Knox Hamilton Talk Brotherly Bonds, Southern Influences + more
Interview & Words by Annette Schaeffer
With pop-driven musical chops and endearing southern charm, Arkansas’s Knox Hamilton have waltzed into the hearts of music listeners with their own brand of indie pop. Having garnered much praise for tracks like the sunny “Work It Out,” the band are now on the brink of releasing their debut full-length album and are ready to put some positive vibes into the world with these new tracks. We got the chance to speak with singer Boots Copeland about Knox Hamilton’s southern roots and vacuum-sealed bear hugs.
Knox Hamilton began as a project between you and your brother Cobo. What led you two to want to create music together?
We actually grew up in a Pentecostal church. Our dad was was pastor of a Pentecostal church, actually he still is back in Sherman, Texas. We were actually the music in our church. I played drums at like five years old, my mom sang, and we had a piano player. Then when Cobo first started playing drums, I moved over to playing bass. So we’ve been writing music together since we were just tiny. We’ve just been experimenting with different types of music ever since we were five or six years old.
Do you feel like the band and the music you create is an extension of that brotherly bond?
I don’t know. We probably wouldn’t get that deep with it just because we do give each other a hard time. You have this person who you think alike, you talk alike. I wish I was as tall as him, but that’s not the case. You have this mindset where we play alike, we write alike, so it’s definitely effortless as opposed to a stranger you haven’t lived with, haven’t grown up with. The history’s there for sure.
How do you feel like having those family ties has impacted how you operate as a band?
Well, it’s easier to fight. It’s also easier to make up. Definitely stuff can get heated just because you know what can make each other tick, and usually you would think that would help you avoid fights, but sometimes that can make it easier to get into them. But also the making up and getting over it, we’re pretty good at that. We’ll get over a fight in less time than it took us to draw up the confrontation. You take the good with the bad.
You guys have lived in the South your whole lives, and while your sound isn’t exactly southern, you’ve said that that southern music still offers a bit of inspiration for you. How do you feel like that culture has influenced the music you make?
I think the easy-going, friendly, humble, kind of simple southern roots is evident in our music. It’s not a very brash, showy type of rock ‘n’ roll music. I think it’s kind of that humble beginnings kind of feel. Being southern is cool. We take pride in it, and there’s a lot to take pride in, but our music is also a means of escape because you don’t love everything about the South. The alternative indie feel can be our escape while at the same time we can still appreciate where we came from. That gave us our style and our ability to make certain types of music. At the same time, the type of music that we play, the South isn’t completely welcoming to it, so it’s our way of getting out.
You guys strive to cultivate a sound that is upbeat not only musically, but lyrically as well. What drives you to want to put that positive vibe out in the world?
I think it’s just a lot of, not just recently with the crap that’s been going on in America, but you can find darkness pretty much around every corner like getting on the internet, listening to some of your favorite bands. Some of my favorite bands don’t have a positive bone in their body; it’s all melancholy, or it’s all about heartbreak. Knox Hamilton has always been that kind of conduit for positive energy. It doesn’t have to be fake positive, it doesn’t have to be manufactured positive energy, it’s just kind of the way we feel and the way we think our music translates and the way it builds us, so I like to have the lyrics mirror that positivity. It’s kind of like “Well, you can listen to ‘insert dark and deep artist here’, but you can also listen to Knox Hamilton when you’ve had a shitty day and your boss made you cry at work and you just want to forget about those kind of things and imagine that you’re on the beach in LA or wherever, wherever your favorite beach is even though we made the music very far away from that place.” We just feel like Knox Hamilton can be that friend or be that thing that takes you to a better place than what you’re currently experiencing.
How do you feel like having that positive energy motivates you as a band?
We obviously have down times as a band and as people in our personal lives, and, I mentioned it before, but we get messages on Twitter or social media and we got this young girl, I think she was 14 or 15 at the time, she tweeted us like “Nothing like getting in your car, bawling your eyes from a hard day at school or work or something and immediately forgetting why you were crying in the first place when ‘Work It Out’ by Knox Hamilton comes on.” It’s stuff like that that reminds us why we keep going and who we really make the music for.
Last August you released your first single, “Washed Up Together,” off your upcoming album. How do you feel that song in particular reflects the tone you are trying to achieve?
Well, that song actually is, sonically, very nautical. It reminds you of surfing, you know, just kind of that beachy vibe, and I wanted the lyrics to match that. There’s a lot of talk of being castaways or overboard or turning ships around. I kind of wanted to go with that feel. Some songs you draw off personal experiences, and with this song, I was like “Well I think I want to write a short story.” You can get a little bit of that with “Washed Up Together” for sure.
