By: Dr. Matt Warnock
Looking back over his career there seems to be little that virtuoso guitarist Gary Hoey hasn’t been able to accomplish. He’s reached the top five of the Billboard charts, been a successful produced on the L.A. scene, released five volumes of his hugely popular Ho-Ho Hoey Christmas series and written music for ESPN, the Summer X-Games, No Fear and Disney’s California Adventure, just to name a few. Not one to sit back and relax, Hoey is continuing to move forward as he gets set to release his first guitar instructional DVD, release a new studio album as a band leader and write and arrange new material for his next Christmas album. All while maintaining a busy schedule of concerts and public appearances.
While he is most widely recognized for his best-selling guitar instrumental albums, including the smash hit Endless Summer II Soundtrack, Hoey has recently begun to get back to his roots by expanding into the role of singer-songwriter. Years of singing and playing in cover bands, while paying his dues in East Coast bars as a kid, have given Hoey a deep knowledge of what it takes to write solid lyrics, as well as a catchy riff and hard groovin’ rhythm guitar line.
After releasing fifteen instrumental albums in the past seventeen years, Hoey is shifting his focus slightly as he gets ready to release his next studio album. Besides showcasing the guitarist’s lyrical lead lines and burning chops, the new album will feature the Boston native as lead guitarist, vocalist and the records principal songwriter. The album, titled Only Human and due out in February of 2010, will provide fans a window into Gary Hoey the singer and lyricist, something that Hoey hopes to continues in the years to come.
Aside from the success Hoey has had as a guitarist, producer and writer-arranger, the multi-faceted guitarist is also stepping into the world of guitar instructional videos. After posting several well-received lessons on his website, one dealing with alternate picking and one describing a series of blues licks, Hoey will be recording a number of YouTube video lessons that fans and students all over the world will be able to access.
As well, Hoey recently worked with Rock House Video to produce his first instructional DVD. Featuring many of the techniques and licks that have made him famous and delving into Hoey’s signature vibrato sound, the video offers players of any level the chance to study with one of rock guitar’s most legendary performers, right in the comfort of their own homes.
With a new album set to be released in February of 2010, and a new Ho-Ho Hoey album in the works for later that year, Hoey is building on his well-deserved reputation while remaining firmly focused on his musical future.
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Matt Warnock: It’s early December and the holidays are coming up, which brings to mind the great Christmas themed albums you’ve released over the years. How did you get started with the Ho-Ho Hoey series of albums?
Gary Hoey: It all started back in 1995 when I recorded the first Christmas album. My manager, my mom and a lot of people around me were telling me I should record a Christmas album, but I hadn’t really thought about it that much. So, I sat down with my eight-track recorder and started laying down “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which was one of the first Christmas songs I recorded.
I’d been playing the melody for a while and I wanted to see if I could tune the guitar down to drop D, make it a little heavier, and come up with a new riff to put in the middle of the tune. Not related to the song, just something obscure to add to the arrangement. After I came up with that riff I went back to the melody and started to make it a bit heavier, to go along with the new riff, and I found it was working out for me. Since it was a public domain song I could take some liberties with it, which was very cool.
After doing a few songs like this I started to see a pattern developing and thought that it’d be cool to do an album of these arrangements. We didn’t sit down with some marketing plan to get rich or anything, we weren’t trying to capitalize on Christmas or whatever.
When we put out the album, and it began getting picked up by radio stations, we realized that there weren’t a lot of rock and roll Christmas albums out there. Bon Jovi does one song and Bruce Springsteen does “Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town,” but there wasn’t much else around. So, once the album got picked up on the radio it really took off from there.
Matt: It seems like someone who loves rock music would dig those Christmas albums, but people who like Christmas music, and not necessarily rock, might be surprised at the heaviness of the albums. How have those albums been received so far by the public?
Gary: Most of the response has been very positive. Critics and fans seem to enjoy the albums and I’ve had people tell me that they didn’t really like Christmas music until they heard my arrangements, so that’s always cool to hear from the fans. I’m sure there are people out there who don’t like those albums, but I haven’t really seen it. I even have people tell me that they play the album at Christmas and everyone from their eight year old kid to their eighty year old grandmother loves it.
It’s certainly opened up a wider audience for me than I would have had if didn’t release those albums. Also, a lot of people know me from my Christmas music that then go back and check out my other albums and end up enjoying those records too. So it’s been a very positive thing for me all around.
Matt: Do you have plans to continue the series with a new release in the coming years?
Gary: Yes we do have plans for a new album. We originally did the three Christmas albums, then we released a “best of” album and now we have the complete collection out, which is a double CD with thirty-seven tracks on it that came out a number of years ago. So we haven’t done anything new in a long time with the Christmas series.
