Audioholic Media

It’s around 5 pm in L.A., and Ernie Halter‘s new album, Starting Over, has just debuted at position 36 on the iTunes rock charts. We’re wandering the streets of Los Angeles (one of us in heels. Hi.) looking for Ernie’s house, convinced he lives in some sort of Southern California vortex. We cannot find his place. We’ve found the correct cross streets. The GPS is telling us that we’re there. But none of the places we see match the address he’s text messaged me. We feel really stupid, and we are now running late, so we call him. As it turns out, he’s sent us the wrong address, and we’ve passed his front door at least fourteen times. If he weren’t so incredibly nice, I’d probably be annoyed. Instead, when he comes down to meet us, he apologizes. And then apologizes again. Then hugs me.

Ernie Halter comes across as a genuinely nice guy, and he’s an incredibly talented musician. In all actuality, I arranged this interview with him primarily because I’m a pseudo-groupie. I don’t have the time to devote to being an actual Ernie Halter superfan, but I’m pretty sure that my time constraints are the only things holding me back.

I’ve yet to meet even one person who doesn’t dig Ernie Halter’s music. Regardless of what brand of music you associate yourself with, his previous album, Congress Hotel, offered such a broad appeal that merely pressing play could give even the most hardcore emo kids something to be excited about.

Audioholic Media: I’ve read that you really got into playing music when you were 17, and if I had to guess I’d say that means you’ve been playing for about… eight years, but I’d imagine that’s not right. So how long have you been a musician?

Ernie Halter: I’m old! I’ve been a musician since I was eight and I’m 33 now. My parents made me take piano lessons when I was eight, but I’ve been messing around with music my whole life. I started singing when I was about 16 or 17, and started street performing about that time. I’d just go to the beach, and I would sit out there with my guitar– it was horrifying and terrifying, and I’d probably make, like, three or four dollars in a few hours. To me that was the four best dollars that I’d ever earned. I talked a friend into coming out with me, and she would hang out and sit with me, and I would buy us ice cream. It was pretty cheesy. I would play skeeball with the money [I'd earn], and I’d win a troll doll. I had a line of them by the end of the summer. It was my little trophy back then.

AM: I saw you play last year and you played “Blue Dress” at one of your shows, and I know that “Played” was cut from Congress Hotel. Both songs are on your new album, Starting Over, so how long has Starting Over been in the works?

EH: “Played” was written probably, like, two or three years ago. But, I would say– really planning for it– it’s been at least a year, probably. I released it with Rock Ridge Music. They also put out Congress Hotel but they only licensed it, they didn’t actually have a hand in making it; it was already done by the time Rock Ridge got involved. This is the first project that Rock Ridge has been involved with since the beginning. So once we started deciding, “Okay, we’re gonna make a record,” there’s a lot that goes into it legally. You have to have lawyers look at contracts, you have to make a plan for the record and decide what direction you wanna take it in and what you wanna say. I think that’s very important: deciding what you want the record to be and what you want it to be about. For me that was an easy choice because I’ve gone through a pretty hard year. I don’t know if you read my bio, but it was pretty tumultuous and I’m still going through a lot of it. It was clear what we wanted to hone in on and what we wanted to say musically. So, yeah. [The process took] about a year.

AM: You’ve been known to introduce some of your songs to the public during your live shows, as opposed to just releasing them on your records. Do you use any of the feedback you receive from that when you’re deciding what songs you put on a new record?

EH: Yeah, if I played a song out and people didn’t mention it, or didn’t like it, I wouldn’t record it. I’m not so self-serving that I’d be like, “Fuck them, I love this song!” But sometimes I’m proud of it, and I hope that everyone else would like it as much as I do. Some of the songs, people haven’t really gotten to hear unless they came to a show. It’s hard to gauge a reaction until you release something, then it comes out there. But I’m always listening to what people are saying about the music. If someone said, “I really don’t like that song,” or “I really love that song,” it influences things like putting it on the record. People like the song “Played”. I wasn’t really that crazy about it– it was kind of a cutesy, tongue-in-cheek, goofy sort of song. It wasn’t very serious in tone. The producers who helped me with Congress Hotel didn’t want to put it on the record because they felt like it wasn’t something a serious artist would put out– but I’m not really a serious artist in a lot of ways. I mean, I am, and I’m not. So anyways, we had that debate about “Played”, then so many people asked me about it, and asked me to play it that I put it on the record.

