Interview Hutch Harris // The Thermals. Creative Life, New Records and The End Of The Thermals!

For those who may not know, do you mind catching us up on what happened to The Thermals?

It’s been three or four years, I think. The last record we did was in 2016 and then we toured, but not as much as we usually did for the other records. We toured most of that year, I think. And then a year or so later, I was like, “I think that’s good enough for me.” I wanted to leave.. it. I wanted to stop doing it because I felt if I didn’t stop doing it, it was just going to be the same for the next 30 years, or until we stop doing it. And I thought about that, my life and my creative life. They were just going to be kind of a flat line for the rest of my life, If I didn’t stop doing the band and do something different.

So I just told the band that. They weren’t thrilled but they understood, I felt like it had a good run and I just kind of needed to do something else at the end.

How scary was it ending this project, that had been such a big part of your life?

It was fine. I knew what it was going to be like. I just knew I was kind of going to be in the weeds in a valley of some kind. We were so comfortable [with the Thermals], doing it for so long and it paid all the bills.

So I knew I was going to go to a place where I didn’t have that. I wasn’t going to be supported in that same way… doing music and by playing shows. I was so sick of touring. I didn’t want to get back in the van for another six or eight months a year. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted my life to be more artistic and more creative. The only way I saw to do that was to quit the band. So much of what the band, and what other bands do, is not creative and not artistic.

We sit in a van for 8 or 10 hours a day. Playing shows is great, but that’s only one hour out of 24 hours a day. The rest of the time, you’re not doing that much creative stuff.

I had gotten some writing and stuff done on the road, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for me. I don’t make as much money off it now, but I have a way more creative and productive artistic life.

Could you ever stop making music?

I love writing songs and recording songs and playing songs. And that’s why touring was like artistic death for me, because you’re not doing any of that. I like being home. I like being in my studio, writing and recording. I can spend every day, all day, if I want to, just working on songs. I don’t have to go anywhere. It’s not even that I can’t stop. I just don’t want to. I just really liked working on music. So that’s been great.

Yeah, how is it to leave that security behind for the unknown? How do you find that courage to jump out there and do this?

It’s hard, the band was way bigger than I ever thought it would be. And I was surprised that it was still doing so well, after 16 years or so. It just gets to a point where I don’t want to be doing it just for the money. And the thing is I still did like doing the band and it just felt like it was going to be the same, and it had been kind of the same for a while.

I knew it wasn’t going to be super fun to stop getting paid to play shows. When the pandemic came, I was like, “Well, I mean this is fine. We weren’t playing shows anyway.” I’m sure it would have sucked.

You know, for all the bands that have like six months of touring planned, and then cancel them, that sucked. But for me, I was like, “I’m kind of glad I didn’t have anything planned anyway.”

What is it like not being tethered to a band and getting to make the art you want to make?

I mean it was never with The Thermals, where I felt like I was doing anything for anyone else. When we were writing songs and recording, it was always to please ourselves first. And there was never anything we did where we did not like the result, but we knew other people were going to like it. A lot of times, it was the opposite. We knew that these records were not going to be super commercial, but we liked them a lot.

So I’m kind of just still working in that same way, which is I’m just going to do what I like. And if other people like it, that’s great!

How do you figure out how to make things for yourself first?

Since I started playing music in high school, I just kind of knew what I liked. A lot of it is knowing your limitations and knowing what you can do. Like, I don’t shred. [Laughs] it’s not that I dislike shredding, but I don’t aim to [be a shredder]. I never directed myself in that way.

I have always been concerned with songs over musicianship. I like a good drummer but I’m not usually blown away by someone’s musicianship. I’m usually blown away by songs. If I really like the vibe of the song or like the lyrics of a song…

I’m just trying to make songs that I think are great and I’m not trying to impress anyone or impress myself with how good I can play.

My playing has gotten to a certain point where I was able to write and record and track the songs that I like.

I’m not usually working on getting better as a musician. I’m just trying to work better on getting better as a writer.

Do you write songs or do you channel your songs?

I think, both. Sometimes I do feel like you’re kind of channeling stuff that’s in the ether or wherever. A lot of times, you just need to start with a very small bit. A melody will come to you, or just a line.

These days I’m trying to write songs where there’s a really strong chorus. So now when I start, I’m trying to find one line that will be the chorus. That will be the title of the song and describe and explain to you what this song is going to be exactly about, as opposed to something more vague. I feel like I have done that before. So with the new record, I was just trying to make very clear titles and choruses so people would know exactly what the songs are about.

Suck Up All The Oxygen is very, very dark. How do you make something that dark, while also making it so damned poppy?