I’m actually working on developing another Christmas album that should be out in 2010. I’m planning on featuring songs like the “Nutcracker Suite,” which I haven’t done before. We’re going to do “Do You Hear What I Hear” with this sort of question and answer, stereo-echo guitar thing. We’re going to do a really cool version of “O Holy Night,” which we’ve never done. So we’re really trying to take things to the next level with this new album.
Matt: Listening to your albums, and checking out live videos of your concerts online, I noticed that your repertoire consists of a mixture of covers and original compositions. It seems like playing covers has become a lost art with today’s up and coming bands, whereas it used to be a right of passage for any new band, that they would play covers before writing original material. Can you talk about your experiences playing covers and how it’s affected you as a writer and arranger?
Gary: Well, I had about fifteen years of experience playing in bands when I was a kid. I started playing guitar when I was fourteen and by sixteen I was playing in clubs with local bands, having to sneak in the back because I wasn’t drinking age. Laughs. We were doing everything from Van Halen to Brian Adams, all of the Top 40 songs of the day, and I think I really learned about what a hit song was from playing covers, as well as what it took to become a songwriter.
When I started making instrumental music later on, I figured that if I could do an instrumental version of a song like “Linus and Lucy” or “Lowrider” that it was a way to connect with an audience. People could recognize the melody and go, “Oh, I know that song,” and if they liked it maybe they’d go check out my original music. So, covers became sort of a way of drawing people to my original music, which they might not have checked out otherwise.
Also, I’ve always tried to make each cover I do my own, give it a fresh arrangement. Sometimes I hear people do covers and it sounds exactly like the original and I think, “Why would you do that?” Over the years I’ve even had people come up to me and tell me how much they like one of the songs I played, thinking it was mine when it was really a cover, which is cool because it means I’m putting my own personality into the music, cover song or not.
Playing covers has really helped me over the years, but sometimes I have to watch how many we do so I don’t get known as the “cover king.” Laughs.
Matt: Speaking of your early years, you released your first album back in 1992, at a time when lead-guitar style rock was getting killed by Grunge and later Alternative Rock. Even though you were up against the Grunge movement you’ve managed to have a very successful career when other, similar, players have fallen by the wayside. Why do you think you were able to maintain your career over all these years while other instrumental guitarists have come and gone?
Gary: I think it’s just been a matter of staying the course, of sticking to what I do and not giving up. There are always going to be fads that come and go in music, but the bands and players who stay true to themselves will survive through all of that. When I first came out I was in the top five on Billboard, right next to Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Led Zeppelin. I was also getting played on MTV in the middle of all of these Grunge videos, so it was probably a little bit of timing and a little bit of luck.
I did one album with a band called Heavy Bones that cost four hundred grand to make and was a total flop. Then I went out and released my first solo record, which cost thirty thousand dollars, and it was a big hit. It just goes to show that if you do something from the heart, and stay true to yourself, things end up working out.
Our first hit single was a remake of the tune “Hocus Pocus.” It was a great song already, and we did a new arrangement of it, but it allowed us to connect to an audience that was already there, that already knew the song. So it really helped start my career.
I also think that once the Grunge scene hit it was a necessary regurgitation of music, because the poser bands were definitely out posing each other by then. There were also a bunch of guitarists on the scene who were playing too many notes, too fast, all the time and we were losing a little bit of taste for the sake of technique. It was time for something new and it was a benefit for the music scene. It had to happen that way for music to move forward.
Matt: One thing that’s changed for you in recent years is that you’ve started getting more into the singer-songwriter thing. Most people know you for your instrumental guitar work, but some people might not know that you’re also an accomplished singer and songwriter. How did you begin to explore that side of your musical personality?
Gary: Like I was saying, I started out singing in bands for a number of years. I think that people can take voice lessons for years, but unless they get out and sing in a loud bar, through crappy monitors, they don’t really get the experience they need to grow as a singer. Dealing with those things and still singing your best is how you learn to become a singer, it’s not learned in a practice room.
I had that experience, singing in bands, and I was also producing a lot of bands in L.A., where I was standing on the other side of the glass, so to speak, from the singers. I would be trying to help these guys to sing the best they could, finding out what their range was, maybe identify the five best notes that they could sing and making sure we used those in the melody. Through working with those singers I started to discover that I had a pretty decent voice and could sing really well.
When I had my two kids I started to think about things I wanted to write about, things that meant something to me. Before that, I really didn’t have a lot of great lyrics coming out in my writing. Also, after recording fifteen instrumental albums I started to get burnt out on that style of music, and I felt like I wanted to do something more, something different. So I started writing vocal songs, and they ended up being decent songs.
I just finished writing and recording a new album, that will be out early in 2010, which I’m singing on, and I feel it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever done. I’m excited about it and looking forward to releasing it, hopefully in February of 2010.
