The Hideous North
A little Q&A with Eric North, the singer-songwriter, bassist, and sole member of The Hideous North. His latest release is Drugs Farm

Leicester Bangs: Tell us a little about yourself.
Eric: I'm 31 years old and live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.  

LB: How did you start out making music?
Eric: The Hideous North started about 10 years ago in a studio apartment I had in Waukesha (a few miles outside of Milwaukee). I had been writing lyrics for a number of years - was really always writing - and had a four-string bass guitar, and I thought I'd record some songs. The first thing I ever put out was a self-released CD-R of 20 songs I wrote and recorded over the span of about 2 years. There was really no instrumentation other than the bass and vocals, and they were pretty make-shift recordings. I had a home stereo CD player that had a karaoke function and an audio input in the back. I bought a cable from Radio Shack and would lay down the bass parts by patching the amp into the back of the stereo. When the bass was laid down, I'd plug in the microphone to the front and record the vocals. It sounded like shit - lots of tape hiss and stuff. At the time, though, I was thinking myself rather genius! Just being able to record and put out a CD made me think I was awesome. A lot of the stuff I wrote back then was my strongest work - lyrically, anyway - and some of the material on Drugs Farm is drawn from those old songs I originally wrote back then. I re-worked them a little, of course - cause I'm older and just slightly wiser now. Just slightly.

LB: Who did you grow up listening to and how do they influence what you’re doing now?
Eric: I fell in love with music at a very young age. The first band I ever liked a lot, and obsessed over really, was called Was (Not Was). I was 12 or 13 when they released What Up, Dog? and "Walk The Dinosaur" was a big radio hit. They're a really unique group, and I still get into them to this day. As I became a teenager, my tastes stayed rather avant-garde. I got really into Primus, Dead Can Dance and a group out of Michigan called His Name Is Alive. Seriously out there stuff, and nothing that was really popular in those days - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, etc. - could do it for me. They all just sounded so mundane, and these oddball groups were really turning me on a lot because the messages they were conveying and the way they presented their songs was just so different and cool. I never really liked the popular bands. Although, Primus was pretty big back then, so I guess that was the one group I liked that kept me from being a total outcast! In my twenties I got into Tom Waits severely, and he has really influenced my sound a lot. And of course, The Beautiful South, which is still my all time favorite group. It's surprising to me how no one sees the correlation between the name The Beautiful South and The Hideous North. So many people don't notice it. What I'm doing musically sounds nothing like what The Beautiful South did, but still, you'd think someone would ask: "hey, does your name have anything to do with The Beautiful South?", but no one ever has.  

LB: Tell us about your latest release.
Eric: Drugs Farm, as I mentioned before, is a lot of old material redone. I have better equipment now, am a better musician, have a better knowledge of song structure. I have the ability now to take all those old songs and re-do them, give them a new coat of paint, if you will. The songs as you hear them on Drugs Farm are how I always wanted and imagined them to sound back in the day, but wasn't able to pull it off. I'm doing them justice now so I can put them to rest and move on with some new stuff. Actually, if Drugs Farm does well, I plan to release one more album of redone songs from my past, and then start putting out the new material I've written more recently. The songs on Drugs Farm are new to the majority of the world anyway, cause The Hideous North is far from being a household name!

LB: Do you get out and play your music live, and if so, what can an audience expect at one of your shows?
Eric: I don't play live. I've always wanted to, but since I'm essentially a "one man band" playing live is somewhat of a complication. Also, I have a hell of time singing and playing at the same time, so if ever there did come a day when The Hideous North would have a live group of session musicians or something, I'd most likely just do the singing. Isn't that how Trent Reznor does it? Nine Inch Nails is really just him in the studio, but for shows he hires a band. That'd most likely be the route I'd take, too. As of now, no live gigs are planned. No one likes to play with me or wants to play my songs.

LB: What aspects of playing and recording music do you most enjoy?
Eric: Lyrics.  I'm an avid writer, and so when I've written something I think is really good, it gets me really excited about putting it to music and recording it.  I love subjecting people to my words!  

LB: Where can people find (and buy) your music?
Eric: Drugs Farm was not, and most likely will not, be released as a physical CD. MP3's are the wave of the future, and of the music I've sold in the past, an overwhelming majority of the sales were downloads. You can find Drugs Farm for sale at iTunes, Amazon.com and on CD Baby. Any legal music download vendor will eventually carry it, it's going to be pretty well distributed. I'm sure eventually the illegals will get ahold of it, too, but at this point I'm not worried about that. If you steal the new Hideous North album, you have my blessing, because you obviously really wanted it. I'm not making music for no one to hear it. Thieves like music, too! These days, it's the hardcore fans that are actually buying the music, and since there's a snowball's chance in hell I'll ever have a top 40 single, hardcore fans who are collectors and completists, with a real respect for maintaining an independent artist's livelihood, are the one's I'm counting on to actually buy my albums and put food on my table! Links below:

www.myspace.com/thehideousnorth
www.cdbaby.com/cd/hideousnorth8