Top Left Corner #161
Micah P. Hinson
live at The Foundry

Podcast (top-left-corner): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Hey, Greylock Nation! This is episode 161 of the Top Left Corner, which first aired on Wednesday, July 13 2022. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez, and I do thank you for tuning in.

We’re incredibly lucky to do what we love as much as we get to do it here at the Greylock Glass. Never has there been a better example than our conversation with Micah P. Hinson, a true kindred spirit of me personally, but more than that — his story is a kindred story to all the narratives we’ve presented that deal with the authentic, the raw, the real. Hinson is a real musician’s musician, and I know it won’t take long for you to get a sense of that.

And I want to have zero doubt, because Hinson is playing The Foundry in West Stockbridge Friday, July 15, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that you’d be making a huge mistake to miss this show.

He’s been compared to a whole host of artists from Bob Dylan to Tom Waits to Leonard Cohen to John Prine. All comparisons are valid, but each is inadequate and unfair in both directions. Hinson opens up his heart/spirit/guts and what pours out is his and his alone.

Rather than take up time with lengthy explanations, though, I think I’ll let the artist speak for himself. First, though, let’s let him sing for himself and have a listen to one of two tunes that graciously allowed us to play on this show. I think you’ll begin to get a glimpse with “You Lost Sight on Me,” from Micah P. Hinson And The Junior Arts Collective, right here on the Top Left Corner.

Editor’s note: We pay to have our podcasts transcribed, and though the following transcript is fairly accurate, it is not perfect. Please become a supporting member so that we can deliver a higher quality text version of our interviews to those who are unable to hear our audio programs.

Editor’s Note: The following article is derived from officially released information, published with few or no editorial changes. The Greylock Glass  occasionally provides our readers with such content if the information is factual in nature, and requires little to no interpretation or analysis, often when original reportage would not provide additional relevant information.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Micah P. Hinson, who is going to be treating the community around The Foundry, West Stockbridge to an amazing show this Friday night. Thank you so much for taking time to speak with us here on the Top Left Corner, Micah.

Micah P. Hinson: And I thank you, sir. I really, really appreciate it. I really, really do.

Top Left Corner: Well, I feel especially honored because I know that you haven’t done interviews in a while and you have not, in fact, played you haven’t toured in the U.S. for a long time. So. So that’s you know, I feel I feel like I’ve got a real a real feather in my cap here as a sort of a music music reporter. Do you do you have any particular ways that you describe your work before I before I get into what I think.

Micah P. Hinson: Oh, man. I mean, yeah, I’ve been so. So I signed to a new record label, an Italian label. And this PR company I’m working with, they wanted they wanted me like to get some press together that I that I thought was fitting or that I liked the most. And I was looking through a lot of things and I saw, like, a lot of things like neo folk or. Or I mean, even like even like it’s a strange thing because even like using the, the word Americana, like that’s even like, of course it’s Americana because like here I’m from Texas like that that all makes sense. But I think so with me, like, let’s say the main things that influenced me when I was a kid was like, John Denver. Like My Buddy Valentine and the Cure. And a decent amount of classical music. And so I feel that when I when I listen to my music, I feel like whenever I play, that’s where that’s where I’m coming from. I’m not coming from a place that’s like trying to like Neil folk is like I would think of like the idea of like trying to reject or move advance upon what folk music and these types of things. And I just I’m not trying to, to advance anything. I’m not trying to to make a statement with what I do more than just these just happen. Yeah, these are my influence and this is the way that I feel. And these are the things that come out.

Top Left Corner: I’m so glad to hear.

Micah P. Hinson: It’s always an interesting one.

Top Left Corner: I’m so glad to hear you say that. And I feel like more people, more musicians need to be willing to say that because, you know, we have entered a really great era. We would talk a little bit in the green room, the digital green room about how there’s all this music available online and there’s good and bad to that. One of the things that’s really good is that people are being exposed to things that they would not normally hear. Because let’s face it, you know, in in radio days, you really had to depend on your local rock station or your local music station and college radio. And college radio was where you heard the stuff that was experimental or just sort of out of the mainstream. But everything else, you were sort of dependent on either the radio or what some buddy of yours who worked in the record store told you. And yeah, right. And so now people are able to sort of absorb different, different flavors and add it to their own music. I will say when I and I will admit that I was not deeply familiar with your work until I was preparing for this this talk when I. Here, you. I think not just of musicians, but I think of. People from other areas. Such as? There’s an author by the name of Raymond, Raymond Carver, Jr., and your songs are deeply personal. They’re slim, but they communicate so much feeling and so much story. Just as. As Carver, just as Carver’s do, his stories are slim, but they communicate a lot of meaning. So that’s kind of that. And then some photographers, especially from the Depression era, there were a lot of really talented photographers taking pictures of the American scene.

Micah P. Hinson: Definitely like the Dust Bowl and Oklahoma. Yeah, there’s some amazing things. Yeah, man.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. So I feel like you’ve got, some of your DNA may may come from other places besides music. And if you get a chance to to read any of Carver, I encourage you to do that because you’ll. I think you’ll identify.

Micah P. Hinson: That’s really rad. That’s really interesting that you are. So you would say something like that because that certainly isn’t anything. And I don’t feel that it’s anything intentional on my part, but that I think about the times that I was writing some writing the songs that would end up being like the Gospel of Progress, which is my first record about 2003. And during this during this time, I was, of course, like any, any good American boy. I was reading, you know, I was reading Jack Kerouac hadn’t particularly got into Bukowski or anything like that. But yeah, I was reading like a lot of the beatniks and stuff like that and like reading about this, this concept that I later realized is just a fucking fraud, but the concept of the American dream and stuff and, and of course, like there has to be something to me being I just watched the Elvis movie with my girlfriend yesterday and, you know, being born in Memphis then like moving to Texas. And there’s like a there’s an interesting lineage that I clearly had nothing to do with.

Micah P. Hinson: And being a Chickasaw, being native, like, there’s like these things that had nothing to do with but but they just happened to be part of me, of course. And I think I feel like maybe that is unintentionally or in some way like influence, maybe the the things that I do. But yeah, you mentioned the. The simplicity thing. And that always I’m not sure how. I guess I stumbled upon that or something. Or maybe I was just. I think I consider myself lazy for the longest time, but I realized what quote unquote art you can or poetry, whatever you want to call it, inside of that, because you can say the same sentence over and over. But the first time I say me, then the next time I say you, and the next time I say she or them, and all of a sudden just changing those, those very simple words ends up like profoundly changing the sentence entirely. And so, yeah, I’m kind of happy that I fell upon some of these writing styles or whatever you want to call them.

