Archives

So we’ve wrapped up the Favorite Waste Of Time Tour. It started in Nashville and that was a helluva good time. All the guest musicians were a real pleasure and it made for a killer night for me and the guys onstage. Off stage was great too. We all had lots of family and friends there. I saw people I’d not seen in 20 years. Folks brought their kids whom I’d not seen since they were babies and now they’re teenagers at a rock n roll show. It truly was a blast and the perfect kick off for a tour. We ended it last week in Greenville SC and it was an equally great bookend to the tour. The Handlebar is always fantastic. The crowd so so receptive. In between we did a bunch more shows. Some highlights were definitely Akron at the Tangiers. Always one of our favorite joints. Played for the first time at Lincoln Hall in Chicago and LOVED that room. It was a Sunday and the Chicago marathon, but it turned out ok anyway. You may have heard rumors of me falling onstage that night and I’d like to say, yes, I busted my ass! Twas the worlds slowest fall (we clocked it). But we rocked through it nonetheless. And yes there are photos.

The new Living Room Sessions ep is now available and we’ve been getting good feedback from folks that’ve heard it so that’s good. It was a fun little project for us and we are glad y’all are diggin it.

The Favorite Waste Of Time video is making it’s rounds too. Along with the contest(see the below link for details). We’ve gotten some great submissions thus far and can’t wait to see more. Could be difficult to choose just one. Please continue to spread the word or hell, just spread the video itself.

Did a long ass rehearsal with the guys today. Preparing for the Shinedown tour that begins next week in Tampa. Getting acoustic versions of stuff together was both more challenging and more rewarding than any of us thought. Really looking forward to these shows. It’s a different mix for us musically in some ways and we are all really excited for the challenge of being in front of such a large and virgin(musically of course) audience for us each night. From all we’ve seen their fans seem incredibly passionate about music and we’ve already seen a few folks turning up at our shows just from hearing about the upcoming tour. And I’ve gotta say I’m very impressed by how dedicated the Shinedown guys are to their fans. Having been around them a few times already it so evident that they want to give them all something special to close out the year and me and the fellas are flattered to get to be a part of it.

So now it’s back to laundry and Thor repairs before the big drive to Tampa. Also if any of you are looking to get me an early holiday gift I’m gladly accepting drivers for Thor for the tour. As always thanks for listening and keep on spreading the word. See y’all soon.

We are going to kick off the ‘Favorite Waste Of Time’ Tour Saturday night in Nashville. Angie Aparo will play first. Then my brother Josh and his band will play. It’s going to be a special night as me and the guys will be joined by Randy Leago and his horn players, Ms. April Rucker and Lo Carter on background vocals. My friend and original keyboard player John W. Lancaster on keys. Plus, and he’s always my favorite ‘plus’, Dan Baird on guitar for a few songs. This means we will be covering alot of ground and we are all really excited.

Also wanted to let you know there are two ways to be a part of this great evening. Obviously first and foremost we’d suggest coming down and being part of the live experience. If for some reason you’re a germophobe, want to listen in your underpants or maybe you just live far away, you can catch the whole show on Ustream…..they will begin broadcasting our performance at 9 pm CST.

So we started our last run in Raleigh, NC. We like it there. The Pour House was fun. Plus our bonus for playing there is that our friend Michael Casey comes and does magic for us after the show. He’s mind numbingly good and it seems we’ve always got someone new in tow(this time it was Yogi) to watch get blown away. Check him out if he comes near your town. He’ll be in Nashville in September and we can’t wait.

Next up was Wilmington. Of all the shows we did that week, this was definitely one of them. Then Charleston. Oh Charleston. It is always such a pleasure. Friday night was great. Crappy weather blew in just a bit before the show and that didn’t help but it still turned out good. Saturday was about as good a time as I’ve ever had playing music. Man it was a sweat fest too. My apologies to anyone who’s clothes I may have ruined while taking a photo after the show. Pretty sure my jeans and shirt are still wet. We really wanted the two nights to be different and felt we did a good job. Only 4 songs got repeated between the 2 nights and one of those was because of a broken string and thus a fairly stinky version of ‘even if it breaks your heart’ on night one. We had an engagement at gig 1 and then a big anniversary at gig 2. It’s nice that we get to be a part of these little moments with ya’ll. Thanks.

