The music industry can hit like a head rush, but it’s only a matter of time before reality kicks in.
“There’s just a constant sobering up of how real this shit is getting,” said Nathan Stocker, vocalist and lead guitarist for Hippo Campus. “How do I achieve a balanced lifestyle when I’m so drawn to extremes and pushing limits, particularly when I’m working?”
With more than a decade of his life invested into Hippo Campus–a Minneapolis-based indie rock band–Stocker is well accustomed to the highs and lows of being an artist. But having turned out of his twenties, he’s begun to look for stability.
“It’s this constant swinging pendulum that I’m trying to reach, this sweet spot of not feeling like an addict and also staying committed to my craft. It gets really difficult to distinguish when I’m just looking for another hit of dopamine,
or whatever it is I get from a career in music.”
Hippo Campus formed in 2013 by Stocker and his friends at their performing arts high school in St. Paul, and though they were young, the band’s commercial ascent came quickly.
“Playing South by Southwest and having an early Conan performance before our debut record were just these weird things that not a lot of bands get to do that early, off the bat, especially when you’re not even old enough to drink. It was an interesting and rare opportunity for us.”
At the brink of their success, the members of Hippo Campus were beginning to pursue separate paths–from applying to college to finding jobs. But when a local lighting director showed their music to a manager who found them a tour opportunity, Stocker recalls a unified, go-for-broke feeling within the band.
“I think it’s this blind, ignorant confidence we had that gave us the energy and recklessness that it takes to be bold and put yourself out there, play as many shows as you possibly can, and really try to shoot for the 10,000 hours.”
Add on more tours with iconic indie acts like Modest Mouse and My Morning Jacket, as well as major festival appearances at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, Stocker sometimes felt like the band plateaued early.
“Ten years in now, looking back at that, it’s kind of like, ‘Yeah, now what? What is it that we are trying to achieve next, both on a daily and on a grand scale?’ It gets a little cloudier, especially when you have personal lives and all these things to attend to.”
Part of this journey for Stocker and the rest of Hippo Campus has been to collectively reconcile their relationship with alcohol and touring. “It’s been hard. It’s hard. I’m almost three years dry, and I think the honeymoon phase of it is definitely over.
“There’s a daily showing up that has to occur. Otherwise you’re going to go looking for the next. It’s going to break down real easy. It’s a classic case of, first the ecstasy, then the laundry.”
For Stocker, pieces of peace have been found between the stage, studio and stillness.
“I’m not as unhinged as I make myself out to be in my head,” Stocker said. “But three years into not drinking, I thought that the sort of ecstasy of this newfound clarity would be a little more sustained.”
Sobriety, along with growing older, can expose ugly–or simply ignored–truths about life in the music industry. Stocker recalls experiencing a loneliness more than usual on a recent tour, after the band had to cancel a show due to a snowstorm.
“I lost the plot entirely. I was just numbed out, and I wasn’t associating with myself, or the reason for being on the road at all. It’s that feeling of ‘I’m just observing this, I’m not actually a part of it,’ that is so hard to reckon with. It’s such a slippery slope.”
Whether ironic, beautiful or both, it was the band that brought Stocker to his lowest, and the band that lifted him out of it.
“It was in those feelings where I have to allow myself to be seen, and allow myself to be vulnerable. The guys were able to be there for me in that moment, and that’s where it’s like, ‘Wow. I’m really happy to be in a band.’”
Now on the heels of Hippo Campus’ most recent record, Flood, Stocker is entering yet another new phase as an artist. The band went to Sonic Ranch–a recording studio in El Paso, Texas–with more than 100 songs to assemble the album. The result is a thoughtful, mature, and calculated record that still hits all the quintessential Hippo Campus sounds that fans have grown to love.
“Our general mindset was that the songs have to be there first and production can, and will, follow,” Stocker said. “But somewhere along the line, we realized that we had made the same record five different times, plus like three other albums worth of material.”
Stocker and the band had to make tough decisions about which songs to shelf at the studio in order to finish the record.
“It was, at that point, too many songs,” Stocker said.
After all the highs and lows Hippo Campus has been through–from songwriting to sobriety–Stocker realized there was only one thing left to do:
“We just had to let go.”
Hippo Campus
GLC Live at 20 Monroe
11 Ottawa Ave., Grand Rapids
May 29, 7 p.m.
glcliveat20monroe.com
