A podcast about a local Bellingham band called The Hookups.

Podcast by Belle Wright

Click here to read the story that pairs with this podcast

0:00

Welcome to Klipsun out loud podcast from Western Washington University’s award winning student magazine Klipsun This edition theme is candid and I’m your host Belle Wright. Today’s topic is about the different styles of music that exist in the world today, and how a local Bellingham band called the hookups develop theirs. We all know we each have different musical tastes. Some of us like hip hop and rap, some of us like electronica, and some of us like heavy metal, and some of us like literally everything. But what inspires a musician to choose the genre they have chosen? What inspires them to create their own signature sound? And how do they hope for it to influence their audience? The versatility of music seems to always be changing. And one could argue that hip hop from the late 80s to early 2000s sounds nothing like the hip hop we hear now. The same can be sad about country, rock, and a lot of other forms of music. And as time passes and musical eras shift, we can’t help it begs the question. How do musicians decide on the signature sound that works best for them in this ever changing era of musical artistry? Well, we’re here to find that out. And our guest today will be Avery, Juliet, Connor and Ben from a local Bellingham band called The Hookups who will be educating us all about how they came to find their signature sound, and a few more details surrounding their journey into Music. What’s Up? It’s Avery. I play the drums.

1:40

Hey everyone, I’m Ben, I play guitar.

1:43

I am Connor, I’m on bass.

1:45

Hi, I’m Juliet. And I play guitar and I sing. And We’re The Hookups! *Matchbox by The Hookups plays*

2:11

The first question I asked the hookups is what genre of music they consider themselves to be.

2:19

Oh, to me, okay. It’s evolved through The Hookups evolving this past year. Right now we call ourselves surf rock with a hint of jazz. We’ve been labeled as bedroom pop, indie rock, any type of indie or just surf rock. How’d you like get into

2:41

the groove of, you know, how, what am I going to sound like? And this is how I want people to hear us like, how did you kind of develop that?

2:49

I think we all just have really eclectic musical backgrounds. For instance, I grew up doing worship, and that that’s kind of a common factor, actually. Not necessarily that we’re religious or anything nowadays or anything, but that’s like kind of a fundamental background for all of us. And then, of course, Ben did School of Rock for a bit. Avery has a heavy jazz background, and Cedargreen learned by playing alongside his favorite records. So it’s kind of just developed by all of our individual upbringings and kind of smashing them together. And that’s what makes her sound.

3:43

Yeah, so it was kind of like a conglomeration of all of your guys’s styles mixed together to like, create what ended up being the sound of The Hookups.

3:52

Yes, we don’t try to like put each other’s playing into boxes or into genre labels. We don’t ask anyone to play a specific way. We each kind of let it be up to everyone’s ear, how they want to play and like what sounds best, of course, will like kind of help critique or be like, Oh, I was thinking of like this melody or I was thinking of this rhythm section, whatever. And then we kind of cultivate music through that.

4:23

Well, and that’s also part of our writing style, is we all sit down and write together instead of having one or two people do it by themselves and because of that, we all like meet in the middle of our own sound, and like since day one, and with adding Connor like two months ago now almost, like, it’s just another like twist on where we were in the middle, and it’s been interesting seeing it develop more over time.

4:56

Did you have any in mind like when your did did Any of you even individually have an artist that really inspires you in that way.

5:07

As an outsider coming in, and being able to come late to the process, after a handful of songs were already written, I think I was able to notice some, some inspirations from music that I knew like bands like Crumb, and other like 2010s indie rock groups. But it’s pretty hard to like, I don’t know. But now that I’m involved in writing and stuff, it’s pretty hard to say that, like, we’re pulling inspiration from artists at this point, and we just kind of have our sound, and we, we bring a lot, we each individually bring a lot to that. And so yeah, there was initially like some similarities with other artists. But I think that it’s certain to sound kind of unique.

5:56

Yeah, for sure you guys have like worked your way into having your own unique sound. And I think that’s really cool, because you don’t always you obviously want to sound like everybody else. So it’s cool that you guys can have your own signature. If we like, think about how different genres of music used to sound 20 years ago compared to the way that they have changed in sound now, what is your thoughts on that, and do you think that in the next five or ten years that your sound will change through that evolution of music, which is just constant and ever changing? Really.

6:32

I think that also from almost a production standpoint, that music has become so much more accessible now. Like if you if you want to play music, or if you want to make music, there are cheaper and available options, I’d say to that of what there was in the 70s or the 80s or even the 90s. So, in that sense, I think music nowadays has gotten to be a lot more homemade and a lot more organic and natural. I think because as as a group personally we had recorded for instance, Matchbox very homemade very DIY. I think that is something that’s just going to continue over the next five to 10 years. And depending on what we want our songs to sound like in the future we hope to integrate parts of that like natural aspect and just individual creativity into our future music.

7:55

I feel that our music has already changed so much since we sat down wrote Matchbox us three and as we continue to write and continue playing being a band together it’s going to continue evolving because, our like Avery said, our writing process is so collaborative. Every song is kind of reflection. *Matchbox by The Hookups plays*

8:48

Well that’s it for this edition of Klipsun out loud podcast from Western Washington University’s student magazine Klipsun. I’m your host Belle and thanks for listening