I’m always surprised that over the years this band has seemed to lead to waaaay more marriages than divorces. Huh? Whodda thunk it. Anyhow now we are back home getting stuff finalized for the new ep. We finished shooting the video for ‘Favorite Waste Of Time’ and it turned out great. I’m excited to get it done so yall can see it. There will be more announcements about all that as we get closer to the single release. There’s also news brewing about our final headlining run of the year in October. Those details coming very soon.
Hell I guess that’s it for now. Off to write some new songs and see if any of these homeopathic ‘go into labor’ tricks work. Yall be good.

ps….for the Fox news portion of the fan base ‘homeopathic’ has nothing to do with gay folks delivering my baby.
Ok. Talk to yall soon.

So it’s been too long. Sorry to have kept y’all hanging. Let’s play catch up from where we left off in the last blog post:

Played a wonderful flood benefit at the Ryman in Nashville. Helped raise 1.7 million dollars for the good folks of our fair city who were really hurting. Thanks to everyone who tuned in and donated. Still wanna help? Bring y’alls asses to Nashville and see us. Bam. There we go.

Next: We did some shows with our fellow Nashvillians, American Bang and new buds J Roddy and the Business. We are currently referring to that tour as the ‘Places Not To Go Again Tour.’. Haha. We had fun, met some great folks but alot of the venues were just BIZARRE!! Played a wedding(don’t ask…that’s a whole nother post!), a couple of dining halls and even above a bowling alley! Lucky us right? Anyhow what doesn’t kill us makes us…makes us….um, well it didn’t kill us.
Then we went west:

On our night off in LA we got to hang with Miranda Lambert and her band. Dinner, bowling(which somehow I was GREAT at that night. Haha) and drinking. Hell that’s lawn darts away from TOO much fun ain’t it? We ended with a late night parking lot jam. Complete with drum kit and bass rig. They were all fantastic players and it was undoubtedly the most fun we’ve ever had in LA. Hoping to get to play with them on the road sometime soon.

Then there was Sugarland. I can’t say enough kind words to describe what an absolute pleasure those shows were. The Greek in LA was the first night and we sort of got off on the wrong foot with the sound guy and didn’t have any monitors to use on stage. They offered us some in ear monitors which we semi-politely declined and just did the whole show with no monitors. Haha. First time playing the friggin Greek and we’ve got NO WAY to hear ourselves. Twas still awesome and we played great. Plus like the total pros that everyone in Sugarland’s organization turned out to be, everything was fixed before we’d even stopped sweating after the show and the rest of the shows were filled with undoubtedly the best sounding/feeling monitors I’ve EVER heard!! Crowds were incredible. Very responsive to our show. Catering was to die for. We’ve considered just following their whole tour and eating. It’s definitely the biggest tour production we’ve ever been a part of. If you get a chance go and see their show. It’s a damned spectacle. It’s obvious at every level that they are truly concerned with every person buying a ticket getting a damn good show. And equally as obvious that they want every musician right down to the acoustic first of three opening act to be taken care of and treated well. I’ve got nothing but great things to say about the whole thing so we will just say another BIG thanks to Kristian and Jennifer, management, band and crew. Yall were truly inspiring. Thank you.
Then we drove home.
So now we are almost caught up.

Played Atlanta with Corey Smith. Super super nice dudes. Fun show. Plus seeing/hearing 7000 people sing every damn word to every damn song they played was both humbling and inspiring. Wow! AND blammo, they had Dega catering too!!(same as the Sugarland shows). Can they cater my life? Really. Can they?
Ok back to business.

There will be a re-design of willhoge.com coming soon. It’s gonna have more things to keep yall hipped to what’s going on and it’ll be easier to find your way around. We can add videos, other songs, etc. Maybe fewer 3 month lulls from us, right? More to come on that soon.

We head back to Birmingham for our ‘make up show’ at Sloss Furnace on Saturday. Hope to see some of you there. Then we’ve got a handful of headlining dates in August. IOP we are coming!!

September is gonna be alot of time at home as we prepare to welcome another little Hoge into the world. Baby #2 is soon upon us. We are all quite excited about it and will update you when it’s all said and done.
There’s a Nashville show on September 25 and we will get you more info on that asap. But trust me you’ll not want to miss this one.

More news on the new single(’Favorite Waste Of Time’), the video for it(shooting Aug 17-18), and other dates soon. Plus a new acoustic EP, but to be honest this is already the longest document ever typed on an iPhone and I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome.
We will talk soon.