It has to be poppy because if you just have those titles and lyrics without the songs being fun and poppy, it would be super depressing. But if you have kind of dark titles and dark lyrics but the music is super poppy and up…Then I think you can get away with it and it won’t be a bummer. I wasn’t trying to make a bummer record. I was trying to make a record that I thought was realistic but obviously there’s a lot of negative lyrics.

At the same time that’s not how I feel all the time. It’s about taking the darkest thoughts that you have and expressing them, but in a fun way. And that was what The Thermals were about, too. There’s a lot of dark material, but to me it’s not pretending. It’s not wallowing. It’s more about accepting that everything’s kind of fucked up, but not letting it bum you out.

It’s  Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday today (November 11th) and he was a wonderful absurdist writer….

I love him. I think I read most of his books. Galapagos was really huge for me. When writing The Body, The Blood, The Machine; that was a huge inspiration for me. The whole idea that people would get to a point where they would devolve. I really like that. But yeah, so many there’s so many books of his I have loved.

Do you consider yourself an absurdist writer?

No, I think I write pop music, even if it doesn’t exactly come out that way. It’s definitely not the pop music that we know. It’s not mainstream pop music.. I don’t know.

Really, I should consider myself more of a folk artist. I make folk music. Everything I do is written on acoustic guitar. It’s all just simple open chords. I write songs that I hope would be very American and very timeless.

When you have writer’s block… Do you have any tips or tricks that you use to break through that block to get the creative juices flowing?

I just stop. I don’t think there’s anything you can do. You can’t force your way through it. Sometimes I’ll go just like take a walk. I mean, I got the dog. So we’re walking like half the day anyway.

Staring at the problem, I don’t think it will help you solve it. You got to kind of step away. Most of these songs were already done before the pandemic. So it just happened to be a coincidence that I was recording all these songs while the pandemic was going on.

I started to think, It doesn’t matter if I spend all day in the studio working on recordings, or if I don’t do it at all… It just doesn’t matter either way. Some of the songs came out really fast and then sometimes I would work for a month on just one song, every day. It wasn’t making it any better. It’s just like some songs need more time. And sometimes I just had to step away from it and not work on it for months at a time.

I used to feel guilty, or I think a lot of people will beat themselves up, like, “Oh, I just need to be doing this every day and I’m just wasting time if I’m not doing it.” And yeah, it’s great to work on something all the time, but it also just doesn’t matter if you don’t do it.

Plus, everyone has different creative batteries…

Yeah, everyone needs to find out what works for them and that can take a long time to figure out and it can also change for you. It changes. I think you have to just constantly pay attention to what you’re doing. And then also step away from it when you need to.

What else helps you with your creativity?

I like getting up early. I like being on a schedule where you go to sleep early and wake up early. It just works for me creatively.

I used to drink coffee all day. And now, I just drink one cup in the morning because anything more, is just too much. I used to like to drink it till 7:00 at night. And then I would just lie there wondering why I couldn’t fall asleep at night.

You don’t always feel like getting to work on whatever you’re doing. Once you do it, once you crack it open and then start working on it… You can kind of start feeling good about it and get some momentum going. But also I think if you wake up and say, “I’m gonna get this done today!” If you start doing it and it’s just going poorly… I think it’s just fine to step away from it. Unless you’re on a deadline! It just depends. If there’s someone breathing down your neck and you need to do a thing to get paid, then you just have to do it.

For a year or two, I worked on some TV stuff for Amazon Studios. And that definitely changed the way I work. There were deadlines that would be like, “We need you! You have to redo the lyrics for this song and we need it now!” And it’s like the end of the day. I would be like.. “shit.” and I would just do it.

If you absolutely have to do something, you will do it and sometimes it’ll be good and sometimes it won’t. But that’s part of the creative process.

When you’re working for someone else in that way. Usually what they want is so unrealistic. “We need this to be the greatest song you’ve ever written! And you have to do it today in the next couple hours!” You know that’s impossible, but then you will just do it.

I wrote so much for those projects. At the end of it, I had all this music leftover and a lot of it was really good. A lot of it I used in The Thermals and in my own stuff. There was no choice. It wasn’t like I could say “Oh, I don’t feel like it today. I’m just gonna slack off.”

Being forced to create was really good and I try to apply that method sometimes. Just forcing yourself to do something…. It might be great or it might not, but those are your odds, anytime you make something. It might be great or not.

Do you have anything that may be set unused in a drawer for a long time, that when pulled out later, it clicks in place?

I have like a box of lyrics that I’ll go back to over and over, thinking that something will be usable. And it’s almost never… I don’t know if I ever have.

Music is different [than writing]. I have some tracks, and sometimes I’ll go back and be like, “Oh, that’s great!” I couldn’t find the right melody or the right lead for it. But I have so many lyrics that I feel like, “Wow, one day that’s got to work!” [Laughter] It just doesn’t work, but I still keep them. I don’t know why it’s different with music.

