//Neon Limelight Interviews: Eric Hutchinson//

Eric Hutchinson is no overnight success story. Sure, he may have gotten a little boost when he received a ringing endorsement from a certain gossip blogger, but it was only a matter of time before the 28-year-old Takoma Park, MD native got his big break; Hutchinson has been pounding the pavement for close to a decade trying to get his music heard.

And get his music heard he did. The first single from his album, Sounds Like This, the unbearably catchy “Rock & Roll,” landed on the soundtrack of the hit 2008 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. He was bestowed the honor of being one of the new artists VH1 thinks ’You Oughta Know’, and most recently was named one of Yahoo! Music’s ‘Who’s Next?’ musicians.

Eric Hutchinson does not embarrass easily either. As we sat in a lavender-colored room in the back of the 8X10 club in Baltimore, MD before his gig, we could overhear him and his band putting the finishing touches on an acoustic cover of Beyonce’s Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) before we began our interview. “I’m still trying to learn the words,” he later told us. We let out a sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t trying to learn the dances from the video.

He needed no help with the lyrics to another song that, thankfully, he wouldn’t perform that night, but treated us to a piece of. The self-proclaimed Saved By The Bell fanatic didn’t hesitate to sing a tune from the TV band Zack Attack, complete with imaginary in-ear (video later, we promise!).

Through all the friendly chatter and interruptions (like a call from Eric’s brother asking to add more people to the guest list), we did manage to find out more about the singer/songwriter, like his love for Kanye West, writing a song about a crazy fan, balancing smart lyrics with catchy melodies, and making fun of Justin Timberlake.

NL: Tell us about growing up in Maryland. How did that inspire your music?

EH: I grew up in Maryland just outside of DC. I felt like it was a really cultural area. The high school and middle school I went to were really into all kinds of different stuff. It was a really tolerant place and that just really exposed me to all kinds of different music. I think that’s the main thing–I’m such a fan of all types of music and I don’t understand when people just want to listen to one all the time.

NL: Describe your sound for those who aren’t familiar with you.

EH: I kinda describe is as acoustic soul or something like that. It’s very much…I’m trying to do soul music but then it’s also about the singer/songwriter world like The Beatles and Billy Joel.

NL: This is the thing I noticed when I listen to your music: your songs are very melodic–they’re very catchy, but they also speak about real things. Do you think it’s hard to have that balance between actually talking about something in your music and keeping it catchy?

EH: Yeah. It’s tough. I think the hardest part is writing a good melody. I don’t think people give enough credit to that. To write a good pop song is very, very difficult to write a strong melody. I’m still learning how to do it all. To me, it’s like, if you can get the melody going you can get people to listen to a lot of different things. You can talk about a lot of different issues. I think Stevie Wonder was the greatest at that. He’s like a huge influence on me. He wrote really great melodies but then he was also talking about really serious things and never sounded preachy about it. He was just really positive which is a big goal of mine. The album was not to complain about things but to try have a positive [voice].

NL: Do you think there are any current artists [writing strong melodies]? Who would you name off the top of your head?

EH: I think Kanye West who is probably my favorite artist out right now. I think he’s done a lot of interesting things. I think what’s so great about him is that his songs, you really don’t hear a lot of it in the rap world anymore. His album has all different things that he’s talking about. He’s talking about life, he’s talking about fame, he’s talking about emotions. So much of rap these days, unfortunately, [isn't like that]. It’s so hard to find those people out there who have something to say.

NL: Are you a fan of his new album, 808s and Heartbreak?

EH: I do like 808s and Heartbreak! A lot, actually. It’s a little hard to listen to just because it gets…it’s a lot of computerized stuff. It gets a little tiring for me, like for the ears. Like it’s a technical thing.

NL: So we’ll never hear Eric Hutchinson with auto-tune?

EH: Uh, I hope not. [laughs] That was a big thing for my album, not to use any auto-tune, you know, even though we could correct stuff. But I really feel like that’s the stuff that makes an album great, you know the little warts on the album.

NL: Yeah. Definitely agree. There’s nothing like hearing an artist with a little crack in their voice because of the passion they feel in a song.

EH: Yeah, exactly!

NL: Alicia Keys got a lot of flack for it on her album, As I Am.

EH: Really? There’s this moment in “No One,” I think it’s in the first line, it’s like a little awkward thing. It was probably like a mistake but they were like, “No, we gotta keep it!”

NL: Yeah, sounds like she had a little frog in her throat, but you know what, it’s awesome.

EH: Yeah, totally.

NL: One of my favorite songs on your album is “You’ve Got You.” It sounds very Michael Jackson-ish. Who are some of your other influences?

EH: I love Michael Jackson. I pretty much learned how to sing listening to Thriller. I really love Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and the Beatles, and Billy Joel. I also really loved musicals growing up. Like Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers, and stuff like that. I’ve just always been a really big fan of people that write their own material. There’s lots of other good stuff out there, too, but [they are] the people I really connect with. I think Fiona Apple makes really great records these days.

NL: Another one of our very favorite songs on the album, “Outside Villanova.” Love it! It’s super catchy, the hook is crazy!

EH: Thank you!

NL: What’s the story behind it?