Top Left Corner: Well, I think I think you have you have a lot of the storytellers, probably the storytellers gift. And you you know, it’s poetry. It’s music. But your your songs very often have an arc to them. And I think that that’s that’s a real delight. And it’s not it’s not something not something I get everywhere. I would like to talk about Memphis. I’d like to talk about Abilene. I yeah, my my wife is actually from Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in an in a a fundamentalist household. So I actually get to hear I get to hear some of that. I get well, she’s she’s recovering. She’s been recovering for about 25 years.

Micah P. Hinson: Yeah.

Please support our work bringing you stories you’ll only find here.

Top Left Corner: So tell us about tell us about that upbringing.

Micah P. Hinson: Oh, God, dude, it’s a thing that I’ve been. Yeah. So yeah, I mean at this point in my life. So yeah, I’m really realizing I’m trying, I’m determining right now what I should say and what I shouldn’t say. So but I’ll say it like this. So I was I was married for like 14 years. I’m in the middle. I’m almost ending with the divorce. I have four children and a lot. And that directly I feel with my philosophizing about stuff that directly ties into what you’re asking about. I think and this isn’t I don’t really want to talk about religion too much, but the way. And not to be dramatic, but I feel that the way that I was raised and that fundamental Christian situation, I don’t know if it’s the same fundamentally across, but at least in the South, at least there in Texas, I think it’s very when you kind of realize like, oh, this is this maybe isn’t the way I want to live and maybe this isn’t actually on the dot at all. I think you realize how traumatizing it is because you’re being fed not only like concepts, but you’re being fed these concepts that you’re supposed to like that’s supposed to inhabit your life. And it’s supposed to be something that, like, directs your your movements and and when you don’t even know, like, what is really happening. But then you realize that you can do that for 40 years, like based on these things that you never understood. It’s a it’s a bizarre it’s a bizarre thing, man.

Micah P. Hinson: But it’s like your wife, man. I’m in recovery. In recovery from the from the church, man. It’s a strange thing, but yeah, so I was, I was born my parents are both born in Texas and they were going to college up there in the, in the panhandle. And they met in Lubbock. They got married, they moved to Memphis. And my dad was a youth minister and worked and worked at a church up there. And so I was just in Memphis for like very, very little time in my life. Like, of course, I don’t remember it that that first time that I lived there, we moved when I was probably two or something. We lived in West Virginia for a little bit. I remember maybe some of my first memories were from there, but then of course, Texas was I guess we moved to Texas when I was four or five or something like that and a little. I want to say little town, but hell, there was like 100,000 people there. And so it’s not really little. It’s just it’s the only town like I think God particularly put it in a place to where it’s like exactly three and a half hours to any major city in Texas. It’s like you have to go three and a half hours north of Lubbock, you have to go for Dallas, you have to go to Austin. It’s like a fucking no man’s land. I’m sorry for my I don’t know if I can curse.

Top Left Corner: It’s a podcast — we can curse.

Micah P. Hinson: Okay, awesome, man. Yeah, I have a filthy mouth. So and so it had the desperation, the feeling of loneliness that I feel that you would get from a small town. But. But that was a strange thing, because there’s a hundred thousand people there, but you’re out in the middle of nowhere. It’s very much a desert. It’s hot as hell then. It’s really, really cold in the winter. Of course, there’s no I don’t feel like there was any culture. I guess the only culture that was there would have been like the culture of church, I suppose Abilene for the longest time had the most churches per capita than any other city in the United States. And then for a while we actually held the most pregnancies per capita than anywhere in the United States. The high school I went to had a fucking babysitting building.

Top Left Corner: Arrows. Arrows in the quiver for Jesus.

Micah P. Hinson: Exactly. And so. So that was so I mean, I guess I tried to. I’m trying to explain maybe what it was kind of like growing up or whatever, but it was just a really. I just felt like it was a very. It was it was a strange place in the sense that if you wanted anything to happen, you had to make it happen for yourself. It wasn’t like going to a big city. It’s like he’s falling out of your front door and you can pick between all these things. This is what I want to spend my time with. These are the things that I want to be influenced by and seeing something new. Yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like that. I mean, I was lucky enough to have an older brother that was connected into, like, listening to, like, industrial music. He was big into, like, skinny puppy and knits a rib and front front two for two and a weight state and all these types of things. And so I was able to get influenced by by him to be introduced to, to the stuff that I did. It’s best to kind of. Give me a bigger perspective than that little, little flat earth bubble that I was living in in Abilene.

Top Left Corner: It sounds…it sounds desolate. It sounds like a desolate childhood. Youth. Youth. Yeah.

Micah P. Hinson: It’s. It’s a place. I mean, I don’t want to, again, be dramatic or something, but so you have like a bunch so you have a bunch of churches, you have three Christian universities, you have a huge Air Force base there and you have a ton of transients, homeless people, transients, because there’s nothing out there. And so Abilene was a place that if you’re going left or right, you could, of course, go traveling if you’re going south and north. And so with the colleges, with the Air Force base and with that with the transit situation, it was a place that kind of in a strange way, maybe it never quite felt like home, because the spirit of that goddamn place was always. He was always moving, I suppose. Again, I feel like I philosophize about this fucking city a lot or what it or what or what it did to me. It was the. But of course, it was a beautiful place because it gave me because like the absence of what it had or or maybe I’m the absence, maybe it had exactly what it needed to it. It gave me the. The ability, I guess, to find in myself something, to try to explain that to myself or something to try to keep as like a friend as I was going through this stuff. Because, of course, in that small town, like I skateboard and I played music and I love fucking doing drugs and that I didn’t that did it like a wash with a lot of people around there. So it was interesting, kind of like this young boy like without a. I never felt quite at home there. And so it’s interesting stuff, man. What a fucking place.

Top Left Corner: Now, I think that it’s important to philosophize about your the place you grew up because you know you’re going to be asking questions for the rest of your life. Why do I respond to things like this? Why did that? Why does this continue to affect me like this? I thought I thought I was over that. Yes. And you have to go back and you have to look at the mold that you came out of. And if you’re if one of the pieces of your mold is Abilene, you know, that’s that’s going to be there. And I love that. You say if you wanted to do something, you had to kind of make it yourself. And then eventually you decided beyond that, I guess you you did some sort of cleaning up in your lifestyle and and sort of getting some of your shit together, going to college for a while. But you, you decided to find your way out of the wilderness. What prompted that and what did you find? What did a young Michael P Henson find when you first made it out of the wilderness of Abilene?

