded its soon-to-be-released first record in the comparably tight quarters of a shed in McMicken’s backyard. With no soundcheck and no pretense, they launched into a set of ’50s-reminiscent rock ‘n’ roll that left the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd realizing they’d witnessed something special.

McMicken moved to Asheville from Arizona in late 2021, seeking community and a creative reboot. The co-front man of Dr. Dog became fast friends and collaborators with Cartwright (Reigning Sound; Oblivians), swapping songs that fused the complementary sounds and influences of their respective catalogs. With the addition of fellow locals Williams (bass) and Martin (drums), plus Memphis-based violinist Wroten, The Hypos were born.

Meanwhile, McMicken has recruited a locals-only iteration of his loose, jammy solo project, The Ever-Expanding, and continues to write remotely with his Dr. Dog brethren. He credits Asheville with providing fertile ground for collaboration and inspiring a fresh perspective on creating and recording music.

“I'm living in what I consider to be the most ideal musical universe,” McMicken says. “What I'm experiencing now will hopefully be sustainable.”

Asheville Stages spoke with McMicken about his three projects and artistic journey thus far. Part one of our two-part interview explored the origin story of The Hypos; part two covers what’s next for The Ever-Expanding and Dr. Dog.

Jay Moye: How are you approaching writing for The Hypos and The Ever-Expanding?

Scott McMicken: I've never asked myself that question until recently because so many things are new for me. I've been literally in one band, with no delusions of things going anywhere other than that band, for 30 years. I've been super entrenched in one lane of thinking.

The Ever-Expanding, in its previous and current forms, is based on a few basic principles, which is much more improvisational, like jam band. I always wanted to be in a really good jam band. I’m not a jam band dude, but I like the idea of being free with the music you're playing, mostly because I suck at it and it's scary. Dr. Dog would be more jammy if we were capable. And at the same time, we're not going to try to sound like Phish or try to be jazzy or anything like that.

The Ever-Expanding was, on a basic level, my attempt at starting a really good, improvisational jam band by surrounding myself with really incredible musicians. Everyone in Dr. Dog, with the exception of Eric [Slick], all learned to play music to play Dr. Dog music. We're not people who get called to be the guitarist on somebody's album. It's a very insular universe that me, Toby [Leaman], Frank [McElroy], and Zach [Miller] occupy.

Hanging out with session players and people who get called to do any kind of gig is a very new kind of collaboration for me. I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I'm like, “I can just tell you to do a bebop solo and you can do it? This is on the table now? All of these options, with rhythm and feel and shit?” That's what The Ever-Expanding is about for me.

And it’s all so vibe based. A song on the album that’s near and dear to me is “Mountain Lion,” primarily because it's barely a song. It's one chord. Understanding a song, first and foremost, as a vibe before it's even a composition is something I've begun to get really inspired on through the Ever-Expanding ethos.

JM: You recorded Shabang in upstate New York with a hand-picked ensemble of players, most of whom you’d never met?

SM: Yeah. And I didn’t go in thinking I was starting a band. In fact, it was the opposite. I wanted to make a record with the freedom to explore different roles and not be beholden to any particular concept. I even named the band to pave the way for something that could change and evolve.

The experience was so great, and the people were so amazing, that I wanted to stay with it. But I realized over the last year how prohibitive that was because everybody lives all over the place and it's just so expensive. I'll always jump at the chance to play with those folks, but I can't sit around and wait for those chances.

I put together an Asheville version of the Ever-Expanding so I could continue to explore what that ethos represents to me. And it's been so cool — it’s its own little thing. And now I have a more regular outlet to that world, just as I do with The Hypos.

Scott McMicken and The Ever-Expanding (Photo by Justin Bowman)

JM: It was interesting to see the Shabang songs take on a different, looser life with the 10-piece ensemble you had for your AVLFest set. And, man, that sound crew earned its money that night!

SM: That was completely insane! I’ve never been on stage with less of a plan in my life. It was bumpy and there were technical things going on. But I walked away from that show feeling really good because it made me realize that if the vibe is front and center, and if you’re present and trust the people you're playing with, it can work.

I'm consciously trying to build more structure into the Ever-Expanding so it can grow and evolve. And that show was a crucial and powerful part of the process. None of those people played on the record. We had one rehearsal the day before. I selected only songs with one part, knowing that would ensure a better result.

And this is also relative to being in Dr. Dog. We’re not the world's tightest band, but we’d never play a song in a show that we hadn't already played many times and proven to ourselves. So that was really educational for me. It was even more proof of the Ever-Expanding concept of trusting the situation with zero plan because it was in front of an audience with all new people and the chaos of a live setting. And it also was a game-changer in that it deepened me and Kevin's vibe, because the one element I was able to rehearse was our singing.

JM: My friend and I were there and kept saying to each other, “This is a harmony singing clinic.” We’d never seen someone sing harmony on every note.

SM: Yeah, as a musician, Kevin’s nuts. We had like five or six hangs where we’d just sit and sing those songs. We thought the concept was so cool — to take a completely chaotic band, put 11 or 12 people onstage who don't know the music, and say, “Go!” But in the front, you have, like, the Everly Brothers. It balanced things out and added a sense of intention to a situation with literally zero intention.

Those hangs were an education. I'd never sat and just focused on singing harmony with someone for a whole song for a whole set. It made me look closer at melodies, pronunciations, [and] phrasings. I realized there’s so much you can do with just a guitar and two people singing. You're inviting yourself into this whole universe of details that, if you zoom in, become very powerful, dynamic devices. And all of a sudden, it feels really big. But it's just two of us.