EH; [laughs] That song… Ummm… That song is kind of about a crazy fan that came to a show. It’s not an actual true story. I want to get that out there. All of my songs on the album are like a real story that happens that are not that interesting then I exaggerate it to make it interesting enough to be worthy of listening to in a song. So that one was about a crazy girl that came to a show, told me she was in love with me after never meeting me before and I was like, “Red flag!” So that’s what that song’s about.

NL: And nothing happened with the crazy fan??

EH: [laughs] It sounds like I’m making it up but it’s true. That was all that happened. I met her and she was crazy. She came with my brother and a couple of other people to IHOP and that was the end of it, but in the song I extended it to make it a little more interesting.

NL: It seems like you blew up just last year, but you’ve been doing this for a long time.

EH: Thank you for noticing! I really appreciate that.

NL: How’d you bounce back when your first label deal folded?

EH: I did this first label situation and having everybody kind of pull the rug out from underneath me was really difficult. More than anything, I just came out of it with my own confidence shaking. I believed in what I was doing and knew what I wanted to do and coming out of that having everybody, like, turn their backs on me was really [hard]. It made me feel like I didn’t…like it shook my own opinions on everything. But it turned out to be a really huge blessing in disguise because it’s made me realize how fragile the career that I’ve chosen is and not to take any of it for granted. It’s been a really great lesson to learn early, and now that things are going well this time around I just appreciated it way more than I ever would.

NL: How did [that transition] shape your record? Did you have a completely different record at first and you had different things to write about suddenly?

EH: Some of my favorite songs I wrote while waiting to make the real record. Songs like “Oh!” and “OK, It’s Alright With Me” and “You Don’t Have To Believe Me” were written about different experiences I had while I was getting ready to make the record.

I ended up making it myself. It was really important to kind of prove it to me and that turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. I was just out there kinda just proving it to myself, not letting anyone know what I was doing. When I listen to the album now, there are things I would change–I don’t sit around and ever listen to it ‘cus it’s like really hard for me to do, but I’m really proud of what it is. I feel like it was the best I could do at the time.

NL: Let’s talk about touring. You’ve been on the road for, like, forever pretty much.

EH: Yeah. There’s been a lot of touring.

NL: What’s your favorite tour memory so far?

EH: I think the whole year has just been a lot of fun. We took half the year driving around in a van and the other half of the year we have this tour bus now.

I traveled solo for like five years driving myself around in a Honda Civic, and it was very, very lonely. Very lonely driving all over the place and getting somewhere, then playing for nobody and staying in a cheap hotel. Having a band to travel with makes such a huge difference just to have people that you’re kind of in it with and have a good time with. There’s a lot of down time and weird time and great times. I played South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas and that was one of the best times of the year.

NL: You toured with one of our favorite new artists, Marie Digby. Do you think you guys will ever work together?

EH: Yeah, I think so. Marie’s really great and we had a lot of fun touring. We lived on the bus together. It was an extreme situation to kind of get thrown together with somebody like that and we had a lot of fun. We did a couple [cover songs] together, so it would be cool.

NL: What’s your favorite song to perform on tour?

EH: My favorite song definitely changes, you know. I kind of go through phases where I’m into one more than another, but I made sure to like all of them–not even like, to love all of them ‘cus I knew I’d be playing them multiple times a day, everyday. Picking songs from the record is like picking roommates to me. Like I like this person but I can not see them all the time. It would drive me nuts. It’s like the same thing for the band. The songs from the album, I have to like the song enough that I’m going to be playing it all the time and I want it to be representing who I am.

NL: What gets the biggest crowd response?

EH: These days “Rock & Roll” is the single, so it’s starting to get people excited, but, luckily, people seem to know the whole album. They come out to the show and just get really excited. I’m pretty lucky that people are interested in [the other songs on the album].

NL: Who would be on your dream tour? If you could put together your own tour, who would be on it?

EH: These days, and this is just a couple days new, the person I want to go out on tour with the most, well band, is Coldplay. I think it would be a lot of fun to open for them. The crowd would be really cool. But a lot of times I don’t feel the need to push myself on the bill with a lot of great bands. I’d rather just let them be awesome and not, like, try to steal the show ‘cus I’m not going to be able to. [laughs] You know what I mean?

NL: I did some YouTube surfing…what’s the deal with you going at Justin Timberlake at your shows?

EH: [laughs] Justin Timberlake! Yeah… It’s just… I did this… I don’t know! It’s kinda of just a joke. I like Justin Timberlake. I like the songs.

NL: By the way, you sound awesome singing his songs. Your “Cry Me A River”…awesome!

EH: Why thank you! I thought it was funny to do. I remember I heard the song “What Goes Around, Comes Around” and I was like are you kidding me? This is almost the same song as “Cry Me A River.” I’m totally going to nail him on this. But it’s all in good fun. I really like his songs.

NL: Last question, and this may embarrass you a little bit, but I heard that you are sort of a Saved By The Bell fanatic.

EH: Not embarrassed! I’m the number one Saved By The Bell fanatic. [laughs] I love that show. I have all of the DVDs.

NL: Do you have the soundtrack?

EH: You know, I used to have the soundtrack and I’ve been really kicking myself for getting rid of it.

NL: Do you remember the songs from it?

EH: Of course I know the songs.

NL: You have to sing us a little bit…

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