Q&A: Spencer Hoffman’s Heart Blossoms on His Debut EP, ‘A Flower From Behind’
“MEMORY IS THE DIARY THAT WE ALL CARRY ABOUT WITH US” — is something once said by Irish poet Oscar Wilde. Inspired by American folk tradition, 19th century poetry, and country singers such as Guy Clark and Roger Miller, Spencer Hoffman lets us inside his space of vulnerability with his self-produced EP, A Flower From Behind. A collection of songs that are deeply cherished in Hoffman’s heart, he shares his journey through the EP: from moving up and down the Pacific coast before settling in Los Angeles to the cherished memories of his grandparents that are so dear to his heart.
His single “Lie” is one of the first songs written by Hoffman, in which he embraces his country roots. "It brings me back to the trailer park and motel where I spent a lot of time growing up,” Hoffman shares. “My grandpa would drive me around in his red Toyota pickup on his way to repair something at the pool hall or the country store, and sing Roger Miller and Willie Nelson tunes while drumming his fingers on his leather steering wheel cover. It’s the first song I wrote that embraced my country roots like that, and [it] came out of a set of circumstances that were making me weary of certain people I had left behind in my hometown."
Hoffman has been a part of the band Honyock since he was 16, which was formed with his brother Mason and his high school friends Tyler Wolter (bassist) and Christian “Sunshine” Meinke (drummer). With Honyock’s sound leaning into rock ‘n’ roll, Hoffman’s sound for his solo project takes a softer, more contemplative sound. “I’m able to be more relaxed and let some of the vulnerable, emotional sides of my songwriting process kind of come through the recordings,” Hoffman says of working on the EP.
Read below to learn how Hoffman’s debut EP, A Flower From Behind,blossomed into a beautiful collection of heart-filled songs.P, A Flower From Behind, blossomed into a beautiful collection of heart-filled songs.
LUNA: Congrats on your debut EP, A Flower From Behind. Can you go into the story behind it?
HOFFMAN: The EP is a collection of songs that were written and recorded over the course of the past three or four years; moving up and down the west coast to Portland, Sacramento, and now Los Angeles. [The EP] kind of represents, to me, those areas. Especially Sacramento, where I'm from; kind of looking at Sacramento and rural Sacramento where I was born — in Jackson, Calif. They're kind of a lens of someone who's left home, but it's a collection of that past and [the] years moving up and down. It was assembled after I finished recording my first record under my own name.
LUNA: How would you describe your sound in comparison to your band, Honyock?
HOFFMAN: I think it's a little bit softer; a little bit more contemplative. Honyock has the ability to get kind of raucous. We lean into rock ‘n’ roll quite a bit. And I think by myself, when I'm recording it at home, it's a lot easier to just sort of be more relaxed and let some of the vulnerable, emotional sides of my songwriting process come through the recordings. It's just a little easier to sort of get it together versus when I’m with a band; a lot of the music will be written together, and you're kind of fighting over everyone else’s amplifiers to hear yourself, [as well as] a full drum set and whatnot. But when I'm recording by myself, usually everything's recorded one thing at a time. So you can be a bit more chill. I mean, I still love being in a band, especially with those dudes. Everyone is really easy to collaborate with, luckily, and it’s a different sort of energetic space to be with other people and build on each other's energy a lot — which produces for me a more intense sort of rock ‘n’ roll sound than when I'm just by myself, chilling at my house.
LUNA: Who inspires you, both musically and in life?
HOFFMAN: It's always like a rotating cast of musical obsessions and authors that I'm reading and stuff. Right now, musically, it's Nick Lowe. I've been really obsessed with this record of his called The Convincer — he made this later in his life. When he made it he was about 50, but he was leaning into his age a little bit, and it's just really graceful; the performances are really good. He's a great producer, so it's very inspiring to me to listen to other great self-producers. In life — on this record — the first song of the EP, “Baby Blue,” starts out with this kind of [innocent] vibe. It starts with me being born in June and the first kind person that really inspired me was my grandfather when I was a kid. So the song is about him and my grandma. It just starts off with a lot of unbridled love, affection, and vulnerability. I think it's good to be open-hearted in this world, so I’m constantly thinking of my grandfather, especially with this project because it’s under my own name. It’s so personal, and, you know, I’m forced to think about myself a lot more than is comfortable (laughs).
LUNA: Do you feel that there's a sense of vulnerability behind the EP?
HOFFMAN: Yeah. It so happened that this collection of songs is very barefaced in the lyrical content anyway. It’s just the very specific situations that I have dealt with over the past three or four years. Some of the early earliest songs I wrote on it like “Honeybee” and “Lie” were too personal at the time that I wrote them, and I did most of the recording [without] even think[ing] of putting them out. So I've been holding onto them for quite a long time because they were so personal to me that they felt more like a diary than anything else (laughs). So it feels very interesting to finally put those tunes out there in the open and be removed enough from those situations that it doesn't feel as loaded to express them. In general, I kind of open up very easily to people, so it isn't that embarrassing for me to wear my heart out on my sleeve or anything. But I think [that] often in other material that I've written, I kind of like a bit of poetic license or distance from the situation. But for whatever reason, on a lot of these records, I'm trying to be as specific as possible.