AM: How did you end up being signed to Rock Ridge Music?

EH: I was touring with Tony Lucca; he’s signed to Rock Ridge, he’s an independent artist. He’s one of my favorite artists, he’s amazing…. he’s retarded, stupid good. So Tony and I were doing a show in Philadelphia, and we did a benefit show earlier that day for a school for, like, I guess inner-city kids that had maybe had a rough life that had gotten accepted to the school based on their academic merits, not their financial merits. We went and did a show, then did, like a Q&A– like, a clinic– for them about the music industry. It was horrifying for us to see all these faces staring at you, but they were really cool and it ended up being a really great experience. The woman who was one of the headmasters of the school is the mother of Jason Spiewak, who is the head of Rock Ridge, so we just started talking. I wasn’t like, “Hey! Sign me, sign me, sign me, sign me!” I knew I would get signed. It wasn’t a matter of when, it was a matter of to whom, and would it be the right deal? I don’t always feel that confident about things, but I did at that time. That sort of worked in my favor because I was like, “Well, let’s talk about things and see if we’re a good match.” I wasn’t burning to sign a deal just to sign one. I knew if it was right, it would be right, and I knew it was right. They get me, and I still feel that way. I feel great about my decision to sign with them.

AM: It seems as if the more prominent music forums have been catering less to music, and leaning more toward things like reality tv, with the girls from The Hills being featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, for instance. At one point, being on the cover of Rolling Stone was considered the apex of a musician’s career. When you see things like that, does it alter the ultimate goal for you, personally, in any way?

EH: Would I be any less stoked to be on the cover of Rolling Stone? No. I would take it. [laughs] I’d be stoked to be on the cover of, like, Idaho Weekly. I still think that media is a means to an end in some ways– it isn’t everything. I wouldn’t wanna be on Rolling Stone and have a shitty record or have people hate me. It would have to be the result of people listening to the music and having it connect to their lives and having that response parlay into something really great like getting on the cover of Rolling Stone. That would be awesome.

AM: You do a lot of cover music, from the songs you have on Starting Over, to your covers on YouTube, to “And So It Goes” on Congress Hotel. Does that help more for promotion, or is it something you just enjoy doing?

EH: It’s both. I’m a fan of other peoples’ songs. I believe the best flattery is imitation. When I first started out and hadn’t really written a lot of songs– even now that I have written songs– I still look at a Beatles song and go, “Damn, I’m not Lennon and McCartney here,” and I love recording those songs. As a singer, I wanna give my voice a chance to sing a masterpiece of a song. I feel like I’m constantly growing, and I learn by playing other peoples’ music. In a marketing sense, it also gives people something to connect to. That’s why American Idol‘s so popular. They don’t let people perform their own songs on American Idol for a reason. They’re smart about it. They know that people won’t watch it. People like things that are familiar– which is a catch-22 because at one point, nothing’s familiar. That’s where radio and mass media come in– they pummel it down your throat to the point where you have no choice but being familiar with it. You can’t escape certain music, or certain things, and that’s how it becomes popular or well-known. If it’s good, hopefully it’ll stick around and be popular. But… I’m rambling so much I don’t even remember your question. [laughs] Cover songs, yeah. Basically, it helps. People can connect to a cover. They may not know me, they may not know my songs, but they may be like, “Oh, I like this one song he’s singing,” and that will be an introduction to me. Then they’re like, “Oh, I know Ernie Halter, he’s familiar to me,” and they might listen to a song that I wrote. So, yeah. It does help because I’ve had people come up to me all the time, “Hey, I found you on YouTube. You did a cover of Miley Cirus’s ‘See You Again’, and I thought it was a joke. I clicked on it, and it was actually good, and I really checked out your music, and I bought this,” blah blah blah. It does actually translate into fans for me. But I try to do it in a way that shows artistry. There are a lot of people that are online that will take a song and they’ll cover it, and they’re basically just copying it. I think that there’s no artistry in that. You could find a person on every block in America that can take a song and just play it. That’s not hard to do. What I try to do is I try to reveal some sort of creative artistry and do something different with it. I tried to do that with a hip-hop song like “Cyclone“.