Micah P. Hinson: Oh. Oh, shit, man. I think. I mean, I guess the thing that. That as I got older, of course I started not. Of course I got older and I started seeing people either going to prison for drugs or dying from drugs or dying in car accidents because they’re drunk. I had several, several friends that were just they were just dropping like flies. And I remember this one day as clichéd as this fucking thing sounds, but I remember this, oh man, my fucking story. So I was dealing with a little bit of, like, homelessness, which is an odd thing to do in a tiny little town like that, or a big, tiny town like that. And I remember I was reading Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. I guess that’s the cliched thing because of course you have a teenage boy trying to figure out his fucking life and of course he’s reading Kerouac to being apple pie and stuff. And I felt like at this moment it was kind of like, of course we didn’t have drones and stuff when I was that age, but kind of the idea of like a drone shot, like all of a sudden it was like, I could see the top of my head and it fucking shot up in the air and it’s like almost I could see all the roads connecting to Abilene. And it was kind of it was strange, but it kind of really hit me at that point that it’s like, oh, I’m not I’m not I’m not trapped at all.

Micah P. Hinson: There’s roads leading out of this place in every direction and they go in every direction the world goes. And I didn’t make a move then, but but it was amazing at that point to kind of feel like my. My little mind was opening up to the to the to the concept of eternity, almost to something bigger than myself. And so, yeah, I saw I saw people dropping like flies. And it just seemed really strange. And I’d been I had been making music and I wanted to be a I wanted to be I wanted to play music. I want to be a rock star. Know I love the Smashing Pumpkins and all of these things that were going on. And so, like the first time I left with a messy situation, I guess the first time I left in my life seemingly was kind of together. I moved to Denton, which is a really, really brilliant town. And like everybody knows, Austin is the best music. I don’t know if Denton is the same way now, but everybody used to tell it. Austin is this great place for these great musicians came from. And yeah, there’s a lot of people that come out of there, but like 95% of that is going to be whatever 4% of that is going to be like, that’s okay.

Micah P. Hinson: And 1% is going to be like, Oh, shit, that’s pretty good. But in Denton, for some reason at this time, you had like, Jesus, can I remember some of the names you had, like the legendary crystal chandelier or you had like lift to experience or sin traumatic. Some of these bands went on to do some stuff, actually, but it was just this really stunning time of in a very, very and again, it was I mean, this Denton was even smaller than Abilene, just a teeny little place. But they had a college there, so it made it a bit different. And it was there that I started seeing like, okay, this is how like you talk to people and this is how you do shows and this is how you plug in your instrument, like kind of learning all those, all these simple things that seem like rudimentary almost now that I’ve done so long. But, but learning the, learning what I would be doing in the future, I suppose. But again, even even with that, even though I was trying to, to learn things and become a normal like a man or whatever, I didn’t. I never like sent like a tape or a CD to a record label I never liked.

Micah P. Hinson: Email was, of course, going on, but it clearly wasn’t what it is now. But I never attempted to go and do anything with what I was doing, even though I took what I was doing very seriously. I just I didn’t I didn’t take it to a wider place to try to get them to try to get signed and stuff. So when it eventually when I ended up getting signed and stuff, I mean I was like in another strange kind of it was an interesting part of my life, but it just happened to be that somebody in England heard some of my music and they liked it and they wanted to sign me and they called me and that was it. It was nothing that I directly had to. To make for myself. It was something that just came to me and and that was that that was a quite interesting thing to go to because I feel that. I mean, especially nowadays like self promotion. I mean, that’s that’s the way of the future. And so to get a career that I’m here like 20 years later and I wasn’t self doing anything, I’m not sure if I should find a sense of pride in that or something, but very, very different. And I’m glad to I’m glad that it all worked out that way.

Top Left Corner: I think that, you know, you have to you have to trust that some of the things that happen, whether you’re trying to make them happen or not, they’re just, you know, that luck happens and it doesn’t the luck doesn’t happen if you’re not trying. I have discovered if you’re not trying.

Micah P. Hinson: There you go.

Top Left Corner: It doesn’t you know, you’ve got to be you’ve got to be advocating for yourself. If you want the stars to align, you have to give the stars some help. But but when they do align, you know, sometimes it can seem like you’re not doing the things, but you’re really doing the things. It’s just other people are beating their head against the wall, doing the marketing. And like you said, they’re setting up tapes and they’re trying to, you know, promote their brand. But that’s not that’s not necessarily the things they should be doing. Maybe the things they should be doing is just playing and playing and playing and playing and meeting other musicians and, you know, learning their craft. And then maybe that magic will happen just sort of when they’re back is turned, when they’re not expecting it. You know, it doesn’t always, obviously, because, you know, the number of people who actually can make a living doing it is is really actually kind of ridiculously small, don’t you think? For as much music as people have in their lives, you would think more people could at least make a standard middle class living doing music?

Micah P. Hinson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the music is such an integral part of human existence. Yeah. It’s weird that people have people are making a living from selling Burger King, but yet people aren’t making a living by providing humans with joy, you know?

Top Left Corner: Yeah. I mean, just, you know, if you if you offered people a minimum wage to, like, do music, I bet you we’d have a lot of people say, oh, yeah, I’ll do that instead of flip burgers. Sure.

Micah P. Hinson: Yes, absolutely. And then what? Jesus. I’ve never even thought of a concept that you just that you just brought up. But but if that was a world that we lived in. Yeah. That, that would be absolutely incredible.

Top Left Corner: Insanely cool.

Micah P. Hinson: It would be kick ass. But you know, we have to figure out how to how to tame the to because those are there’s some dangerous socialist and communist veins. And what you said.

Top Left Corner: Oh, jeez. I know, right? Gosh, I probably I probably should edit that out, because then they’ll realize that that we’re we’re we are a threat to the to the to the hierarchy, to the to the world order.

Micah P. Hinson: No shit.

Top Left Corner: But.

Micah P. Hinson: Man.

Top Left Corner: But no, I think that, you know, the the arc of of liberty is is long, but it bends in whatever direction it eventually gets there. And I think that I think that this this youngest generation, this Gen Z, I don’t want to put it all on their shoulders because I know that pisses them off. They’re like, What do you mean? What do you mean we’re going to fix the world? Why the hell are you giving the giving us a broken world? And then saying and then, like, looking at us with pride, oh, our children will fix it. Oh, thanks a freaking lot. Right. So, but, but I do think that this generation has a really interesting, strong handle on their own identity and their own sovereignty, I guess. And I think that it’s maybe the strongest generation that we’ve had. And I think that’s a damned good thing because they’re going to need to be the next couple of decades. Let’s talk a little bit about let’s talk a little bit about the music that you have. You’ve put out scents because there’s definitely you know, there’s definitely talking about arcs. There’s definitely an arc to the development of your craft from Denton to today. What were some of the the the the the crossroads where you made some choices that put you where you are now, both musically and professionally.

