“I ’m not standing in the way of Steve Earle making another record,” says Will Hoge, talking to the Scene from his home in Nashville. “The world needs more Steve Earle music all the time.”
Hoge is talking about how he made the choice to produce his 11th album Anchors, released Aug. 11, himself. Veteran producer Ray Kennedy had signed on to the project, but before recording could begin, Kennedy got the call to work on Steve Earle’s new album So You Wannabe an Outlaw. Hoge was too eager to get his new songs out into the world to wait for Outlaw to be finished, so he forged ahead on his own.
Lately, that kind of excitement had been in short supply for Hoge. His previous record, 2015’s Small Town Dreams, looked as if it might catapult him to mainstream country stardom, building on a 2014 national ad campaign for Chevrolet featuring his song “Strong” and the country chart smash that Eli Young Band had in 2012 with “Even If It Breaks Your Heart,” a song Hoge co-wrote with Eric Paslay. Small Town Dreams wasn’t exactly a flop, but rough music-biz politics well beyond Hoge’s control hampered the album’s ability to break through, and Hoge found himself in a rut.
“The latter part of last year I was at home, not doing anything,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to move forward with an album. There were three or four of the songs that I had kind of liked over the last couple years but just didn’t find a place.”
But Hoge is a creative workhorse. Not finding any inspiration in the present, he looked back at his past to find the spark that would turn into Anchors. He found himself rejuvenated by some other musicians in his home: his kids. Prior to beginning work on Anchors in earnest, Hoge heard his two young sons and a neighborhood friend having a jam session in the garage. Their youthful enthusiasm reminded him of his own first forays into playing, and he attributes the moment as one of the most pivotal in the album’s creative process.
“That really dug me out of this months-long funk where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do or how,” he explains.
Another revitalizing practice was to go back to the daily routine he’d established in his salad days, when writing was his foremost concern.
“I’d wake up at 9:30 in the morning and make myself write,” he says of his younger years, in a wistful tone you might reserve for memories of your first love. “I didn’t have any responsibilities, so that was loads of fun. Somewhere along the line, with record deals and publishing deals and family and growing up and having responsibilities, you have to start to carve out time to be creative. I don’t know that I always did a great job of that. I’ve gotten to a place now where I feel like I could again. The songs and my attitude reflect it.”
He’s not wrong. The album bristles with a quiet urgency, which shines through even on more somber tracks like the Sheryl Crow duet “Little Bit of Rust,” which he planned to record with her before even picking up the phone to ask. The two were going for, as Hoge puts it, a Delaney and Bonnie vibe, which they captured and filtered through their own rough-hewn lens. The title track retains the same grit, while allowing Hoge the space to stretch his tattered-velvet vocals over an atmospheric arrangement that borders on psychedelic.
“You sort of revert back to the things that made it work before, because they were innocent things,” he says. “What are the things that inspire you? Music, art, family, life? Pay more attention to those things.”
Innocence is at the core of what makes Anchors work. The songs are honest and unapologetic, welling up from a place of deep passion. From the soaring chorus of the opening track “The Reckoning” to the determined stance of the closing “Young As We Will Ever Be,” you can hear new life in Hoge’s voice — in both his lyrics and his performance. It’s a pretty convincing argument that we need more Will Hoge music, too.
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