On supporting your collaborator

It feels significant that your latest album is self-titled and that it’s the first time you’re both fully featured on the cover. Do you feel you’re still introducing yourself as a band? What was your thought process pulling the songs together and deciding to go with Hovvdy as the title?

Charlie Martin: It’s sweet that you picked up on that. We didn’t really set out to make the record with the idea that it would be self-titled. We were working with a larger body of work and being pushed by our collaborators to be ambitious… Initially we were working with 20-plus songs and we boiled it down to 19. Just having that range, it did feel like a culmination of everything we’ve done as a band so far.

Will Taylor: To answer your question, “Do we feel like we’re still introducing ourselves?”… I think in a lot of ways, yeah. We’re lucky to have fans who have liked us for some years and then we’re also lucky to have the new fans, too. I think we’re constantly introducing ourselves and I think that’s something you’re required to do as a musician who tours and puts music out—to be available to continue that journey of revealing yourself through the music.

One of the beautiful things to me about Hovvdy is how you have built this fan base over time. Your songs address growth as this thing that’s constantly happening, and I think listeners feel they’re growing beside you. Do you notice that connection or impact?

Will: I think that’s a cool observation. When you find some music, or even a show or something that you can connect to, and that is with you for a long time, there is something to that—feeling like you grow up with the characters, or you grow up with the music, or the music grows up with you. We have a lot of fans close to our age and some people who’ve listened to us for a long time through their 20s and into their 30s, like us. It’s a really rewarding thing when people share that our music helped them through something or helped them pass something or navigate something.

Charlie: We use songwriting as a way to process the whole range of emotions, and ideally that comes through in the music and the fans also have that cathartic experience.

I see your music as putting who I am and who I want to be in the same room. It gives me this breathing room, so I have the structure but there’s still progress to be made.

Charlie: I don’t think we’re a band or songwriters that necessarily are singing about humanity or something. We keep it pretty close and pretty hyper-personal. Maybe that’s a way to alleviate the pressure. I don’t think we go into a record being, “Oh, I need to write a song that is going to help someone through some really intense shit in their lives or solve some sort of problem.” We’re just writing about mundane, very common family, relationship, and personal shit.

Can you talk a little bit about how you both started writing songs—even if it was before Hovvdy was formed—and how your process has evolved

Will: I definitely wrote some songs with a high school band and stuff like that… My early to mid-twenties was when we started the band and I had just recently started writing songs again and trying to learn a guitar. As far as our process, I think it’s changed a lot. We still bring our ideas to the table and try to get everything down and try to grow each other’s ideas with the recording and the arranging of the record. But we have progressed in a lot of ways, in that the lines of communication are a little bit more open than they’ve been. We’re sharing ideas in their younger stages rather than when the song’s done.

Charlie: I grew up playing piano and drums and never wrote songs pretty much until Hovvdy. I always played drums in a post-rock band and always saw myself more as a support musician, but I was such a big fan of so much music and so many songwriters. It’s been a long 10-year run of hopefully getting better every record.

I also think when you spend time with another person in any capacity, you start to trade off bits of yourself, almost through osmosis. Are there certain themes you’ve found yourself exploring more after working with each other for 10-plus years, even if it wasn’t something you consciously set out to do?

Charlie: I think the unique thing about the band is that me and Will could be on opposite sides of the planet and write six songs and combine them, both of us not having heard the other’s songs, and they would feel like a cohesive Hovvdy record. I just think our upbringings and our disposition… We’re very different guys but, somewhat remarkably, the themes in our songs do tend to run parallel. I don’t really know how but it’s probably that osmosis you’re talking about.

Will: Musically, we meet each other more as time goes on. Whether it be the style of guitar playing or whether it be knowing I can rely on Charlie or our great band to help add some balance. We share a lot of interests musically, and so throughout time, those have melted together. I feel our little motifs or our little individualities have strengthened as well. And then also us both getting better and more confident as individual songwriters.

Is there something you think the other person is able to express more clearly or that you admire about their creative process?

Will: I’ve always loved the direct, visceral songwriting Charlie has. In particular how it relates to managing life, family, and love, and hurt. I think it is empowering to hear songs that have an emotional tangibility. I think earlier… maybe for both of us, but for me particularly, the lyrics maybe meant something to me, but as a listener, it might be more challenging to find what’s going on. Hearing the way that Charlie writes directly has helped me and I know that he’s gotten better at it throughout time too. I think we both build on our own strengths.

