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SXSW preview: Mayer Hawthorne
Mayer Hawthorne has Smokey on the mind.
He puts up a good front at first, saying that a string of dates ahead of his appearance at South by Southwest — where he’ll perform on the same stage as Motown legend Smokey Robinson - are his main concern.
But it doesn’t take much pressing to get the new-school soul wunderkind to admit that, yeah, he’s more than a little on edge about his chance to share a bill and he hopes some face time with perhaps his biggest musical hero.
‘It’s pretty amazing … my knees will definitely be shaking. That’s my No. 1 idol of all time,’ Hawthorne said by phone recently before a concert in Baltimore. ‘I can’t think of another performer I look up to more, and to this day I still tear up when I hear ‘Tears of A Clown.”
Those aren’t light words considering that Hawthorne, 30, has worked and rubbed elbows with soul heavyweights such as members of the Holland/Dozier/Holland songwriting team, and he’ll share the SXSW showcase at Austin Music Hall with new-school soul stars like Raphael Saadiq, Sharon Jones and Austin’s Black Joe Lewis. It’s Smokey, though, who he seemingly could talk about endlessly.
‘It’s hard to even put into words how much admiration I have for the work he’s done, a lot of it because his songs are all a little strange in the way they’re put together,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I’d absolutely tell him that, too. I don’t have any sort of theory or practice as far as what to do when meeting heroes, but if there’s one dude who I want to pick his brain for an hour, it’d be him. There’s no question to me that he’s at the top.’
Whether Hawthorne ever gets within a country mile of Robinson’s success and credibility is anybody’s guess, but it wouldn’t be much more of a surprise than the direction his career has taken in the past two years.
Starting his career as a member of the Ann Arbor, Mich., rap outfit Athletic Mic League, he made a name for himself as a talented producer in the underground rap world.
Difficulty with clearing soul and R&B samples for songs led him to record his own vocal tracks, which where forgotten for years until Stones Throw Records head Peanut Butter Wolf heard them and urged Hawthorne to make an entire soul record.
The result was ‘A Strange Arrangement’ an album that balances neo soul ambition with pretty much timeless songwriting touches on singles like ‘Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out’ and ‘Maybe So, Maybe No.’
The material has been embraced across the musical world, with Hawthorne and the childhood friends in his band the County touring the country relentlessly.
‘It seems like everyday there’s something happening that’s bigger than the day before and I jump out of bed every morning because so much is happening,’ he said. ‘And I’m always writing new songs. Some of them are Mayer Hawthorne songs as most people think of me now, some are new wave, some are these dirty boogie funk songs and then there’s Brazilian style stuff, too.’
There’s also some throwback hip-hop material on the horizon with Stones Throw producer Knots. He admits so much variety might throw his newfound fans for a loop but doesn’t seem too worried about losing them.
‘I’m a studio rat and I just love being in there making every kind of music I can imagine. Lots of people will be scratching their heads when they see what I’ve got coming up up next, but that’s part of the idea. I can’t wait to see what they think of the (no wave/noise legend) James Chance cover I’m working on.’
Given Hawthorne’s respect for is hero Robinson’s use of nontraditional song structures, it seems he’s trying to one-up his idol in terms of avoiding obvious choices and eschewing lowest-common-denominator material.
He won’t cop to that directly, but does plan to twist listeners’ ears in some possibly challenging directions.
‘I want to get people prepared for something new. I’m not trying to flip the script and lose everyone, but I want to get them to a point where they’re ready for me to try anything under the sun.’
7 p.m. Friday at Austin Music Hall
1 a.m. Friday at Mohawk Patio
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