Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Hodges.
Hi Nick, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Nick Hodges and I am, quite simply, a musician from Chicago, Illinois. My life of music starts and ends with my family and the music of the Heartbreakers. When I was seven, my parents put a guitar in my hands, which in retrospect, was the formative event that started a chain reaction of explosive interest in music. Growing up in a household where Rock ’n’ Roll radio, records, and CDs were being worn out left and right, I developed an insatiable craving for surrounding myself in physical media in the form of used vinyl records. The first favorite band I had was, and will always be, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, whose guitarist, Mike Campbell was my sole guitar influence growing up.
Down the line a bit when I started performing around Chicago, I was taking lessons with my now dear friend Andy Levenberg. I owe a lot of my early performance etiquette to his instruction and guidance. He’s one of those folks who chooses his criticism carefully and offers his compliments only when it seemed right; Andy saying “cool” was earth-shattering. Through high school I was gigging in bands in the Midwest regularly ranging from weekly to daily or even hourly shows with venues spanning coffee shops to amphitheatres. At this point in life, everything pretty much took a backseat to performing live. I still laugh at how I took a gig over attending my own high school graduation.
I did my first two years of undergrad at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, where I really started to learn how to work a young crowd and more importantly, how to keep them wanting to come back. From backing R&B singers, Rap groups, Rock revivalists, and the occasional jam band flashback, I was able to see how people reacted to unfiltered original music. To set the scene, I was seeing this in a proper live Ohio college format, which were typical house parties, the one actual venue, and the fan-favorite middle-of-nowhere cornfield with a giant power generator hidden behind the wall of kegs. Not once did I bust out “Louie Louie!” Missed opportunity if you ask me. After those two years, I transferred to Berklee College of Music, where I focused my efforts and training on being the best session man, orchestral arranger, and performer I could be. However, by doing session work, I discovered a new burgeoning love for recording and engineering. So, I sit here today, a session musician, a touring guitarist, and a rising assistant engineer at The Village Recorder here in LA.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’m beyond grateful to say that it could have been a whole lot worse. Like anyone, my road has had its ups and downs. It’s a dance, I suppose. I would say that I’ve had to do a lot of leaps of faith, where if I didn’t land, I would’ve had big regressions keeping me from where I am today. This is a pretty tough question as I’ve gratefully never been in the “starving musician” category and I don’t want to ignore those who have been. I say this knowing full well that I can join that category at any point in my career. Like I said, it’s a dance. That’s the endless challenge of the freelance and gigging industry. My best defense, however, is my determination and the ill feeling I get when I’m bad at something. I’ve found that my desire to grow and thin my margin of error is what makes me dust myself off and throw myself back in the ring. Aside from all of that, the simple thing that keeps me going down a bumpy road is that music just makes me happy.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
At this stage, I work on both sides of the studio glass as a session musician/touring guitarist and a rising tracking engineer by way of running the totem pole at The Village Recorder. The engineering bud sparked in me when I had the life enlightening experience of serving as session musician to Jack Douglas (John Lennon, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, The Who) while watching him work the room firsthand.
In the session and live arenas, I aim to play for the sake of the song and keep the song’s needs as the highest priority. If a section of a song only needs one note, I’m going to make that one note count. That’s where the Mike Campbell influence really took off! I also tend to use an array of “auxiliary” guitars like Rickenbacker 12 strings or steel guitars; on top of 6 string acoustics and electrics to add harmonic depth when necessary. Essentially, my job is to make the sounds that the artist hears in their head become a reality. I also work as second-in-command in my main band, Soviet Jesus Choir, where I’m able to lend my playing style to its folk, rock, and – without sounding entirely pretentious – performative art both in the studio and on the live circuit. As a final note, I’ll be releasing my own debut record in the near future, demonstrating my angle of songwriting while lending a nod to the bands and records I grew up with.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_nickhodges/
Image Credits:
Max Meola / Duncan O’Boyle