Micah P. Hinson: I guess like, wow, that’s a question.

Top Left Corner: The only kind I’ve got.

Micah P. Hinson: Yeah, seriously. I guess. Whoa. Shit. So musically, I feel. That I made soon. Okay. So there was a time that this record label called XL Records was doing really, really good in England. I hadn’t released my second record yet as a record called The Opera Circuit, and they had signed like the White Stripes and like Radiohead was on the label, like they were like heavy, heavy hitters. And I had done. Wow. Okay. So I had I had had to have a back surgery, a couple of discs in my back, and it popped from an accident of mine. And so during the recording, the majority of the recording of the opera circuit, I was I was like, I mean, I was in a corset. I was I was not in a very that was a really tough emotional and physical and pain time in my life. It was something that I actually had dealt with for the chronic pain of that I dealt with for 16, 17, 17 years, somehow miraculously fixed itself. I’m not sure how that happened, but I was going through that. I had just met this guy named Eric Bachman that was in a band called Arches of Love and Crooked Fingers and Very Blacks and things that really, really influenced me as a teenager. And he had I’d gone on a tour with him. He came to Abilene. We listen to my new record, he was like, Hey, I’ll take these and I’m going to be going up to Washington and Oregon and all these places, and I’m New Mexico and I’m gonna record some strings and some people I know.

Micah P. Hinson: Incredible. He comes back. The record is all, like, recorded just in my house on, like, pretty shitty equipment. But the strings were done and it felt for me like it was a completed it was a completed work. And so this Exhale label came to me and they were like, Hey, we want to give you money just to go into the studio and, and like more fully realized this stuff. And this is a time that I feel like if I was a normal human, I would have been like, awesome. They’re not, like, asking me to take away this original record. They’re not asking me to, like, betray anything. They just want to see what what I can do and and to like my direction musically or my career. I think at that time making that decision of I mean, I wouldn’t even do records in yet. And for some reason I thought that I had a better idea. And so to stick and sort of stick. But, but again, but that’s a struggle thing because I feel like maybe if I would have done that, maybe they would have tried to push me and maybe I would have burnt out and maybe I would not be doing this now.

Micah P. Hinson: Be doing this still. Right, right. But but that was definitely a time that I feel like, man, I could have I could have really upped things. And and there was another label I was talking to at the time, and they wanted me to record this opera circuit record. They wanted me to go do it with the guy that did the Sigur Ros albums. And for some reason, at that time, I was still like, No, what I’ve done in my house in Texas is better, is going to be fine. So that was that was a that was an interesting time for me. I feel like at that moment I chose. For foolishness or for wisdom. I chose. What? What I was doing was what I wanted to do. And I wasn’t going to clearly go out out of that box, whether it meant, like a big label or whether it meant whatever it meant. And of course, having a hard head or like being said and believing in what you do, that can be really good. But of course, that can that can backfire if you make the wrong decision. But, yes, there was. There was. What a huge question that was. But there was I guess that was an interesting thing. What I was. What I was going through.

Top Left Corner: It wasn’t just music musical and it wasn’t just professional. There was an element of character. There was an element of you looking into yourself and saying, What am I willing to to risk? What am I willing to to, you know, potentially allow out of my control? And I get it. I totally get that. I had a small bilingual newspaper in Worcester County, Massachusetts, and I was I was approached by The New York Times, and I hadn’t even been doing it a year. And The New York Times Corporation wanted to buy it, and they were going to give me a bunch a bunch of money. And and I knew what they were going to do to it. I knew exactly what then they were going to keep me on for three years. But I knew that I would have no control. Right. Most people, most smart people, most people with common sense would would have said, yeah, New York Times, yeah, totally. And I was stubborn, hard headed, whatever you want to call it. But I said, no, I think I’m just going to keep going my own way. It didn’t work out. The newspaper ended up folding. But, you know, there was that moment that I had to decide for myself. What? What? How much does my soul really worth? So. And there it is.

Micah P. Hinson: Indeed. I mean. Indeed, I mean. And that’s. And I guess if we look at if we look back at the record that I’ve done, that’s I guess that set like a precedent, a precedent for what I was going to keep doing in the future, because the majority of my records have all been I mean, this last record that I just finished or just it’s been taken a while, but that I finished, it’s the first time that I’ve actually had like a producer on the whole thing. And like we’re actually recording a lot of the things we actually recorded in a studio, whereas everything else it was like, I might work with a producer, but I’m going to be bringing in like the majority of stuff I’ve already done and we’re just going to clean it up, maybe we’ll add some stuff. And so, yeah, so that, so what I set with my second record is like I’m just going to do my records and whatever I feel comfortable with. That’s probably a good thing because as we were talking about earlier, but as music changed the industry and as money wasn’t coming in. If a record label says, here is a $6,000 advance, make us a hit fucking record, it’s like, Well, no, I can’t. Well, first off, more than half of that money is spent because I’ve got to pay rent, there’s taxes and all this shit, and there’s no way. And so if I would have gone through my, the first of my career being like, okay, I expect a studio and I expect that producer and I expect this and this and this. I would have gotten to a point where it’s like, Well, I can’t. I would have been paying out of my own pocket, clearly, to be making these records. And and you can’t I can. You can’t do that.

Top Left Corner: No, no.

Micah P. Hinson: No, not at all. And I don’t know. Yeah, that’s a whole confusing thing. How? The music industry. We talked about how the music industry is now and the the little the little value it seems that. Well, yeah, I think the little value that it seems like the world at large puts on puts on music. I don’t think a lot of value is put into that, at least financially. And that’s a that’s a very it’s a very heady situation. And I’m not sure if we’re ever going to ever going to figure that out, because I’m not sure how the government can’t figure out. So common laws of humanity, much less figure out what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen to the music industry. And so, yeah. So I’m glad. Yeah, that’s yeah, I’m glad that, that I stuck to the way that and of course I couldn’t say that at the time, but yeah. If I, if I hadn’t, I guess if I hadn’t have made that decision, I wouldn’t have been able to, I think still still be here and be willing to. I mean, just Yeah. To be especially with the plague that has happened and stuff. I mean, the concept of making money, you have to stick to it with the, with the some sort of dedication of a drug addict or something. Even at the times when it’s not serving you again in this capitalist society, when it’s not serving in that way and you’re having to suffer in some ways it would be it would be so much easier just to just turn around and do something else.

