Hot Water Music to light up Aquarium

On Thursday, Oct. 15, Hot Water Music hits the Aquarium stage with Dragged Out to Sea and Baltic to Boardwalk. Hot Water Music formed in Gainesville Florida during the early 90s. HPR chats with bassist Jason Black about recording their latest album (set to be released early next year), the evolution of show promotion, the Gainesville Florida scene and the importance of college towns to the underground.

High Plains Reader: I see that you’re currently on tour with The Menzingers. How’s that going? 

Jason Black: Good. We’re six shows in so far into a pretty extensive two leg tour, so it’s kind of like a three-week leg now, and then we go home for a few weeks, and then another three-week leg. It’s a ton of shows overall, but it’s been going really well so far. Just kind of getting into the groove a little bit here.

HPR: How many days out of the year do you spend on the road?

JB: It’s been ticking up a little bit compared to how much we’ve been out for, you know, maybe the prior 10 years or so. And it all just kind of just depends on what opportunities pop up and everyone’s availability, because everyone’s got other bands and other stuff to do. 

HPR: You guys just wrapped up recording a new album. How did the process go?

JB: It went really well. It’s always a little bit of a struggle doing a record. I shouldn’t say struggle … but challenge, maybe?

As with anything creative involving multiple personalities, it’s pretty easy for things to get funky pretty quick. It’s maybe a little cliche to say, but the kind of struggle or whatever that usually happens making a record is pretty — I don’t know…. I feel like it’s pretty important. 

I kind of tend to think that if making a record’s super easy, you probably didn’t make a very good one, right? Or you’re a genius. Like, one or the other, right? 

HPR: I suppose if it was easy to make a record, we’d all be making records, right?

JB: Right, exactly. I mean, hey, now with AI, everyone can do it, right? But yeah, it’s not easy, even if you’ve done it a bunch of times like we have. It’s still tricky. It’s a lot of it’s a lot of moving parts, especially in a band like ours, where it’s a pretty democratic process. So there’s not, like, one person in charge or anything like that.

HPR: You mentioned that you guys all had other projects that you work on. What else are you working on?

JB: I don’t have a bunch of other stuff that I do, musically. I do all of the admin management stuff for the band, which takes up some time. Then the other guys have a lot of other touring and music stuff that they do.

HPR: So have you always done the admin stuff, — or rather, show promotion? 

JB: Yeah, any of that — pretty much all of it — for a long time.

HPR: I imagine that’s changed quite a bit since you guys have been at it.

JB: It has. It’s definitely evolved over the years a lot in many different ways — and some of which are cool and some of which are terrible. I shouldn’t say any of them are terrible, but some of them are cool and some of them are very taxing. It’s taxing to always be “on.”

HPR: Right! I can only imagine … 

JB: There’s a lot that’s changed in the 30 years that we’ve been doing this. Obviously, in the first whatever, however many years we did this, we had no cell phones. But as far as the other stuff goes, I think a lot more of the process falls onto the bands now than it used to. 

Labels — and promoters, for that matter — used to take care of a lot more of the legwork as far as marketing and promoting, and that’s kind of all … we won’t say it’s all left to us, but much more of it is left to us now. So the longer you do it, the easier it is for the music part to become the last thing you think about.

HPR: I imagine there were a lot of handbills and lots of hanging up posters when you first started? 

JB: Absolutely. That was it! That was all there was, you know? Which was cool. I feel like there’s been a bit of a turn back to that. People are getting kind of over being chronically online to some extent.

This also is complaining about having a really cool job too, but like, in eons past, if you showed up in a town and the show didn’t go well, you’d be like, “Promoter, why didn’t you promote the show well?” 

And now they’re like, “Band, why didn’t you promote the show well?” And you’re like, “I did the playing part and I’m here …” 

At the same time, it’s kind of cool to have a direct line to fans — more so than in the past. So there’s benefits and there’s positives and negatives to all of it, and it’s really easy to kind of complain about things changing or whatever. But I don’t think that it is helpful, and it’s not gonna go away anytime soon. In our case, we sort of figure out what works for us. And if it doesn’t work for us, then that’s okay.

HPR: I always like to refer to social media as like a double-edged sword.

JB: It really is. It totally is. Like it’s amazing. It’s also awful. That’s how I feel about using it. That’s how I feel about reading it. I look at it every day. That’s how I get a lot of information, you know? But it’s also how I get a lot of bad information … well…not bad, but, like, you know …

HPR:  Well …(laughs) there is bad information… 

JB: Yeah (laughs). If it went away, I say I wouldn’t care right now. And I hope I actually feel like that might be true. But it’s definitely a necessary evil. It’s not going anywhere, so it’s just kind of figuring out what my, like, cutoff point is with it. 

HPR: What’s the scene like in Gainesville these days?

JB: It’s interesting because I don’t want to say we’ve aged out of it, but we aged out of what it was when we were coming up. It’s still pretty thriving. I would think the biggest difference in Gainesville and a lot of places similar to that is it is a college town, which meant something different a while back, I feel like. 

You know, there were college radio stations. And underground music would sort of go hand in hand with college towns back then. And now — it’s not that it doesn’t, but it’s not so much of a guaranteed situation anymore, I guess.

HPR: Right, it’s more of an identity.

JB: Exactly.

IF YOU GO:

Hot Water Music with Dragged Out to Sea and Baltic to Boardwalk 

Thursday, October 15, doors at 6:30 p.m., show starts at 7 p.m.

Aquarium above Dempsey’s, 226 N Broadway, Fargo