Vote Will Hoge for governor.
Gnight.

So I just realized I’ve not really updated you guys since the 4th of July, sorry about that. It’s not from lack of activity on our end I assure you. Things are really moving forward fast as hell on the new album. I guess we can all start referring to it as ‘The Wreckage’ now. So now, let that be done. As of midnight tonight the first track will be posted on myspace. Hope you’ll all have a chance to listen. The song is called ‘Hard To Love.’ As a side note, it’s my favorite opening track on any album we’ve done. Thanks for letting me share. This will all be followed by lots of official add dates for vinyl, digital download, cd’s etc. On top of all that stuff we’re trying to gear up for getting back on the road. Thor’s itching to go. Very excited about Greenville at the Handlebar on Friday night. Plus I think I enjoyed Virginia Beach once before too?(That should tell you something). So over the last bit all the guys in the band have put together some thoughts and such about the album or the shows at 12th and Porter, etc. I’m gonna post those too coinciding with all this stuff that going on. I reckon we’ll start with Siggi since he’s got seniority. Take it Sig………

June Shows – I was a little nervous going into it, mainly because we haven’t done a full on show with plugged in guitars and everything in over a year. However, it ended up being really exciting, especially at the first rehearsal at 12th and Porter. That first Tuesday we all got together and it felt really good. Everyone that sat in really made the difference. I don’t really have a favorite night.. But favorite moments from each night that were really great for me personally and musically. The biggest highlight was Peyton coming in and singing that Animal’s song. The low for me during that run was having to drive back home and wanting to do another night of rocking.. And my fucking kick drum pedal kept breaking.. “Equipment failure”. Overall I really enjoyed myself. In general I feel that is the way the shows should go. Plenty of time to load in, play, tear down, everyone talking about how the songs should go but not over thinking it either. After the shows I really enjoyed the band lunch on Thursday and us hanging out. I really feel that we have all gotten a lot closer over the last year. We’ve all stepped up to the plate playing and performance wise. I think it is more professional than it has ever been and I really enjoy that because I feel like I really know my spot. Upcoming – I’m really excited about the upcoming shows. I can’t wait to get out and perform new songs and support the new record and just try and be the best band out there.

So that’s it from Mr. Birkis. I did want to go ahead and include the final track listing in order for ‘The Wreckage’ in case you’re wondering what you’ll be hearing over the next little bit.

Hard To Love, Long Gone, The Wreckage, Favorite Waste Of Time, Even If It Breaks Your Heart, What Could I Do, Goodnight/Goodbye, Just Like Me, Highway Wings, Where Do We Go From Down, Too Late Too Soon

I’m sure there’s more to talk about, but hopefully that’ll get y’all through the night. I gots work to do. See y’all soon. Please spread the word.

First let me say a sincere thank you to everyone who made it out to any of these shows the last 3 weeks. The response during the shows, after the shows was truly humbling. Myself and all the guys were so flattered. It was a great warm up for getting ready to get back to work in the studio. We had a hell of a ride home from Maryland. Flat tire and such. Took all day to get home. Loaded in the studio yesterday. It was cool to be back at Sound Emporium. Kind of strange thinking about working there before the accident and then getting to where we are now. All the folks there were so helpful during that process it was good to see them all again. We got sounds up yesterday to match up with where we’d left off. That was interesting. I’m not used to taking a 9 month break in the middle of recording. Anyhow, we got started on songs this morning. We tracked two really good ones. ‘Favorite Waste Of Time’ was first. This marked Devin’s studio debut with the band. He nailed it. Cool twelve string part plus a really good lead part. I got to play electric guitar which is the first time since last August. That felt wonderful. Next we worked on a song called ‘I’m Ready To Go’. I’d written this with Jim Lauderdale right before the wreck and had kind of forgotten about it. We dug up a demo of it Monday and it was cool so we banged it out. Siggi was napping so Ken played drums, I played acoustic and Devin played mandolin. Blade played this way cool bass part that really drives the whole thing. Siggi eventually came to and hit the percussion toys and the damn things almost done. We’re gonna add some accordion and melodica tomorrow. We’re hitting two more tomorrow as well. We’re going to attempt to update you at the end of each day with progress. Hell maybe even some photos or video eventually. Danged technology. Alright, I’m going to relax a bit. We’ll chat tomorrow.