Matt: Besides being an accomplished performer, producer, writer and arranger, you are also a sought after guitar teacher. I noticed that you have a couple of lessons posted on your site, one on alternate picking and one on blues licks, do you have plans to continue this series of lessons on your site?
Gary: Absolutely, that’s something that’s very important to me. I’m also going to be doing a series of lessons that will be on YouTube, so that people can see me playing in each lesson, which is very helpful when learning anything on the guitar. Apart from those lessons, I just finished recording my first ever instructional DVD for a company called Rock House, that should be out fairly soon.
I’m really happy with how it was filmed, with lots of close-ups of my hands, and I was literally able to cover the A to Z of lead guitar on the DVD. It’s not for the total beginner, but for people who have some of the basics down it will be a great way to learn how to expand their lead playing. I’d love to continue doing these instructional videos and lessons. I taught guitar lessons for fifteen years, so it’s something that I definitely enjoy doing.
Matt: Could you give us a sneak peak at some of the topics you covered on the DVD? It sounds like a great learning tool.
Gary: On the DVD we start with my picking technique, how to work on pick harmonics. We delve extensively into vibrato and bending, which are the two ways that I think people establish their own style on the guitar. I hear a lot of guys who can play a million notes a minute, but then they bend a note and it’s out of tune, or they play with vibrato and it sounds off. These are the little subtleties that make a pro a pro.
I also talk about how to get out of “position ruts.” Where someone might be stuck always playing in one part of the neck and they don’t know how to get around the fret-board that well. So we look at everything from playing pentatonic scales in different positions across the neck to playing scales from the third fret to the seventeenth fret.
I’ve also included several Mp3’s of jam tracks that people can use to practice with. Everything I give them they can go and jam with these tracks and put it into context, which is essential when leaning anything on the guitar. Then there are several performances on the DVD, so people can see me using all of the techniques I talk about in the context of my own soloing.
Matt: One of the things I noticed while watching you play is that you are a horizontal player, rather than a vertical player. You tend to play across the neck, instead of vertically in one position. Have you always had this approach to soloing or did it develop later on in your career?
Gary: The way I look at it is, we’re all using the same twelve notes, so it’s more about how we play those notes and the fluidity of our lines that makes us stand out. I do tend to do a lot of shifting in my playing, a lot of sliding; it’s part of my style, it makes it sound a little more fluid than playing in position. I never had a lot of luck ripping up and down pentatonic scales in one position, for me, I find moving it into a different position is a little cleaner, a little more fluid.
I’ve played that way for years. I had a couple good teachers early on who exposed me to that style of playing. It really opened up the neck for me because I wasn’t stuck in box patterns all the time. I always tell guitarists that the goal is to be able to play what we hear in our heads, and box patterns are one way to do it, but that may not be the best way. So try playing things across the neck, it may open up a whole new realm of possibilities in our playing.
Matt: You mentioned that you taught guitar for fifteen years, and you have these new instructional materials coming out, what advice would you have for guitar teachers out there? Are there any pearls of wisdom you’ve gleaned over the years that you could share with the guitar teaching community?
Gary: My advice to guitar teachers is, first of all, find out what your strengths are as a player and teacher. Don’t try and teach everything all the time. If you find what your good at, and develop a curriculum to teach it, it’ll make you a better teacher. Also, don’t give the same thing to every student that walks in the door. Talk to your students and get a sense of the type of music that they like, and the style of music they want to play.
Don’t be afraid to give a student who’s not technically ready to play Stevie Ray Vaughn, a Stevie Ray Vaughn tune to work on. Sometimes if we give our students something that’s difficult for them to play they end up working really hard at it and the results can be amazing. Don’t try and teach them fifteen jazz chords before you teach them the blues. Give them a little of what they want, and need, then let them work it out. If you do that they’ll not only work harder, but they’ll stay dedicated to you as a student.
The last thing I’ll say is make students jam with you. Take time every lesson to play with your students. A lot of teachers will spend months teaching technique and theory without ever really playing music. It’s great to sit down with a student and jam on a blues. Have them take twelve bars then you take twelve bars, just keep going back and forth like that. I think that approach will help a student grow a hundred times faster than if teachers are constantly making people feel like students. If you can break down that wall a bit, even if they’re not at your level, they feel like their contributing in a musical situation and it can be very helpful in their learning process.
For a lot of years, when I studied jazz, I would get to the point where I felt I wasn’t learning anything, and it was very frustrating. At one point I took all of my theory books and threw them in the closet and said to myself, “I’m really tired of being a student, I want to be a player.” At that point I started looking at my career as a professional and not as a student, because we can die still thinking that we’re students. Someday we have to make that transition. We have to make the decision that we are ready to stop being a student and we’re ready to start being a player.
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Links
Ho! Ho! Hoey! The Complete Collection on Amazon
The Best of Gary Hoey on Amazon