Top Left Corner: Well, the thing that kills me is that the music industry with a capital M and a capital I, they would have you believe that they they have the crystal ball to know what the public wants. But if that were true, then there wouldn’t be so many, especially of these young musicians that are coming out of, you know, they are building up their own following through YouTube or SoundCloud or whatnot. And, you know, I think if someone like Tessa violin and I don’t know if you’ve heard of her or whatnot, but she’s really she’s really wonderful. Tessa Violet. She just slowly in her bedroom started recording songs and now she’s touring all over the world. And it took her, it took us some time, but she’s been pretty much entirely self produced, has her own label, and she did it because she knew what she wanted her music to sound like if you had. If you had run her through her music, through the the distillation machine of the music industry, it wouldn’t have come out sounding like that. It would be completely different and it probably would not end up being the hit that it is today.

Top Left Corner: I want to talk. You mentioned the accident and you and I have have a few parallels in our life, our lives. And one of those is is accidents that really affect us and leave a mark for a long time. I was in a motorcycle accident back in the mid-nineties, and I broke both of my arms and I had both arms in a cast up to my shoulder for seven and a half, seven and a half months. There’s an amazing number of things you take for granted that you can do with your hands. That’s all I can say that. Yeah, but but so that was that was really rough. And it changed me. And it it was probably the first time I really understood what mortality meant and how close I came to that. So you had a van accident, you were on tour and and you ended up really just I mean, it was devastating physically. Talk about the that talk about the effect on your your perceptions of life, yourself, music, all of that.

Micah P. Hinson: Holy hell. So, yes, I had gone. So we just covered this a bit. I had, like, a back problem. I had surgery and all these things. And so when I would so that kind of changed my behavior on when I would tour, I couldn’t sit up for I couldn’t sit up for too long, he said. So this one day I’m laying in the back of the van. It’s just like a three seater van and I don’t have my seatbelt on because it’s fucking uncomfortable. I can’t sit up. It’s like I’m doing the best that I can and I’m sleeping and then we end up getting into an accident. And I remember like hitting the roof and my eyes barely open and thinking like, this isn’t fucking natural. And then I ended up getting my arms trapped in the broken window of the fucking van. But the van had flipped over tons of times and I was like facing down halfway through the broken window with my shoulder blade, with my shoulders touching in the front. It was highly, highly, highly, highly violent. And I remember like my head, like feeling like the the warmth of of the sunshine outside and felt like the dirt was in my face. And my band at the time was all Spanish. And I could hear them speaking English, but I knew that they weren’t going to be speaking English during a fucking emergency. And so I was like breaking some time and space language barrier or something like that.

Micah P. Hinson: And I remember like laying under there thinking like, Dude, I don’t want to. I want things to go back to normal. It was just it’s such a shock to being in such a bizarre and violent place, like, in a matter of seconds. So. I went through that. They took me out. They got they had to use like these jaws of life fucking thing. They got me out and took me to the hospital. I was in the hospital a few days. They they gave me like an MRI and all these things. And they wanted to keep me in the hospital in Spain for a very, very long time. And I was like sharing this room for a day with like a man with a hole in his skull. And I was like, I just got I just got to get the fuck out of here. And so my bass player, his girlfriend at the time was a was a medical doctor, of course. And so they were like, okay, well, we’ll let them go and you’re going to keep an eye out for him. And and I got back to Texas and I still had grass in my hair from the from the Spanish countryside and stuff. They didn’t even, like, give me like a proper arm brace and all these things. Like my arms didn’t work.

Micah P. Hinson: I guess that’s the main thing. That’s the point of what’s happening is that my arms didn’t work, my left arm didn’t work at all. And my right arm, like, maybe like 20% or something like that, couldn’t pick up glasses, couldn’t course, couldn’t, couldn’t do a fucking thing like getting to do this fucking scam calls. There we go. And. So, yeah, my arms didn’t work. I got back to Texas. I went to see some doctors there. They did a bunch of tests on my arms, and they’d realized that, like, I’d pulled. I pulled the huge cord on the inside of my shoulders. I pulled it and it had broken essentially like all the nerves inside, but it hadn’t actually broken the cord itself, which was if it had broken the car, I would have been paralyzed for life, of course, if that had been broken. And so they were like, okay, it takes this long for the very scientific. Like it’ll take this long for the nerves to go back and it’ll take this long for them to heal because they heal one inch a month. And we have to go from your shoulder to the tip of your finger to your shoulder. And so, yeah, it was it was a while of just I didn’t know what the. I mean, my arms didn’t work. And so even though they said it’ll be this and this, in my mind, I was like, Yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe things will be start working again.

Micah P. Hinson: But if my arm is only at 40% or only at 70%, like the concept of playing what I played, much less like getting better and trying to advance into the future like this is probably been drastically changed. So yeah, of course you have that until you’re going through like fits of depression. And at the time I was on drugs for my from my previous back problem, I was on fentanyl of all fucking drugs. Yeah. They had me on fentanyl for that’s the drug. I was 20 so I was on that for 14 years and then I and I looked in the mirror and I was like, dude, if you don’t quit this drug, like, you’re going to die. And so and I had a son at the time, so I quit the drugs. And then for some reason, as soon as I quit that and went through all the hell of that, my back didn’t hurt anymore. And I’m like, what the. Yeah, it was. I don’t know if if one the gods intervened and fix my spine or to the pain that I was feeling. And what I was going through was from over ten years of massive opiate addiction. I’m not sure which one it was, but yeah. So that, that arm thing man. So I was out for I guess in the end, strangely enough, I only I just stopped touring for maybe a few months because that happened in the middle of we were playing Trump Lemon by the Pixies, me and the Spanish band, and I was playing guitar.

Micah P. Hinson: Of course, when the show, when the tour, we just got one show in and we were heading to the second show when the accident happened. And, and so a few months later, of course, I needed the money and I guess I was massively high on drugs. And so we went back on the road and we did that tour and. And I just say kind of like tried to do my best version of Frank Sinatra or something. And then not only that, I also hired a string section and we went around England. We also went on to mainland Europe. And we were just it was just just strings and me singing. And so. In a pretty goddamn interesting way. It instead of like the concept of like my arms being destroyed for the time, therefore I’m going to the whole thing, the whole, the whole house of cards fumbles. I it was pretty rad, I guess, to look back and think like, oh, like that. I, I guess I gave myself that opportunity to do something a little bit, a little bit different, of course. And if you’re standing behind the guitar for that many years, once that guitar is gone.