With the release of your first full-length album on the horizon, what were some of your anticipations going into the project?
So the album came in pretty much two sessions. There was a session with Tim Pagnotta in Los Angeles, and then a session in El Paso with the producer Evan Peters who is also out of LA, but we did it in El Paso in this really dope studio out there. As a joke amongst ourselves, we consider the Tim Pagnotta tunes our pop album and we consider the El Paso our rock album. You don’t really get that from our previous stuff like “Work It Out,” but with this album, you’re going to get a taste of what Knox Hamilton rock, like pure rock ‘n’ roll, is all about. We’re excited to show people that we haven’t been only up to pop/synth music, we’ve also been up to some rock ‘n’ roll. You talk about anticipation, we’re really just ready to show people that the pop vibe is all inclusive and that it’s still in our music, but it also comes in different shapes and sizes. That’s been pretty cool to experience. You come to our shows, and you’re like “I didn’t expect so many guitars” or “I didn’t expect so many of this and that,” so it’s cool to give people a little different vibe.
When is the album supposed to come out?
Early part of next year either late February or early March. We’re still trying to figure out a single and video and things like that, but definitely early part of 2017.
How do you feel like you guys grew as songwriters from putting out your first EP to putting together this album?
I guess I’d have to reflect a little bit more on that question, but what I can answer is I came to a point where I do a good majority of the songwriting and I just found that with our older stuff it was more, I don’t know how to say this without sounding too odd, but with the other songs it was very…it took awhile. I just find it now that I know what our band expects, I know what our fans expect, I know what live shows are like now after touring for a couple of years. It kind of helps you put puzzle pieces in place. You can still be inspired the way you were back in the day, but it’s almost like you have a formula, and I don’t want that to sound too cold or too robotic, but you have a formula where you can kind of put things in place. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s just like a painter. A painter at first is like “I don’t know what to do,” and then after he paints a few portraits he’s like “I have a formula.”
How do you feel like this album represents the next step for Knox Hamilton?
I think actually the music speaks for itself. You can put the different songs into a timeline, into a sort of chronological order of when they were written. I think it’s actually obvious. You can hear it within the album. If we could put the last song that was written, which we just did in L.A. if it ends up making this upcoming album, you can hear the direction I think, the future of Knox Hamilton. You can hear that trajectory.
What would you say has been the most difficult part of your career for you all personally and collectively?
As short lived as it has been thus far, I think the hardest part is, and we didn’t realize this once we did it, is the being away. Pretty much you’re leaving your inspiration every single time you leave out on the road. You’re leaving your wife or your kid or your home. You’re leaving your muses, but also we’ve written many songs about being away from home and missing people and things like that, so you kind of find the inspiration apart from the original.
How did you, or do you continue to, overcome these struggles?
If you’re me or Cobo, we have some bit of home with us when we’re touring together. It’s kind of like you have a little piece of home, but being friends as long we have and touring together as long as we have, you are touring with family, so it’s a lot easier. You have your family-family and you have your tour family. It’s easy to share the homesickness.
What is the ‘highlight’ of your career so far?
I got to see Paul McCartney after we played our Firefly set. I got to see Paul McCartney, my favorite musician and songwriter ever. I got to see him play with my wife right beside me and with our firstborn in utero. It was a good time.
What is the one dream the moment at which point either personally or collectively you would be able to say “yes, I’ve achieved this, I’m living my dreams”?
It was actually at the moment where we were getting vacuum sealed in our video for “Washed Up Together” as weird as that sounds. I actually had the thought to myself, “Even though I’m being vacuum sealed and it’s the scariest thing in the world I’ve done, I’m actually making a music video that would make Carson Daly and TRL proud.” That was actually where I felt like a rock star. I had cameras on me, I had makeup on my face, and I’m getting vacuum sealed, what could go wrong?
What did that actually feel like?
It felt… this is always weird to ask other people because I think it makes our family sound weird, but if you’ve ever been bear hugged by an older cousin or an older brother or even like your dad or whatever, but if you’ve ever been bear hugged to the point where it hurts so bad, but you can’t help but laugh because you know it’s like an awkward thing for someone to pick you up and squeeze you as hard they can, that’s literally what it felt like. You can’t help but laugh, but at the same time you’re like “I hope I don’t die.”
It looked like it had to be uncomfortable.
Very uncomfortable. It was hilarious, but at the same time, it was terrifying.
Knox Hamilton will release their debut album, ‘The Heights,’ in March. Tentative date to be announced soon.
