Hedgeking. An interview with Eric Harris from Gypsyhawk

We always talk about rock and roll here and how we feel it’s time for a revival. Well, continuing that tradition, I want to share Gypsyhawk with you. You may or may not have heard the band, but I’m here to to tell you that if you haven’t, you should listen dammit! Full of the classic rock spirit, delivered in a modern way, Gypsyphawk throws away all the bells and whistles and concentrates on what it should…kicking your ass with the music. This band features the technical skill of metal players, creating pure rock and roll. Can you honestly ask for anything else?

Listen to the entire Eric Harris interview below:
[ca_audio url_mp3=”http://www.unsungmelody.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Eric-Harris-from-Gypsyhawk-interview.mp3″ url_ogg=”” skin=”regular” align=”none”]

Today I’m welcoming Eric Harris to the Unsung Melody family. Eric is the bassist, but also the voice of the band Gypsyhawk. First off, thanks for taking the time to join us today.

No problem dude.

I wanna discuss a few things with ya today and then I’ll get out of your way. Let’s start by discussing your newest album, Revelry & Resilience. It’s a straight up rock and roll album, which is what we love here at the site. The first song I want to discuss is Hedgeking. The track makes me want to put on a Thin Lizzy t-shirt, steal a Trans Am, throw away the T-Tops and blast this record at 120 MPH. Was that the intent?

Yeah Dude. Obviously it worked. That’s killer. We just want to have fun and all that stuff. Just everything we were writing. We just made sure it was fun for everyone else. Seems like we nailed it.

Overloaded is another track that has seen some success for you guys.

Now it means it was the first song on the last album. (laughter) I don’t know. We don’t really hold like meanings like a lot of songs. Other artists can be poets about that shit. They can be like, this is a very important song in a certain point of my life or whatever. It’s just a rad song that we all put together and wrote.

You guys self produced this album. Is that a trend that continues for Gypsyhawk?

I think we’re actually getting pushed towards getting a producer. We’re still undecided of how that’s going to happen or who that’s going to happen with. We’ve always self-produced our own stuff. We’ve never really worked with a producer. Each of us, individually, even in past bands that we’ve been in, I don’t think we’ve ever worked with a producer. So we’re all kind of like, that’s new territory for us.

What are the future recording plans? Do you have new material written?

Yeah. We actually do. We have about three or four songs that are brand new. That are written. Actually five and one of them we are taking out on tour with us right now. A song called The Answers We Need. It’s about my experience from Dungeons & Dragons. (laughter) But it’s a really fun song. it gets a good reaction every night. We’re stoked to be able to bring something out with that and also playing all of the songs off the last album.

I’m interested in the fact that most of you guys have been in metal bands over time, but now it’s straight up, no frills, balls out rock and roll for Gypsyhawk. What was the appeal or the push to form this band?

For me, playing metal, I saw the whole kind of metal resurgence come back. I was like okay. Cool. I’m not really into that anymore. It’s just like over-saturated. With cartoons like Metalocalypse, with Richard Simmons wearing like corpse paint and everybody. it just seems like metal is just a novelty thing these days. So, I wanted to take it back to the stuff that influenced metal bands and I would have been listening to. Bands like Deep Purple. We just wanted to bring it back to the music. Instead of being like an elitist sub-genre thing, let’s bring it to the masses and let everybody have fun with it.

You’ve had some pretty crappy luck with vans of late. How’s that going at the moment?

It’s going better. It was just this one tire that refused to hold air. After like four days of going back and forth, we finally got it fixed. We’re good with the van right now.

If anyone wants to help out, you guys currently have an open Indie GoGo campaign going. (Click here if you’d like to help) Is that something you have used before?

This is the first time we’ve done that. We had to do a kickstarter back in the day. Like last year or something to make it out to SxSW. That’s the only other time that we have done something like this. This Indie Gogo campaign is really, really important to us. Because we’re just renting the van for this one tour. We plan on buying a new van band for next tour, so if this Indie Gogo campaign goes real well, then it’s going to be pretty promising for us to make a smooth transition into continued touring.

Well obviously you need that van to tour, which you are currently doing. Tell us about the current tour you are on.

We’re out with Scorpion Child and Kadaver. Nuclear Blast Records and our friends in Mothership. Then new guys, Wilson that we have yet to meet. Scorpion Child, us and Mothership, we’re all friends who played in Texarkana, AR. We all were hooked up there by way of a friend of ours named Joshua Foster, who is a promoter down there. A really cool dude. He kind of booked all of these bands from Dallas to Austin. We had met Scorpion Child down there, so we had known those guys before any of us got signed. We’ve been playing tours around now and this tour is especially cool for us, because it’s a bunch of our really close friends.

Sounds like a fun time right there. You guys earned your battle scars together. Really cool.

Totally man. It’s just going to be fun to do this tour now.

I’m really stoked to ask this question. I respect your particular brand of rock and roll. So, I’m curious if there are any bands out there that you recommend that I check into. Sort of an under the radar question.

Oh yeah. For sure man. There’s a band from San Francisco called Glitter Wizard. They’re really good friends of ours. I don’t know that they are doing anything. Other than like self-producing, putting out their own albums, but if you ever get a chance to see them, if they ever come around. They’re called Glitter Wizard and they are phenomenal. They’re one of my favorite current band.

Alright, as if that wasn’t random enough, I like to end on a random question. Let’s take the band name Gypsyhawk and create a fictional superhero. What powers does the Gypsyhawk possess?

That’s funny. I would probably just say that it’s got the same powers as like Hawkwoman. With the added ability to produce drugs in party scenarios in a blink of her eye. (laughter) I don’t know. I didn’t really put too much thought into that one.

We’ll say produce drugs and melt faces.