LUNA: Do you feel like you were able to explore both sonically and lyrically?
HOFFMAN: I feel like every time I record a new song … it feels like I’m starting from scratch. I tend to try to chase this kind of feeling that a song has, acoustically, and there's an imagined textural element to me that I'm trying to chase down through the recording process. Sometimes that's successful and sometimes you just kind of have to be okay with it not ending up as you first imagined. You might find a new thing that's kind of novel or interesting enough to run with instead. I think, on this EP, one of the things that I'm most proud of is how, during the mixing process, I was trying to make [the songs] sound cohesive when they're taken from a wide range of times and spaces. A lot of that was mixing them down on my tape machine to give them a certain warmth and cohesion that I can appreciate in the EP. Lyrically — like I was saying earlier — the vulnerability was principally an accidental experiment. But I think it was successful in that; I feel like what I said is what I needed to say with the material in the confines of each song without walking over the songwriting process too much with my emotions. I think they're pretty well-contained in there.
LUNA: Which song(s) on the EP do you feel you have a close connection with?
HOFFMAN: The two most potent songs emotionally for me are “Baby Blue” and “Honeybee” — especially “Baby Blue.” I wrote it after having what I thought was going to be the last conversation, and it turned out to be the last conversation that I had with my grandmother before she passed away. Her mind was starting to slip, she was starting to slow down, and my family sort of gathered together to have a meal. It was sort of that headspace of thinking about life and time together and stuff. I kind of waited until every other family member had gotten in their car and left. Then I just sat down and had a one-on-one conversation with my grandma about my grandpa, who already passed away when I was about 10. She was immediately with these piercing green eyes — so cogent and coherent. Her memory — when I was recalling the love of her life — was so sharp and so vivid that it was just this very inspiring conversation to me. After that, I went to a friend's cabin by the sea in Elk, California and wrote that tune very quickly. It’s still kind of a token of my grandparents to me and what they mean to me. So every time I sing it, it's very felt.
LUNA: Wow, that was beautiful; thank you for sharing that. You know, my past two features carried a huge sense of transparency behind them, and it seems to be a pattern in my writing (laughs). I feel like we don't have enough of that these days, and it's great to see more artists be so vulnerable in their music. I feel like it makes the audience feel seen/heard and like they are able to build that sense of connection.
HOFFMAN: It definitely feels nowadays that there's not a lot of time to remain superficial, you know? Just in terms of my sense of how I want to express myself with my art — especially under my own name. It doesn't feel like a responsibility to be vulnerable, but I feel very … drawn to subvert, and not [play into] the superficial in music a lot of the time, you know? It just seems like a waste of time to be interfacing with some of the lowest common denominators of a possible audience in order to have more listeners or something. I guess with a vigor message or something, it just feels so much better to actually connect with people on a specific feeling that is deeply felt. I do see that a lot more [artists] lately are able to be very upfront and vulnerable with their art, and it seems like it's appreciated, which is really beautiful to see.
LUNA: I know you are inspired by 19th century romantic poetry (Percy Shelley, William Blake, Keats). How do you tie all of your influences into your storytelling/songwriting?
HOFFMAN: To me, there's a similarity between people of musicians from the American folk tradition and old-school country music from around the ’60s [or] ’70s and previous that's very similarly rooted in this idea of nature and company — the company you keep and your specific surroundings. I find it's really similar to a lot of romantic poetry that is very embodied. For example, Percy Shelly's poetry is very embodied poetry, and it has a lot to do with a reverence for nature; his nature happened to be England or Italy. For instance, Guy Clark, in [his song] “Dublin Blues,” is singing about being in Dublin and wishing he was in Austin, TX drinking margaritas (laughs).
I think I tend to gravitate towards a sense of groundedness. I think that if I'm influenced by one thing, it’s an idea that is abstract. Those abstractions need to be rooted in something personal, you know? Like some sort of personal introspection is the thing that I look for the most in poetry from all times. Country music and music from today is what sort of livens my spirit; when I find something of myself in someone else's introspection, I guess. I hope that answers your question. It might be a tangent, but yeah (laughs).
For instance, when I see someone like David Byrne or David Bowie, they have these very specific versions of expressing themselves. I think a knee-jerk reaction is “Oh I want to make music that sounds like that!” right? Because it sounds fucking cool, and I want to be cool (laughs). But what’s more the bigger inspiration to me is to lean into what makes me myself, and you can be inspired by the way that someone approaches art without stealing their conclusion that they sort of arrived at through the way they approach art. So I think my biggest inspiration is that what I try to take and glean from other people more than anything is their approach.
LUNA: Anything we can expect from you in 2022?
HOFFMAN: I think there should be a record coming out this year — fingers crossed. It's all ready to go, and I'm really excited about it. It was the one that's kind of responsible for me finding a sense of purpose and releasing music under my own name. So I’m very happy and [will] hopefully put that out this year. In terms of beyond that, I'm just looking to play as many shows as the world will allow. I would hopefully like to do a west coast tour and [tour in] Europe and make more music.
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