I never thought of myself as a maximalist, but on some basic level I'm more comfortable behind a wall of sound. So, it feels good to feel increasingly more and more musically powerful things happen with less noise. And that’s been something that the osmosis of Greg [Cartwright] has imparted on me — that a lot is possible with just a few elements.

JM: Will there be a set lineup, or is it an intentionally rotating collective?

SM: What I've learned over the last six months of trying to have this project is that you’ve gotta be reasonable. You can’t have a 10-piece band and expect it to be active. We're now at five or so, and it's getting it done. We want to get to a point where we can start playing more regularly with a core group that always knows what's up, but always with open chairs up there for anybody willing.

The quicker we're in front of an audience, the quicker we're in the right environment to explore what the band is actually about, which is creating and sustaining a vibe and a rhythm. We’re asking ourselves the simple, unpretentious questions of, “Does the music move along? Is it visceral on some level? Is it soulful?” And I feel like the best way to test out these questions is with an audience.

JM: Shifting gears to Dr. Dog, I saw on Instagram that you guys are making a new record. What can you say about that?

SM: This is the first time in my life that, creatively, I’ve had so much going on outside of [Dr. Dog]. A part of why I was happy to step off touring for a while was hoping for this kind of thing — new experiences and new perspectives — so the reality of that as a guy in Dr. Dog has been interesting.

When we started talking about getting together to make some new recordings, my assumption was that we'd probably go to our studio in Philly or some other studio.

I realized I could bring what I've learned these last couple of years to Dr. Dog. I had not created that bridge in my psyche yet, so it took a second largely because Dr. Dog is a very collaborative situation with a lot of investment from everyone in the band. But as soon as I started talking about it, everybody was like, “Hell yeah!” Everybody's so into what I've been doing — so stoked and supportive.

So, I basically packed up my shed and brought it to Pennsylvania in August. We recorded our album exactly the way The Hypos did, which is essentially with an eight-track, one-inch tape machine, eight preamps, and a mixing board. We tracked all the songs live in Toby’s uncle’s cabin in about a week with no overdubbing and very basic gear: guitars, amps, bass, drums, piano, and organ. We weren't in a studio stocked with bells and whistles.

The second part of the experiment, which is new to Dr. Dog, is remote collaboration. Most of us are not seasoned in the ways of digital recording and sharing tracks. Zach and Eric knew how to do it, but Toby, Frank, and I only learned more recently. Over these last two months, we've all been at home with the freedom to try whatever we want without breathing down each other's necks. Next week, I'm going back to Philly and we’ll all make a call on what stays and what goes. We’ll record backing vocals, then take it to Memphis to mix with Matt Ross-Spang [who mixed The Hypos’ debut LP]. We’ll be done by the middle of November. So that's a long-winded version of what I can say about Dr. Dog. [Note: Dr. Dog just announced a July 18, 2024 concert at Red Rocks in Colorado, the band’s first show since Dec. 31, 2021.]

JM: Have you always been a studio and gear geek?

SM: Recording music has been my obsession since I was 12 years old. Dr. Dog started as a recording project. The fact that we even became a live band, and then a live band that was trying to reflect what we were as a live band in a studio, was a very unexpected turn of events from where we came from as four-track-loving weirdos.

It was a significant leap when I realized if I just have eight uniformed preamps, and every microphone I'm using on the band is going through the exact same preamp to an eight-track, that it’s like pointing one single camera in front of the band. After that, you can put it in the computer, fuck it all up, and do whatever. But if you begin your creation with that in mind, there's something tangible there. You're not seeking to find it by layering things until it happens. It's already there.

JM: That seems like it’s been a major creative “unlock” for you.

SM: It really has been, in terms of understanding music is not 10 individual things combined perfectly. It's one thing. So, it’s important to do the work to learn more about how to make that one thing good. When you're invested in that, you're thinking far more about the people, the feel, and the room you're in. You're not thinking about the paralysis of options in terms of gear and sounds.

It's restored a sense of elemental enthusiasm for the fundamentals of music — tone, rhythm, performance, collaboration — and the realization that if these things remain the focal point in the studio, it can be a pretty fucking cool thing. There's so much weird, heady stuff that goes into making music in a studio. But you can find an outlet, literally in the moment, just by counting to four and playing something. And when it's over, listening to it and see[ing] if you’ve achieved music or not. That’s been refreshing for us as a band.

JM: You’ve got a lot of great, complementary stuff on your plate. And I'm hearing several consistent threads: simplification, collaboration, localization, presence.

SM: Totally. There's a sort of cultural voice that suggests that the deeper into something you get, the more challenging it can be to maintain enthusiasm. In those moments when it seems like something you've been doing for so long has lost its sparkle, there's often an overlooked sparkle in the most elemental aspect of the thing itself. And what's robbing your ability to see the sparkle is some sort of wall you've put up between yourself and the sparkle — not so much the absence of the sparkle. That wall might be some pretense, fear or resentment; there's so many things that can topple over a person's interest and enthusiasm and inspiration.

But the ultimate through-line is that there's always beauty in music. There's no end there. For anyone invested in making music, it feels nice to have that affirmation. Music’s fascinating that way. It's endlessly accessible. And if it's not working for you, maybe it's just that one way of doing it is not working for you. If you open yourself up to the different ways you could do it, you might find an endless hole of opportunities.

IF YOU GO

Who: Scott McMicken and The Ever-Expanding with Floating Action
When: Friday, Dec. 1, 8 p.m.
Where: Eulogy, 10 Buxton Ave., burialbeer.com/pages/eulogy
Tickets: $20.94

Learn more about The Ever-Expanding and Dr. Dog.

(Photo by Justin Bowman)