Plowing through the dust
The Mother Hips prove they’re a rock band for all ages
By Brett Leigh Dicks 10/08/2009
For a band whose success came by virtue of a rigorous touring schedule that, at its peak, played more than 300 shows a year, the explosion in digital promotional opportunities has opened a series of curious new doors for the Mother Hips. There might have been a flurry of excitement over the Beatles’ recent foray into the digital realm, but the Mother Hips have been a Rock Band staple for years. And with YouTube bringing its distinctive take on California rock to the world at large, it has left the band more than a little bemused.
“I don’t play video games, so I’m not intimate with that whole world and what it exactly means,” confessed the Mother Hips’ guitarist and vocalist Greg Loiacono. “But I do know that a lot of people have come to like the band because of that!
Someone sent me a YouTube video of a couple of 12- and 14-year-old brothers in Ireland sitting on the edge of their bed playing “Time We Had,” one of our songs on Rock Band. Here were these two kids doing a cover. They figured out the song from the game, and there they were playing it. That’s a pretty cool way to reach people.”
Having formed in 1990 when Tim Bluhm and Greg Loiacono met at California State University, Chico, the Mother Hips released its debut album, Back to the Grotto. Having been courted by several major labels, despite still being students, they signed with Rick Ruben’s American Recordings, which re-released the recording. Two subsequent albums followed on American: Part-Timer Goes Full and Shootout. But it wasn’t the music charts that broadened the band’s following; it was its fierce dedication to performing live.
After leaving American Recordings, the Mother Hips released two independent albums, Later Days and Green Hills of Earth, and, in so doing, became almost permanent fixtures in California’s live scene. Its emphasis on touring eventually took a toll, and in 2003 the band took an indefinite hiatus. But the break lasted only a year and a half before the Mother Hips was out on the road again. The pull of its considerable fan base that established the band as one of California’s leading live acts ensured that the demand remained. And not only did the band return refreshed, it came back with a new approach.
“Because we were touring so much, a lot of the time the songs would be written on the road, and we would learn them during sound check and then start playing them live,” Loiacono recalled. “We would really develop them during the live performances. Since the hiatus, Tim and I have been bringing songs into the studio and learning and practicing them without them ever seeing the road. And that’s been a whole other experience.”
Having added to their already impressive album armory in 2007 with Kiss the Crystal Lake, on Oct. 27, the Mother Hips release its seventh studio album, Pacific Dust. Recorded in Bluhm’s San Francisco recording studio, the experience not only followed the creative path that gave rise to Kiss the Crystal Lake and its preceding EP, Red Tandy, but expanded upon it. Without the potential burden of a monumental recording bill, time actually became the band’s ally. And from its admittedly humble beginning, in Pacific Dust, the Mother Hips has not only delivered one of its most considered and creative undertakings so far, but one that harkens back to how it all started.
“The impetus for Pacific Dust was, let’s make another record,’” offered Loiacono. The great thing about the recording process for us now is that Tim has his own studio in San Francisco. It’s great financially and it’s great artistically. Tim and I had ideas for songs, some of them more put-together than others, so we set up a couple of mics and basically recorded our jamming and experimenting.”
The Mother Hips, Friday, Oct. 16, at the Lodge, 11 S. Ash St., Ventura. Visit www.zoeyscafe.com for more information.
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