In the Spotlight with The Hikikomori Pact

In today’s  “In the Spotlight ” I have the Huge pleasure to give you The Hikikomori Pact!

Thank you so much for joining us today.

 

How did your journey into music start?

I always loved music, as far back as I can remember, and the 80’s and 90’s were a great couple of era’s for radio so that’s where the intrigue started.

Then when I was in elementary school I had a friend I used to hang out with a lot and he had an older brother that was a real shredder of a guitarist. He also had a wall of cassette tapes that spanned almost the entire height and width of his wall and it had every hair metal band you could possibly imagine and have never heard of and just all sorts of stuff. To me it was the ultimate tape collection.

That and my generally introspective nature and the impact of young life. It always felt like a natural place to exist.

 

Have you always played the same instrument or have/do you play others, and which is your main?

I’ve always played the same instruments more or less. I spent some time with a recorder and the fact that I don’t spray my spittle through that anymore is really a blessing to everyone.

Growing up relatively isolated compared to most people(middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere) I just sorta gravitated toward whatever I felt like I needed to make noise on to record some tracks, I didn’t really have a lot of people to really jam with earlier on so I sorta half assed a lot of instruments just to make something happen so I could get more complete ideas out. Guitar is the instrument that I can most directly think with.

 

What part in creating a new song is your favorite?

The internal concept that no one else gets to experience, everything I do after that is a step toward the destruction of perfection.

 

If you have to choose, only sing, only write or only play an instrument? (Oh I am feeling mean today!)

Probably the writing part. That’s really the core. Others have even commented a bit how my songs seem like they should be movie soundtracks. As I’m developing an idea a lot goes into visualizing out a cinematic set of events then I just describe what I’m seeing or experiencing. Sometimes it’s a replay of my life, sometimes it’s something completely hypothetical, sometimes it’s an amalgamation of a bunch of different social interactions and reactions to those interactions packed into too small a package. So from that point to the point of having the words out on paper and the process of swapping out words to make or break a flow or change the meaning, maybe embed extra meaning because of the connotation of the word I chose.

That whole process, it’s the most pure and has the least amount of frustration. Once we start bringing in instruments and moving on into other areas, that’s when the real headache begins. So if I was reduced to only writing, I’d still be perfectly happy.

 

You are both a solo artist and in bands, which do you feel most comfortable with and what are you working on at the moment? 

Solo is definitely the most comfortable on the front end but probably more scary on the back end.  There’s nothing like really just getting in the zone and doing whatever pops in my head, but at the same time once that hits the listeners ears, good or bad, it all falls entirely on me.

 

At the moment I’m working on entirely too much.  I have an album I’m working on for myself and another I’m working on with a few other people.  There’s a handful of collabs moving a snails and conversations of others with some intent and occasional effort to make it happen.    That’s entirely from trying to revive my business and not just barely scrape back what we had before the pandemic, but to take it to a new level.   I expect things to level out in the next couple of months and I’ve even had a few decent ideas recently manifest from the void so maybe that means some of the extra life baggage has had it’s time and I don’t need to dedicate as much mental resource to that and can get back to fun things like trying to figure out how to make peoples eye’s twitch when they listen to my music.

 

You also have a creative day job, can you tell us more about that?

I run an upholstery business and am an upholsterer. I wouldn’t exactly call it creative on it’s own. I’m much more on the do the work/run a business side of things. So maybe more of a trade/craft where I occasionally slip off a piece and staple pretty fabrics to myself. I’m just the guy that puts the fabric on straight.

The vision for the future does involve a lot more in the creative realm. It’s all based around upholstery in that there are many things that have wood, metal and fabric and we’re starting from upholstery and working outward from there.

 

How do you feel your day job and music influence each other?

When this comes up I sorta feel like I’m just retelling Jack White’s(The white stripes) story. There’s plenty of lessons in both, but when it comes down to it, the one big lesson we share and probably the most difficult lesson to learn as a perfectionist, was absolutely the whole “do it, get it done, let it go, move on, and try to do better next time.” approach. If I tweaked every piece of furniture to the extent I want to I would still be working on the very first piece of furniture I ever upholstered.

That’s very much the situation I found myself in with music for about a decade. I had a good run with an all original local band. I had to go through a pretty big growth period of figuring out how to work in areas I was very weak in so I could continue forward without the baggage of having to coordinate with a bunch of other people who have their own agenda’s and moods. I tried to form other bands but we just never got past practicing and writing before members moved on to other interests or realized they really didn’t want to put that much energy into the process. I totally understand, everyone has different priorities and I’m the kind of person that lives at band practice, or at least I have been in the past when the other members were very much the same way.

It overlaps because there’s very much a figure out a solution move forward finish the project, make it as good as possible then move on to the next. So getting accustomed to working more in tight timelines and just not having the luxury to go full ocd for an eternity really translated over to songs.

 

What is the one thing you would like to tell your Fans?

I don’t really know, I guess this is one of those moments where I’m supposed to be profound…hmmm…

“Don’t just hear, listen”

I guess that’s a good one. There’s plenty to be at odds about these days but miscommunication doesn’t have to be one of them.

 

What is the one thing you want the Music industry to know?

I don’t really have anything to say to them. It’s a machine that chews people up and spits out cash. They already know and they even have lobbyists pushing legislators to keep things the way they are or tip them more in their favor.

The best I could come up with would probably be 14 pages of expletives.

 

Thank you so much, and I can’t wait to hear what you bring us next!

 

And YOU can find The Hikikomori Pact here!

https://twitter.com/HikikomoriPact

https://www.facebook.com/TheHikikomoriPact

https://www.instagram.com/thehikikomoripact/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5PK3ioKflmAveQXKIlK171?si=EA94978uTjC9mExwsZBc1A&nd=1

https://soundcloud.com/thehikikomoripact

https://www.thehikikomoripact.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_XwXKuWMbI4At829_3BLTw