Charlie: I think Will is in a lot of ways a more poetic songwriter than I am. What a particular song is about doesn’t necessarily hit you right in the face. It develops over time. He’s also just a little less complacent to do the same thing over and over. I feel like Will was the first one to bring some more electronic elements into the fold, and Auto-Tune vocals, and just being more wide open and experimental in the record-making process. Whereas I am more Virgo…

Will: …If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Charlie: Yeah. “No, they like this. Let’s just keep doing this.”

Will: Which is strong, too.

Charlie: It’s a push and pull with that and I think it works.

What have you learned from working together about what it means to lead and what it means to serve something or someone else?

Will: In the context of touring, it is pretty black and white. It’s the easiest example of what you’re talking about, which is making sure you perform and play and sing along with the other person’s song. And then I think emotionally, and as far as workload and managing the band, we have our strengths in those ways, too. I feel like supporting each other is a big part of the duo thing. A lot of times, it comes maybe in a backdoor way. Whether it just be letting someone find their own way, whether it be with a song or with a concept or with a band decision… I think it’s a big part of the band, for sure. Even if it’s not very verbal. I think there are moments where you have to be more direct: “I’m here for you.”

When you are trimming songs for an album and seeing what fits, are there songs that don’t make it on that you save in your pocket for another time?

Charlie: If it’s a song that I really like, or if it just doesn’t fit on the record, it gets shelved and might come out in another way. My creative priority is Hovvdy and Hovvdy records. Putting our best foot forward means writing really vital, fresh material. A lot of times, we will maybe regurgitate an older idea. But the song as a finished product is really coming together in the present.

There’s a sense in your music that art isn’t just a way to express something, but a way to become a better person or friend or partner. Has the process of writing and reflecting helped you become a better communicator or helped you say things you don’t usually express as openly?

Charlie: Definitely songs I’ve written have resulted in processing and having a deeper understanding for the people in my life. Or me writing about certain things where, if you know me, you know what the song is about. My uncle who I never talk to hearing a song and it really hitting for him strengthens that relationship and that understanding. It’s awesome.

Will: I think that’s the hope, right? You put yourself out there and share your thoughts and ideas in hopes of having a better understanding, and it leads to better communication. Maybe as I reflect throughout the years, and as I’m down the road a little bit, I’ll have a clearer understanding of the impact that having the songwriting outlet might have had on me.

Charlie: I feel Will’s daughter will hear songs off our last record and it’ll be really enlightening for her.

Will: I might need a little bit of space from it all to realize that.

Charlie: A lot of the time, I think songwriting is a way for me to maybe say something that I’m not even quite ready to say, and start that processing.

There’s also a vulnerability to writing about those family relationships you’re talking about. Whether it’s about the love aspect itself, or distance, regret, letting someone down, or feeling let down. Do you ever worry about being too revealing? Or does sharing make it more bearable?

Charlie: I think there’s always a tiny bit of risk involved. I feel if something were too much, I would probably know it. I would have that instinct or my wife or Will would be like, “Bro, that’s too much.” I think if you were too on the nose with it, it would just be corny, maybe. So try to still make it artful and musical.

Are there any boxes you feel yourself pushing against or something you still hope you can improve or expand upon?

Charlie: It’s not like I consciously am trying to not put pressure on myself. But I do just want to keep music a very inspired, cathartic, therapeutic process. In terms of the lyrics, no, I don’t feel like I need to say any particular thing or expand lyrically in any particular way. But sonically, for sure. I think we as a band want every record to feel fresh and impressive and exciting. We’re working on our sixth record right now, and if we were like, “It has to be our best thing we’ve ever made,” I don’t know. That would be tough.

Will: I’m at a stage now where I’m striving to be more solid as a musician and to be able to play more instruments and play them well, and know how to fit [them] into a song and not overplay… It feels like at the beginning of the band, a part of what made us unique was that we weren’t necessarily the best guitar players or whatever and we relied on our limitations to create our sound. As time goes on, I think we’re both trying to just be better musicians, have more tools, have more tricks, have more things that we can bring.

I think a lot about repetition and how certain ideas or memories come back no matter how many times you try to express them. Do you ever feel like there’s a subject you might have explored before but you want to run with it in a new way or approach it with more experience and clarity?

Charlie: Certain things or certain traumas or experiences you never fully get past, and how you deal with them changes over time. I’ll probably be writing songs about my father, or my absent dad issues, for potentially forever. Or as long as I need to.

Will: Revisiting and rekindling a fear or a thought happens naturally the more you write. I think the themes in our band are fairly consistent. Maybe one thing we could do even more is write songs that are outside of ourselves a little bit more. But because of how we’ve done it thus far, I think it’s only natural that things reappear.