Photo by Kelsey Ayres
Hot Water Music with special guests Quicksand and Off With Their Heads perform at the Newport Music Hall on Saturday, May 4. Tickets are $34.50 in advance, $40 day of show. Doors open at 7pm.
Celebrating their 30th anniversary, Hot Water Music‘s kicking off a world tour in Cincinnati on Friday, May 3 and then rolling into Columbus for the first time in 20 or so years for a gig at the Newport Music Hall. Conventional wisdom says you should hit the road upon release of a new album but Hot Water Music is doing things a little unconventional, perhaps not even intentionally. The first week of dates will be completed before the band’s 10th album, Vows, drops on May 10. But, given this era we live in, six of the album’s 12 tracks have already been released as singles so fans should recognize anything new that works it’s way into the set.
I recently chatted with bassist Jason Black, who has been with Hot Water Music since their formation in Gainesville, Florida in 1994. One of the things that has always struck me about Hot Water Music’s brand of punk music is Black’s bass playing. While many bands are content with the rhythm section hanging out in the background and keep things on track, Black treats the instrument almost like a guitar and is insanely creative in a genre of music that isn’t known for it’s creativity. It stands to reason that Black – and the rest of the band – are insanely proud of the new material and have gone so far as to call it the best stuff they’ve ever released. The listener can be the judge of that but having had the pleasure of previewing the entire album, I’m inclined to agree.
You’ve called this album the best one Hot Water Music has released. I’ve never interviewed a band where they’ve said, “This is the second or third best album we’ve done.” That being said, I do think Vows is awesome. What makes it special for you?
Nobody used to interview us so there were six albums that we didn’t have to talk about at all. I keep trying to qualify it like we’re in a bit of a vacuum. I definitely feel like it’s our best record because, at least for me, you have to remove nostalgia from it because that’s always part of the process for the listener. I know that if Caution is someone’s favorite record, it’s pretty unlikely we’re going to kick that out of the number one spot with anything because whatever was happening in their life when they heard it, everything just connected at the right time. But, on paper, or in a vacuum, these are the best songs we’ve put together.
I’m not a big singer-songwriter guy where I’m super into the craft, I just like interesting music so whatever is interesting to me, I feel like we made an exciting record which is hard to do. Once we got rolling on the tracking, it made me excited to listen to it and it still does. I’m kind of in a little bit of disbelief. It’s like, “Wow, we did a really good record.” I feel comfortable saying that and I’m still excited when I put it on. I think the main thing is there isn’t a song that I’m like, “That one’s just not quite as great as the other ones.” I have my favorites, but they’re not due to quality, it’s just due to personal preference. This is definitely the first record I can say that there isn’t at least one song that I could yank.
You can probably give me a list of 40 bass players that you would say shine almost like a lead guitar player. But, I’m sure you’ve read your own press. Your contribution to Hot Water Music’s music is not buried in the background. I think that’s what sets you apart. You’ve up front. I can hear your stuff and it’s really creative and inventive. Do you approach playing like a lead guitar player? Have you always played like that? Do the rest of the guys give you that space rather than being like, “Hey, can you tone it down a little bit?”?
All of the above, I guess. That’s how I’ve always played. When I really started playing in bands, all of the players I gravitated towards were more out front because of exactly what you said. When I originally started playing in middle school, I was still fairly heavy metal leaning, some punk stuff. Cliff Burton (Metallica) was a big influence because he’s pretty out front, especially for metal bands back then. But outside of that, there weren’t so many. Then I started getting into the typical bands like Rush, the Chili Peppers, Primus, Fishbone. I think being the age that I am, I was playing a lot through the punk/metal explosion thing where there was a lot of bass players out front so I ended up writing that way.
I learned how to play mostly by playing jazz. I was learning the supportive role but it’s all improvised or less constrained than other stuff. And I was also being taught to take solos so it was part of my vocabulary the whole time. That’s one thing we actually focused on on this record and the last record too, [producer] Brian’s like, “The secret weapon you guys have is you and George don’t play like other bass players and drummers in the world that you guys exist in. Lean on it a little more,” which is something we tried to do. I don’t have a problem playing standard supportive lines but if I had to do it for a whole set, I would hope that I was playing in some gigantic band that made it okay.
I saw Hot Water Music play the More Than Music Fest in Columbus in 1997. There were some emo bands at that festival, some punk bands, some hardcore bands. I went to see the emo bands and my memory of Hot Water Music is some of you guys had beards, Chuck had a gravelly voice. It was not like what I was listening to at the time and, to be honest, it took a few years to come around to what you were doing.
Your reaction wasn’t that dissimilar than a lot of people’s back then and rightfully so. We were a little wild at that point in our lives. It definitely stood apart, for sure, to our benefit and detriment probably.
What’s amazing is that whole performance is on YouTube.
The stuff that comes up now if I look is crazy. I love it because I don’t remember so many things. I’m not actively paying attention because there’s so much going on on the internet, it’s a little bit of sensory overload. I do love being able to go back and scroll through and see what shows we played and who we played with.
You’ve got a lot of dates coming up. Are you in that idea of “it’s now or never”? Do you have to set aside personal commitments or are you 100% in and like, “This is what we’ll be doing for the rest of the year and beyond”?
I didn’t have to adjust anything for this tour. I just got laid off. I was downsized at a day job I had been at for 10 years last month. I had carved out a mental plan to get out of there anyway, by the middle of this year, because it had run its course for me and everyone involved. The last few years have been me holding us back from doing more shows than just weekend stuff because of my job. We had devised a long weekend program that worked really well until post-pandemic because hotels, flights, everything just skyrocketed so much that touring became an unsustainable model. We’re like, “Oh shit, we have to actually have a longer run of shows to have it financially make sense.” There’s a plan in place that was already there and we kind of leaned into it because it’s our 30th anniversary. We were like, “Let’s do it. Let’s go back to all the places that we haven’t gone in a while.” We’re gonna go play smaller markets where our shows aren’t gonna be as great because we’re not that big of a band to where we go play all these places and they’re all great shows. At the same time, you can’t expect everyone to keep driving or flying to see you all the time so we really wanted to get out and get to as many people as we could while we have a good window to do it this year.
Is it going to be tough starting the tour a week before the new album comes out? How do you balance out playing songs from the new album with playing songs from your deep catalog?
In the UK, we were doing three new songs. I would say here, it’s going to be four or five new songs by the time we get on tour. Luckily, we’re pretty good with doing like 23-ish songs in a set. It’s not easy. When we were doing those last eight shows, I was like, “I’m leaving things out that I know need to be in here.” At the same time, it can become a problem if you’re just putting all this stuff that people wanna hear in there. The set sometimes doesn’t flow very well and feels kind of jumbled or disjointed. We’re working through a couple different ideas on how to marry the two and get it to where we think, “This is a really cool set and we’re hitting everything that everyone wants to hear and it still flows.” I still think of sets as being like long albums – there has to be a flow to it for it to be cool for us and everyone else.
I love that this tour includes Quicksand. It’s always nice when there are multiple great bands on a bill. Do you have a history with those guys?
Well, just with Walter. I don’t know Alan or Sergio at all. Walter produced our album No Division and we kept in touch off and on since then. We’ll run into him once in a while. I lived in Brooklyn for a while so we’ve been in each other’s extended orbit the whole time. They’re one of our favorite bands too. I can’t believe we actually got this to work and be for a whole tour.