Micah P. Hinson: I would assume that would be kind of a strange thing. But for some reason I really I really embraced it and it was pretty rad, but it definitely was. It definitely was a was a massive it was a massive setback. But an interesting thing about. I guess I can bring this in. Interesting thing about my career is that the press or the public or even the labels I’ve been on, they’ve always had some fucking fascination with romanticizing my my hardships because every one of my records has something. Whether it was the first one was like I was with some some some terrible black widow woman and I was homeless and all the drug addict fundamental households that my parents held snakes, you know, and that was the thing that was like the first record, then the second record that was made with my back accident. And then and then there was like the arm problem. And I guess there was one record I released like right as I was getting married and that, and it was like, oh, it looked like Mike is doing a little bit better. But even like Met that was like, oh, we’ll see how long that lasts. And so I met it with even something positive. At the time it was positive. It seemed positive. It still was met with a bit of this. You know, the whole bullshit, like tortured artist situation, you know?

Top Left Corner: Yeah, they. They really. Well, the tortured artist. I mean, that’s you getting a lot of mileage out of that story, you know, just scare you. Do you know I’m still here, right?

Micah P. Hinson: I’m talking to you, man.

Top Left Corner: Right. Yeah. I bring it up. I bring it up because I know that those incidents often lead to transformation. That’s what I’m interested in. And I’m less interested in the in the guts and the and the pain and the the thing I’m always interested to see what what comes out of it. You know, what what’s the what’s the growth potential? You know, for me, I it’s this is not an interview about me, so I’m not going to go into it.

Top Left Corner: I’ll just basically, I, I had not ever tested the limits of my own strength. I thought I had. And I don’t mean physical strength, I mean character. I had never really fully tested. I had hitchhiked around the country, motorcycle around the country. I mean, I had done all sorts of things, but I had never really tested the limits of my own strength until I peeled off the fiberglass tape casts with my teeth and went and found a job washing dishes with arms that had been in casts for seven and a half months. And you can imagine how thin they were. I had to wear long sleeved shirts in July in California to hide the fact that I had no muscle. I had I had skin and bones.

Micah P. Hinson: Bet it was freaky.

Top Left Corner: It was. Yeah, well, yeah, because the rest of my body looked fairly normal. Except, you know, it looked like a t. Yeah, man, I looked like it. Yeah.

Micah P. Hinson: With these kind of tiny arms.

Top Left Corner: And that’s. And that’s how I had to carry the dishes. I mean, I had to carry my dishes that way like a t rex because I had to. I had to use both arms to carry even the, like, three plates. I would, I would wash three plates and then put those away. It was I had to hide that for a month while I started building up strength from my, my boss from the other employees. Yeah, it was. And that was, that was the thing that when I think about those days, I think what was it? What was the meaning? What was the significance of that accident? It wasn’t really the pain. It wasn’t the the discomfort. It wasn’t the learning how to, as I said, do all of those things that you’re used to just take for granted. It was the, you know, who did who was I when I resurfaced? Who was I? And and I like that your story has a very similar growth element to it. You know, you found out a who was I? And I love to hear that. Let’s let’s talk a little bit because I you know, I know that you and I, if we were to sit down over a cup of coffee together, we could probably spend a long time comparing notes. And I’d love to do that one day.

Micah P. Hinson: Indeed, man.

Top Left Corner: What what I want to do is I want to talk a little bit about this show on Friday. Yeah. And I also, by the way, I just picked up I just picked up from Bandcamp. She’s building up castles in her heart. Oh, nice. So if if that’s still a tune that you’d want my listeners to hear, I have it now.

Micah P. Hinson: Okay, let’s do that. Yeah, that’s great, man. So that’s a really I don’t think even the people that maybe like religiously listen to me that’s that’s certainly like off the beaten path. But for me, that’s that’s like a pinnacle of I feel it’s like a pinnacle of sonic sound that I that I reached. I fucking love that song. Absolutely.

Top Left Corner: So let’s talk a little bit about. When I shoot at you with arrows, I will shoot to destroy you. Just tell us a little bit about where that comes from. Tell us a little bit about what you were shooting, what you were shooting for.

Micah P. Hinson: Yeah, well, that’s a. Why do all my why does all my. I feel like I have so many so much too long of answers. So when I was. So I did a record called The Holy Strangers, which was a very it was I called it like a folk opera. It was like 33 songs long and it was like 2 hours. It was it was absolutely insane. The record label said no and they would release like half of it, and they were very picky as to what was happening. And so to work and I was going through a bit of a we all have life. I was struggling with life at that time. I just had my first son and everything just seemed a bit cocky and weird, cockeyed and weird. And so I kind of felt like I was really kind of losing my way on that album. And so then when you get to the next record, which is the one you asked about the musicians of the apocalypse, I felt even, even further away from that it was it was coming to the point that. And even my wife at the time, she was actually even encouraging this, which is very fucking disheartening. But there was a time right then, especially that record, that it was like, I think it’s time to fucking hang up, hang up, everything. Like, I’ve done enough. Maybe I’m kind of dried out. Like, I finished, I’ll finish these records and maybe we’ll be we’ll be finished, which is of course, like a pretty dark fucking place. Looking back, it’s a very dark place.

Micah P. Hinson: And I think when I actually just recently listened to that record and it hit me in a completely different way, to me, it sounds like a human being. Again, not to be dramatic, but it sounds like a human being. Like I’m the fucking on the very edge. But I was speaking. I felt like maybe it was like to protect myself, but it was like I felt like I was speaking about somebody else. And I was speaking about, like, somebody else’s story and kind of like these made up made up concepts as opposed to, like, really realizing like, oh, you’re talking about killing yourself and maybe you’re talking about yourself and feel that it was, it was like a prophetic record, like, for myself and maybe it’s not the right word, but it was a fascinating record for me to look back on now and to be able to use that as like a, like a concrete, like historic evidence of, of where I was, where I am now, and like where where I want to be. I feel like in this time in my life, it’s I’ve been, I dude, I’ve been learning and growing and changing and attempting to learn things more than any other time in my life. And so for that to be my last record and to have that again, that that evidence has been a really, really helpful. Again with that record. I just. There’s some secrets about that record. But, you know, with that album, I really. I approached it differently in the sense that I just wanted everything to be very simple.

