Wednesday, June 20, 2007

New Interview: Tommy Hernandez

By Erin Rice

This Friday, June 22nd marks an important day for Tommy Hernandez as he releases his debut album, Mimespeak, at the Double Wide. While any record release is a key event in a musician’s life, this night will be even more special for Tommy, who professes that the record is “summary of the way I have thought about myself for the last 21 years.” Those who get the opportunity to buy the album, can no doubt hear the journey played out over Mimespeak’s 14 songs.

Interview with Tommy Hernandez

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As the son of a piano teacher, Hernandez started learning to play before he could even walk; as he confessed, he as even been “writing songs since I was three or four.” The classically trained pianist notes that up until entering college, he lived his life largely by the book, following rules, doing as he was told. But this all changed in college: “I guess everyone goes through that whole ‘go crazy’ kind of thing. That compounded with new friends, compounded with drugs and confusion about life; everything caused me to just completely reject every kind of rule that I’d been given.”

After leaving school and quitting one of his two jobs at the time, Hernandez more or less fell into his previous project, the B-Minor Harmonics, which he started with co-workers “as a joke.” Getting started with some friends, and friends of friends, he lastly added a new drummer to the mix… a former heavy metal drummer (heavy metal and classical piano?). But accordingly, this fit in with Hernandez’s rejection of conventional approaches to music and life in general. “I needed craziness; I needed a totally different energy than the just calm, collected, calculated musicianship that I’m used to.”

Once B-Minor began to dissolve, Hernandez started focusing more on his solo musicianship, and when he was approached by a company to put an album together, it was just a matter of picking from the repertoire of songs he had been working on for several years. “I must have written like, I don’t know, sixty songs during the time that I was in the band, but not for the band (me: ‘wait, 60? Wow.’) Yeah, all the time just writin’ new songs, not all of them good, but, you know.” But after he recorded the album for the record company, he wasn’t happy with the end product and scrapped it, picking several new songs and recording it himself.

That self-recorded effort is what is now Mimespeak. And while “mimespeak” not only sounds like a cool title, it actually has some meaning and historical reference for Hernandez: “I used to be a mime when I was in theater; I was in plays throughout my later childhood. I look at myself back then as a mime, without a voice, unable to spout off his opinion, and the record is sort of like a journey… from somebody who doesn’t say anything on his mind to somebody who just blabs out everything he wants to.”

After listening to the album several times, it’s clear we’re lucky he’s recorded this “journey.” Mimespeak, although heavily piano focused, pulls from a variety of influences creating a work that is at times playful, toying with different genres and time periods, while at other times exploring dark feelings about life and dysfunction.

There is certainly more on the horizon for this talented, young artist, but in the meantime, get thee to the (one “e”) Doublewide on Friday and give Tommy Hernandez a listen for yourself. Hell, you could not only catch a great show, but drink spiked Tang and YooHoo while you’re there. Just say yes.

Click on the audio interview above to hear Tommy Hernandez talk more in depth about how he started writing and playing music, his influences, putting together Mimespeak, the CD release, and more.

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