AM: That got a big reaction.

EH: It did, actually. It was really cool, and I think the reason is is because I didn’t copy the song. I took something familiar in one area and I flipped it, you know? I did it in a different way. The juxtaposition is what people find interesting. The fact that I can play that song isn’t that big of a deal. The fact that it sounds a little bit different and it gives people something to tell someone else– “Hey, check out this Baby Bash song, but this dude did it on an acoustic guitar. It’s pretty cool, you should check it out.” Baby Bash himself had found it, and got in touch with me, a radio station in Phoenix has been spinning it, I just found out as of last week a Top 40 station in Denver played it on their morning show, so it’s been cool. And that won’t happen with my own music; not yet because nobody knows who I am– but people do know who Baby Bash is or they know that song, and people can find my music through that. But I never wanna just copy someone’s songs, that’s bullshit. I wanna do something cool and different.

AM: One thing I’ve noticed about the independent music community is how close-knit everyone seems to be. There’s a lot of interaction between you and a lot of other L.A. and Nashville artists, for instance.

EH: The songwriting community’s pretty close, I can definitely say that for L.A., and Nashville, and just in general. It’s a specific genre, the singer-songwriter thing. It makes sense for artists to collaborate in a touring sense because financially, it’s the best way to go. It just is. When you tour with somebody, you share expenses. If I was touring on my own, I’m paying the gas bills and the hotel bills by myself, and it would suck. I’m gonna have those bills whether I’m touring by myself or with another artist. I can choose to split it, or not. If I split it I just cut my costs in half. So it makes good financial sense to do that, and it makes great musical sense because Andy Davis’s fans, or Dave Barnes’s fans are going to come to my show and be like, “Hey, this guy’s cool.” And vice versa– I wanna make them fans as well. It all comes around. It’s not like acting– speaking of L.A. It’s not like where you’ve got that one part, and we’re all trying to kill each other to get that one part. We’re trying to promote music in general. We’re trying to promote people going out, and listening to, and enjoying live music. There’s no limit, there’s no quantity to it. You can see ten shows, you can see a hundred shows, you could see a thousand shows, you could spend your life savings on CDs, and some people do– and sometimes people don’t. But the more we can promote music as a whole, the more everyone benefits. So that’s what we’re trying to do– whether we’d all sit down and conspire about it…. [laughs] We want people to come out to shows, whether it’s ours or our friends’ because it all ends up coming back around, and people find each other through other people, and it’s awesome. It would suck if people were loyalists, like, “I like the Boston Red Sox, and I like Tony Lucca, and fuck everybody else!” Then it would be really hard. Then I’d be like, “Screw it, I’m touring by myself.” [laughs]

AM: Have you been writing for or with other people at all?

EH: Yeah, a little bit. I’m getting more into it, especially with the film and television thing. I’ve been working with some music coordinators and songwriters to get some stuff. I placed two songs with ABC this year, like a Samantha Who? placement, and I do some writing for commercials as well. So much of that is like a lotto ticket: you write it, and it gets submitted, and you have no idea if it’s gonna make it. But if it does, you know, you can make skrilla. If something like that gets picked up for a national ad, it’s awesome. So when I get the call, and if I’m not doing anything that day or if I can schedule something in that week, I jump at it because you really don’t ever know.

AM: As you touched on earlier, the bio on your MySpace page has some pretty personal stuff in it. Is it hard to define the line between when, as an artist, you’re sharing too little or too much?