Micah P. Hinson: I didn’t have the strings. It was it was very. I guess I was trying to make it as cinematic and cinematic as some of my other works that I’d done right. But I think in that, in the way that I that I did it with the musicians that I did it with, I think maybe in some way it was even it even maybe even drew, whatever I was trying to escape, maybe it even drew more of that out. I just I didn’t I thought by excluding certain tools that maybe the writing would be different or something. But yeah, so that’s I have so much to say about that album. But yeah, so that’s the last one I did. And at the time I thought it was like, yeah, again, I thought it was kind of like a death nail. I thought it was going to be We’re going to be done. But I guess I can talk about this to something that I learned and maybe a person or a songwriter or even like a writer or even a fucking human. Maybe this will be interesting to them, is that it hit me maybe about a year and a half or two years ago that I was only writing from past me. I was only writing about like the feelings of old experiences and the feelings of like the stuff that I had that I had gone through. And it really hit me like a ton of bricks, like, hey, I need the one. I need to stop doing it because not only am I writing songs that way, but that’s evident that I’m thinking of my life in those ways.

Micah P. Hinson: And so whatever rules, whatever guidelines I have for my existence, I’m going I’m going off of 16 year old myself or I’m going out, who knows? I’m going back even as far as five year old myself. And so it just I just realized, like, hey, from now on, if I’m going to write songs, I’m only going to write about what I feel or what I want to feel. And I’m and that’s going to be the cutoff point. And for some reason they’re man, holy shit, I don’t know what happened, but my playing and writing songs, I mean, right now, of course, we had the plague and I refused to release anything during the plague. But I mean, I would consider based on my prior output and I’m probably sitting on like six records. And to go from feeling like I’m done writing to then now, like I don’t even know what to do with everything that it’s such a it’s such a bizarre it’s such a bizarre place to be. But it’s highly encouraging because I think what that is, it’s showing me that, yeah, that I was right, that writing from the past and sticking to that old self and it was not. It was not helping me at all. And so I think I learned that it’s less about what you go through and more about what you do with what you’ve gone through. That kind of makes sense.

Top Left Corner: I think that seems to be a theme in your life. To be honest, I mean, starting all the way back in Abilene. That seems to be, you know.

Micah P. Hinson: There you go.

Top Left Corner: What’s on the other side? What’s on the other side of the gate? The doorway? What’s on the other side of the wall? What’s on the other side of the. You know, of the. The fog of. Yeah, man. Fentanyl. What’s on the other side that you know. And I think I think the thing that’s, you know, that’s challenging for a lot of people, especially when when you have a persona and then you have the person. Sometimes it’s and this is just me kind of spitballing here, but sometimes it feels like there are forces in life that really want to restrain us from growth because it’s more convenient for us to be who we were, not for us, it’s more convenient for them. And, and, and sometimes for us. Sometimes it’s, you know, there’s fear keeping us from moving forward. Sometimes there’s habit, sometimes there’s laziness. But but there’s a lot of forces that seem to want to take away our permission to to expand and to to change. And that’s tough, because if you spend too much time, you’re basically a fossil and fossils, you know, they they just set.

Micah P. Hinson: Yes. I mean. Yes. I mean, you put that really I mean, we started we were talking about the front almost Christian type of thing for a bit. And that’s and that’s a really good point because not involving that, it’s the idea of even when you feel like it’s time to move on or you want to see somewhere else, there’s all these voices going back and saying again in this example like, it’s sin or it’s this or it’s this. It’s like things that are attached to that. It’s supposed to be attached to the morals of who you are as a person. And so not only do you have to decide, I want to be different, but you have to decide I’m going to be different. And all these fucking ghosts in my head, I have to I have to like actively ignore and not even ignore. You have to like actively correct those things. And yes. And it would be so much easier to wake up on so many days and be like, Oh, I can be whatever anybody says, you know, and that is the easier road to tow for them. Yeah. As you say. But those are those are those are those are strong things, man. Those are strong, strong things. But yeah. What a what an existence. What an existence.

Top Left Corner: Not easy. It’s not easy. And the you know, the older the older I get, the more I have to sort of remind myself intentionally, because, you know, there’s there’s this bullshit that, you know, that you’re supposed to be this thing. And now that you’ve arrived at this place in your life, that people should be able to expect something out of you. And that’s the thing you’re going to be. Well, I’m not I’m not I’m not done yet. And it doesn’t sound like you’re done yet either. So, you know, if if you’ll all pardon me, I’m going to keep growing if that’s an inconvenience for you. I’m sorry, but you are coming to West Stockbridge. Have you been to the area before?

Micah P. Hinson: I have. The closest I’ve been was I played a show with David Gray in Boston. I guess that’s the closest I’ve been here. But yeah, it’s a it’s an amazing place. I’ve actually been able to stay here for the past. I guess I’ve been there for the past six days or something, just wandering around the woods and just trying to find things. It’s, it’s it’s it’s a very strange difference between being from, of course, being in Texas and the and the definition of what a small town is. And more than that, it’s like, what is this small town look like? Yeah. And if you think of a small town in Texas and I guess it has a lot to do with geography, of course, but these are like windblown, just pretty fucked places that probably should have been deserted a long time ago. But you come to this place, I mean, I’m standing on the back porch and I’m looking at the houses and it’s like, what? What is going on? Yeah, it’s a fascinating place, man. And the people are really, really nice, man, you know?

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it’s the Berkshires are unique. They have, you know, like everywhere else. They’ve got their issues. We’ve got our issues here. But you really, you know, you couldn’t ask for a better combination of nothing going on arts. There’s a lot of arts going on and then there’s and then there’s New York and Boston just, you know, a couple, two and a half, 3 hours away. So, you know, you can you can be out of the city and you can be in the city and, you know, no time at all. And now people are talking about actually expanding the train access. So if you don’t like to drive, you can just jump on the train and be in the city in 2 hours, which would be great.

Micah P. Hinson: Hell, yeah.

Top Left Corner: So. So, yeah. You’re going to be at the foundry West Stockbridge. I know that Amy is hoping to to churn out a big crowd, and I hope so. I mean, if they don’t if people don’t come just to see the guy that has so much interesting stuff to say, I’d be shocked and amazed cause this do you have obviously I’m going to put the links to your website in the show notes. Any thoughts on this particular show? Why now? Why here?

