Having never heard of Hotel Books before, I wasn’t too involved
with the crowd during their performance at Mixtape Festival this year. I hung
back near the merch tables, and simply listened to the words pour out of
frontman Cameron Smith’s mouth. I found it hard not to tear up. As they ended
their set, I remembered my boss telling me he had e-mailed Hotel Books’ press
agent for an interview and never got an answer. Without even thinking, I asked
the man sitting at the band’s merch table if he thought the frontman would be
willing to be interviewed last minute. Thankfully, it turned out not only that
yes, Cam was available, he was also an extremely pleasant person to talk
to.
After the set we walked to a quieter part of the
venue, and before I began asking him questions, a fan approached us and told
Cameron how touched he was by his words. Cameron remained humble, though
appreciative of the praise. He had no problem telling me about his beliefs and
his influences, one of them being God, but he also admitted to the flaws of
christianity. “Probably the people who are worst at telling people how love
should work is probably Christians. Some Christians can be so bigoted, and so we
just wanted people to know, religion has nothing to do with us loving other
people. Religion is something that people create in their heads,
where love is something that’s bigger than us,” he said.
As far as musical
influences, Cam drew a bit of a blank. “We don’t really know who our influences
are. We listen to some pretty weird music for how we sound. There’s probably
like, three bands I listen to, and and none of them sound like Hotel Books, but
what I learned from those bands helps me write for Hotel Books, even though we
don’t sound like those bands. Like my all time favorite band is Modest Mouse…
it’s cool to listen to that, and grow up with that, and understand the world
better because of music. Then I write my own music and hopefully it reflects a
clearer understanding of the world, too.” He also draws inspiration from what
he calls “obscure SoundCloud ambient bands.”
Growing up, he was only allowed to listen to Christian
music or clean music, such as Yellow Card, Switchfoot, and Weezer. He also
spent a solid five minutes going on about P.O.D., and how powerful he feels
they are, claiming that their album Satellites changed his life. Being the
first time I have ever interviewed anyone, and having no questions prepared, I
continuously stumbled and stuttered over my words, but Cameron was very
comforting and quite the conversationalist. At Hotel Books’ merch table I saw a
book of poems and short stories Cam had written titled Most Nights, I Wish I Was With You (phenomenal read, for the record)
and I had to ask him who his favorite poet was and he answered, “There’s the
real answer and then there’s the Hotel Books answer. My favorite poet, as a
person, is Shel Silverstein, because that’s what I was raised on and what made
me interested in poetry, but obviously I’m not reading Light In The Attic when I’m trying to come up with a
Hotel Books song… I’m not sure who my favorite poet is, I mostly listen to
lyrics, but my favorite lyricist is the singer of MewithoutYou… but as far as
poetry… I mean there’s the obvious, Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, I read a lot
of Edgar Allen Poe and of course, Emily Dickinson… We actually recently stayed
at a parsonage at a church, and it was the same one she stayed at when she was
living in Philly.” He considers Dickinson, Poe and Frost to be “the first step
to poetry. Like, you read a bunch of their stuff and then you’re like, “okay, I
understand where poetry has been, and now I’m gonna take it somewhere
else.”
Cam says he’s played
drums in punk rock bands since he was eleven, and got into hardcore bands when
he was about thirteen or fourteen, and then Hotel books formed sometime in
2011. They played their first show on the ten year anniversary of 9/11, and
said it was definitely an emotional way to start their career, but felt that it
was a reminder to remain humble, because “the people listening to your music,
you don’t know what they’re going through, you don’t know how hard their life
is, all you know is that they came to see your band, and playing such an
emotional show where people were so damaged gave us the ability to step back
and say “hey, let’s be honest and sincere with these people, ‘cause that’s what
they want and need,” ya know?” At this point, I began blanking on what to ask
him, but he knew the drill. “We have a new record coming out on April 7th,
called Run Wild Young Beauty,
available on iTunes and through the record label’s website.” They are signed to
InVogue Records and pre-order is available.
Later on, I ran into their
guitarist Kaleb, another extremely pleasant person, and he was also willing to
answer a few questions. It turns out he had never been interviewed before, and
it was an honor to be the first. Kaleb started playing music in high school,
his first band being a melodic hardcore band with Hotel Books’ other guitarist, Dan. Kaleb joined the band in May 2013. I asked him about the writing process,
and being new to the band he was only familiar with the process used on the
album they most recently worked on. “We were recording in Ohio… and Cam would
usually do his own thing for awhile, and he would sit at his computer or spend
some time alone outside, spending time in prayer, write his lyrics and then the
rest of us would just write the music.” Though Kaleb was not raised in a
religious family, he himself is a Christian. He started going to church with
friends a few years ago, and now before every set and drive the entire band
prays together.
I asked him what he thinks the best show they’ve ever
played is, and Kaleb told me though they recently played South By So What,
which was a huge success, he loves the small house shows they’ve played. “I
really enjoy house shows. They’re much more intimate.” Being so new to the
band, I asked him how he ended up going from hardcore bands to Hotel Books.
“Way back, Dan and I were in a melodic hardcore band called Endure, we actually
did a split with Hotel Books. Dan ended up filling in for drums for their next
tour, and eventually he said he wanted to bring me in to fill in for bass for a
tour. So I filled in for bass, and then moved up to guitar with Dan, and then
we were in the band.”
Hotel Books is a four piece
spoken word indie rock band from central California signed to InVogue
Records.
No comments:
Post a Comment