Music can change so much. Once you’re set with lyrics, that’s really the vibe of the song. But within the music, there are so many different ways… It’s endless how many different melodies and lyrics you could put into one piece of music.

So sometimes it just takes going back and then finding the right thing to put on top of it.

So nothing is necessarily garbage when it comes to writing?

Right, and you just have to save it… Just because. Stuff like that I would never throw away. You never know.

I’m a hoarder by nature, so I save everything. Do you have any treasures in your collection? Stuff that you kept on held onto over the years?

Mostly No. I’m looking around. Almost nothing. I’m a hoarder only for stuff I’ve made. Anything else is disposable to me. I try not to have too much around that I’m not using. Everything that I’m looking at around here and there’s an instrument, a speaker, recording machine or a pedal. Yeah, it’s only like tools.

It’s only stuff I would use in the future. I like books, records, but I try to be constantly getting rid of stuff because I feel like my head is clearer when there’s less stuff around me.

Before we wrap up, let’s talk a little more about your new solo album, SUCK UP ALL THE OXYGEN! What do you want people to know about this record?

It’s very short, which I think is good these days. I wanted to just make a nice lo-fi record that was about how much everything sucks, but with a fun look or a funny attitude to it. I think most of us can agree that a lot of shit is really fucked up right now. I don’t think it’s any reason to get depressed. I don’t think it’s any reason to get down. I mean, this is not an inspirational record. It’s not to tell people to change their lives or change the world. It’s more of a celebration of how terrible people are and how terrible the world is. [Laughter]

I don’t know if that sells it, but to me, that sounds pretty fun.

So I shouldn’t have been influenced by Here’s Your Future to quit my job?

[Laughter] No, I think that is great! Quitting a job is one of the best feelings in the world. It feels good to get a job when you need one. And then it feels great to get rid of it, too.

[Original question was over-caffeinated / nonsense, but this is what I was trying to get at:] All I really want to do is work a simple job and have more time for my creative pursuits. How do you connect with your creative pursuits? What makes them matter to you?

If something strikes me as a good idea… I don’t want to make a record that is just kind of a collection of songs. I like to have some idea of what the whole record would be about and something that would connect all the songs together.

Originally, I was just trying to think of these songs as theme songs. I was thinking of how so many songs just lie to you and most songs tell you everything is gonna be fine or All right. So I figured we need at least a couple songs and tell you it’s not going to be all right, and neither point of view is entirely true.

This was a point of view that I felt, we just hadn’t heard enough of. I’m done. I’ve had enough songs telling me that everything’s going to be fine… Even if it is.

You recorded this record by yourself. You played all the guitar, drums and bass, right? After working with others, how is it to do everything by yourself?

Oh, it’s great. I love it because you pay nothing. You don’t pay anyone and you get full control over everything.

But it is difficult. You’re always listening for two things. You’re trying to listen to what you’re doing, what you’re playing and then you’re also trying to listen to the recording. It just takes more time, is all. I have all the time in the world here. I have my 8-track that I do all the drums and guitars on. I have a remote that I drag over to the drum kit so that I can just sit at the drum kit and hit record when I want to.

It is nice when someone else is hitting the buttons for you, but then you gotta pay that person. And then also you’re giving up a little of the control. It’s not even the money. I would just rather have the control.

What is the collaborative process for working with yourself in that kind of way?

You just have to know what feels good, and when it’s fun. So many times, I’ll record a track and I’ll be like, “Well, that was great. I did that correctly.” I’ll listen back and “no, that’s just not fun.” It just doesn’t feel fun.

It’s just getting the vibe right. I’m recording these to a click track and then I’m just like, “Okay, so that was correct. Everything is on time. Is the tempo right? I didn’t miss anything, but is the vibe good?”

Singing usually comes last or sometimes the guitar leads will come after. So when I’m listening back, I’m just singing along to it. If it feels good to sing along to it, then I know it’s correct. I know It’s right. I know the vibes are right.

But if I’m trying to sing along and I’m like, “this doesn’t feel good. It’s not fun.” Then. I know I need to go back and re-track whatever I’m working on.

I like that you emphasize fun. Do you have fun recording this stuff by yourself?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So much fun. I wouldn’t do it if it was a slog. I mean, it’s hard enough, even when it’s fun. It’s still hard to get it right. But yeah, it’s to me, it’s super fun. Especially when all the basics are done and there’s only vocals or guitar solos left to do. It’s so fun to get to that point when you’re going over the hump of the basic instruments. Yeah, I think it’s super fun.

I like playing back a track and if it kind of makes me dance around the room then I know it’s right. And if I’m just kind of sitting there like squinting then I know.. I know. It’s not right yet.

Suck Up All The Oxygen is out now and you can pick it up direct from Hutch at: https://hutchharris.bandcamp.com/album/suck-up-all-the-oxygen