Micah P. Hinson: Yeah, I. I guess so. Josh, the promoter, he got a hold of me before a bit before the play. And at that time I’d also gotten approached by the Newport folk people. And so before everything went weird for us, everybody started dropping like flies. I was trying to develop a tour, trying to develop something to be able to come up here. Because the last thing I did was like the Twilight Saga, the Scottish band, and this was, Oh my goodness, I think it was even before my child, I don’t know, it was years and years and years. And so to do this like it just made. I talked to Josh, of course. Then as I felt like things were becoming hopefully as safe as they could, that this would be a really fascinating thing to do. And I have had a bit of a rough, but I haven’t had like the best relationship with the US. It’s probably my fault because I money before 2008, money used to be magic. Like I would go to Europe and I would play shows and I’d come back and I’d give it to the bank and it would double. And it was like, Oh, wow. And so with that magic money machine, I guess, called the world economy, it it made it to where I didn’t have I didn’t have to focus that much on the US. And so I really just like I would do some things here and there I would go, okay. But I just kind of decided, I guess intentionally or not, I was done with it.

Micah P. Hinson: But I think coming I think the thing that I’m going to find important, I guess we’re going to test it out in a couple of days is. Maybe what I do and maybe what I want to do, and maybe the fact that I do have something that provides me with my needs over in Europe, that I can do something different over here. And so maybe it would be something as opposed to going to New York and Boston and Los Angeles and, you know, Denver and maybe as opposed to doing that, maybe like finding places, maybe an idea to like find places. If I’m turning, if I’m turned into essentially like a minstrel, just like a traveling song and dance man. Well, then why do I need if I don’t have to, why do I need to go to the Capitals? So maybe it’s an idea. So maybe doing something smaller, maybe you have of course you’re going to have a different attention span or you’re going to have a different way of of these people looking, whether they’re close to a city or not, a different way of how they conduct themselves and how they see society. And and it was just something about traveling for a goddamn day and then getting to LA and just playing for a crowd that’s just like whatever, talking the whole time. And it’s not that they’re not listening, it’s just like they’re fucking talking. And so the way the way that culture is, it’s just like, Oh, okay, this is background music, and I’m not gonna hold it against him, but that’s not really what I want to be.

Micah P. Hinson: I want to talk to people and people talk to me and and like, try to do something. I’m not here to entertain people. I’ve been saying that for years and I’m not. Yeah, I’m just yeah, I’m not with what I do. I’m just not here to entertain people. And I think that’s very, very important. And I think hopefully people come in a few days, of course, or whether they’ve they’ve heard me, that’s going to be rad because of course I rarely up here. But if people that don’t, hopefully we’ll be able to find something. And I assume that the majority of people that are going to come are probably not people that have heard of it. I’m just going to assume that. But but I think it’ll be interesting to see like what kind of what kind of magic can unfold. And I saw the venue and I like how it’s all kind of like downward facing. And so there’s no stage. Right, right. I really dig that. So it’ll be it’ll be it’ll be really nice even with that, even the US or the non US thing. I mean I’ve barely been playing again because of the plague. And so just to get out in front of some people and then try to share some stuff is going to be is going to be amazing.

Top Left Corner: Well, yeah, it’s it’s a great it’s a great venue. There are some folks in that town who are trying to, you know, the like there’s folks everywhere who would rather they’re not be actual Oh, I don’t want to get into this. That’s the whole thing. But yeah, yeah.

Micah P. Hinson: I hear.

Top Left Corner: You, you know, but it’s there’s always a get-off-my-lawn crowd, you know. And of course. Yes. And that’s that’s the pin in the ass about it. But I think that if people were to come to your show, for example, I think that they would see the value of these little venues. And they’re all across the country.

Micah P. Hinson: Across the World.

Top Left Corner: I mean, I’ve traveled across the country, and there’s little venues like this. And for the musician, I think the value part of the value is, yes, the intimacy with the crowd, but also the reconnecting with what’s actually happening in the country, you know, with places that are real, places that do not exist solely to perpetuate the sort of music money machine as LA is. You know, no one is here in doing doing what we’re doing in the Berkshires because it’s going to make us billionaires. It’s just not going to that’s not what we’re here for, but we’re here to be here to create real stuff. And I think that that’s that’s one of the reasons why I think people are going to love your show, because you just, you know, you reek of authenticity and.

Top Left Corner: You reek of this is a guy who’s singing about shit that he completely lived. This is not stuff that he heard about. This is not these are not feelings that he borrowed from somebody else. This isn’t some pickup truck that he imagines owning. You know, it’s it’s not to put a jab at New Country or anything like that, but, you know.

Micah P. Hinson: A bro country is the best man. Yeah, right. But no, I appreciate you. I appreciate you saying that, man. That’s very, very kind of you. Oh, good. That’s that’s how I hopefully want to come across to people, like, as authentically as possible. But, you know, we’re talking about LA Times. I’m talking about music in general and the and the concept of something authentically coming at you, authentically coming at you. It seems to be a bit of a rarity, you know? Yeah.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. I mean, even if you start out that way, it sounds to me, I mean, like I was in bands when I was young, it’s been a long, long time, but I can imagine just from the friends of mine who did make it to various levels, how? Quickly. You can be dazzled by bright lights and and parties and this this this sort of this all of a sudden, this celebrity mindset that pulls you farther and farther away from further and further away from the stuff that you were trying to sing about to begin with. So. Yes, exactly. I’m glad that you you you held your ground. I’m glad that you you when you were at that crossroads, you you made the choice that you did, because I think the the audience benefits from it. So we’re going to have the info up on the site. And that is this Friday night. Do you recall what the time is?

Micah P. Hinson: Oh, I think the shows are like 7:30, 8:00, something like that.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, let me see here. West Stockbridge Foundry. Yeah, that’s the other thing about the Berkshires is everything closes up early. Yeah, everything is like it starts at seven. It’s over nine. Everybody’s in bed, tucked, nice and tucked away. Yeah. 7:30 p.m., Friday, July 15th. Micah P. Hinson. Gosh, it’s been such a pleasure talking with you and great man.

Micah P. Hinson: Definitely.

Top Left Corner: And I will play these tunes, as I said, and so the people can get a thing. And it’s great that we can play these tunes because I wanted to talk about what an awesome voice you have, but really it’s perfectly paired with with your your, your songs. But I don’t have to talk about that and I don’t have to lavish any more praise on you because I can just play the song and people will get it. So we’re going to do that and until Friday, enjoy the Berkshires. I hope you get out and do some fun things and we will see you on Friday.

Micah P. Hinson: Hey, thank you so much for your time, man. I really appreciate it, man. Great conversation.

Top Left Corner: Thanks, Micah. Take care.

Micah P. Hinson: Hey. Bye, buddy.