EH: I mean, I don’t say everything. Obviously, there’s tons about my life– in a personal sense– that I keep to myself, but I feel it’s important to be honest as a writer, as a person, because I think music has an incredible power to inspire people, motivate people, commiserate with people. When you can listen to someone’s work and be like, “Oh my god. That’s musical proof that I’m not the only person that feels this way, or has been in this situation, or has made this mistake,” it’s cathartic. I feel most inspired and moved by the songs written by people that say shit that most people won’t say. I spent years of my life feeling like I couldn’t say what I wanted to say because I don’t want people to hear in my music what I wasn’t willing to say out loud. I didn’t want someone to go, “What’s this all about? Is this how you really feel?” I didn’t wanna get into that, so I didn’t feel I was being as honest as a writer, and I felt like I was missing an opportunity to reach somebody that was going through the same situation, or if nothing else, to just write music that was soulful and powerful. I was writing music that sounded good for music’s sake. And I still feel really proud about my records. I don’t wanna dis my prior work. I feel really great about where I’ve come from, but I feel great about where I’m going. This process of opening myself up has been– both in a musical sense, but also– you know, in my biography it says what I’ve been through in this past year. I went through a divorce, I have a young son which is awesome. He’s beautiful, he’s amazing. But I’m not gonna go post pictures of him on my MySpace or anything like that. There is a certain level of privacy. I do run the risk– more than most artists that don’t do stuff like this– that people will feel entitled to knowing everything about me. I do get that sometimes, and that’s hard. Especially because I like to please everyone, but I also have to draw a line respectfully, and not reveal everything. Sometimes I’ll tell people, “Yeah, I don’t really feel comfortable talking about that, or answering that question.”

AM: It’s hard to classify your music in terms of any specific genre. Does that play against you as a new artist?

EH: It definitely is a strike against me if you can’t describe the music that I play. It’s a question that I ask myself a lot. If asked, “What do you sound like?”, I would say something– kind of trying to be clever– maybe say something like, “Well if James Taylor got hammered one night and had an affair with Aretha Franklin and made a love child, that would be me, hopefully.” The genre that I fall into is singer-songwriter, and musically I love Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin, and Al Green as far as in a vocal sense, and as songwriter I respect Nashville writers, and the Beatles, so it’s really hard for me to describe what I do. I think a lot of what makes me different comes not just from my music, but from how I interact with people through music, like what I was saying about opening up and interacting with fans in a way that most artists don’t do. I have a nightly webcast that I do with my tours, I webcast shows, I webcast the entire recording process for my record, I include fans in ways that most people don’t. I believe that music is a conversation. That’s one thing that I feel differentiates me. But I’m always asking myself that question. “What makes me different than anyone else making a record?” And to be honest, really nothing. I’m just trying to be as open as I can with my songs. When it comes down to it, I just try to keep it really intimate, really soulful, and know what it is that I’m going for, musically. But I don’t know how to break that down into a genre. The closest thing I could say is rock/acoustic/singer-songwriter.

AM: You were on the Cayamo cruise earlier this year, and will be on The Rock Boat in 2009. How was your first experience with that as a whole?

EH: It was good. It felt like high school, where I was the freshman and I was wondering if I was gonna get stuffed in a trash can. It was great, and it was definitely a great experience, but at the same time I’m not Patty Griffin or Shawn Colvin, I’m gonna be doing, like, the 3-4 pm slot in the atrium by the elevator at the same time that the deck party with free alcohol is going on. I’m like, “Fuck, free alcohol? Had I known I wouldn’t even be here myself!” So the time slots were a little rough but someone has to play them, and I worked the shit out of it. Little things happened, like my merch didn’t make it on the boat, so it was tough. But it was all good. The experience was great, one step leads to another. It lead to The Rock Boat, and I met a lot of great people on Cayamo that I hope to see at future shows, and keep in touch with. It was a great experience.

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Starting Over is currently available on iTunes and will be released in stores on August 5th, 2008.
Visit Ernie Halter’s MySpace at myspace.com/erniehalter.