Interview: Harts back on centre-stage with ‘Harts Plays Hendrix’ & new music

Modern guitar wunderkind Harts has found a way to regenerate the spark and versatility of live guitar. For the first time ever, Harts is expanding his trademark one-song cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze into a complete Hendrix live set. Harts is celebrating the legacy and 50 year anniversary of Hendrix’s death, taking his ‘Harts Plays Hendrix’ tour nationwide. 

For Harts, his musical projects don’t stop at his tribute show, as he releases Twenty Somethin’, his first solo material in two years. Although caught in a frenzy of releases, “I’ve been out of the spotlight for a good two years now, so I’m hoping it’s a nice, exciting time and people get behind me”, Harts says. We caught up with Harts, and discussed how he’s been gearing up for the special, one-off tour. 

Firstly, how has preparation for ‘Harts Plays Hendrix’ been going? 
The preparation is going well. We’ve started rehearsals and just getting the setlist together and figuring out the best way to put that together. The nerves and anxiousness haven’t set in yet; maybe in a couple of weeks it all will. It is a new project for me, so I’m going to be pretty nervous come time for the first couple of shows. I think all in all, preparation has gone well enough and everything we have planned for it is exciting. Tickets are moving, and it’s all positive signs, which is keeping me encouraged and motivated. 

How are you balancing between picking classic Hendrix tracks, and tracks that interest and challenge you in terms of ability?
It’s hard to put it together because there’s always the fans’ perception of what they love about Hendrix, or what is essential Hendrix. Everyone has a different take on it. For this show, because it is the first introduction into Hendrix’s music, I think we want to play a lot of the hits people associate with Hendrix, like All Along the Watchtower, Purple Haze and Voodoo Child, and classic songs. But, I also want to throw in some of my personal favourites that I enjoy playing as well, and enjoy listening to and discovering from Hendrix.

The demographic for these shows is pretty broad. It’s a lot of Harts fans that are my age or younger that didn’t grow up with Hendrix, so they know of his music afterwards, and it’s also fans that are old enough to have seen Hendrix back in the day, and a few people have told me they have! It’s a broad range, so it’s catering toward the broadest range possible. I don’t want to throw in too many obscure tracks that are rarities, because I feel like that may alienate a lot of people that may only know Hendrix’s bigger songs. It’s a hard balancing act to try and get that right, but we have a few options floating around and we’re going to have to roll with it, and see how they go at the first shows, then adapt things as they go. 

That’s a big Hendrix mindset to have a bit of spontaneity and not be so rigid from show to show. 

Is that fluidity something you’re eager to imbue into your set of shows
Yeah, definitely. The whole show, the way we get from A to B in the middle of songs is all improvised. We’re basing our rendition off knowing the material, but all those improv sections [are included]. The way he used to do it live was that they loosely based it around his studio recordings, and those arrangements, but he used to adapt it live and take it in a completely different direction and be fluid with it. We’re definitely going for that, and we’re not trying to recreate a specific performance, or specific rendition he did, or copy it in that way. We’re going for the same ideas that he was going for by keeping it loose and keeping it spontaneous as well. That’s definitely part of the way we’re performing the show. 

Are the unrehearsed periods something you’ve found daunting? Is your Harts set tighter when transitioning from song to song? 
The Harts stuff is much tighter. Sometimes it gets a little too tight, in the sense that you feel like you’re on rails and unable to deviate too far away from the arrangement because sometimes the song falls apart when you do. The Harts stuff has a lot more going on in those songs than there is in the Hendrix material. There’s a difference in that.

I like what we’re doing with the Hendrix show because it’s so freeing, particularly as an instrumentalist and a musician, and even more as a drummer and bass player. It feels a lot more freeing and fluid and I just want to get that fearlessness that he had. I want the ‘ok, we don’t know how this is going to go’. That boldness and risk is what is going to make this exciting. It is different to the way I usually perform, but I think because I’ve been performing for a long time now, I’m confident with doing a [bit more of an] improv show like this. It’s very exciting to me. 

Harts’ Purple Haze cover on YouTube was performed solo, as he expanded beyond guitar solo to additionally provide piano and drum parts. 

Is that how you started putting together arrangements and rehearsing, or has it been with a band from the beginning of this endeavour? 
I’ve been rehearsing with a band from the beginning. It’s better that way, because you have to allow time to get used to each other and each other’s playing styles. With the drummer, I’ve never played with him before, so it’s a brand-new drummer that we’re getting used to, and he’s really good. I like to play with the musicians from the start and get used to it and learn the songs together in a way. I don’t really practice too much by myself, particularly with the Hendrix stuff because I’m feeding off the drums a lot, kind of like he was with Mitch Mitchell. It was drum and guitar going at it together, and they would follow each other.

For me, it was kind of like, ‘ok, I have to play off of somebody,’ and I can’t really rehearse that by myself. That’s another difference from the Harts shows. Harts shows I pretty much do all myself. I do all the arrangements and I program everything myself, so I know that inside-out. The Hendrix stuff, the drummer could do something else on the night, or do something that throws me off, but in a good way that inspires me, and that’s because it’s not pre-programmed or pre-set that we were going to do that, or go in that [direction]. It’s a lot looser and more improvised, and in rehearsals that creates so much space to have really awesome, and different moments each time you play songs. That means each time we play a show in a different state, it’s going to be different and I’m hoping that translates through the shows and people enjoy that aspect. 

With different renditions and experimentation, it also gives you choice over what sounds best with your style. 
Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. With the way Hendrix did it, it isn’t necessarily the same way I would do it. I could do it that way, but I just don’t feel like I would do it justice the way Hendrix did. It’s asking, ‘what can I bring to the table for people who have seen Hendrix tribute shows, that they wouldn’t have seen before?’ That’s definitely informing my decision making with the setlist, [that] Jimi Hendrix’s music is so iconic, and so legendary that every guitarist has done a cover of Hendrix. He’s the pinnacle of that, so it’s like, ‘how can I bring something to the table that isn’t what people have seen many times before?’ That’s another reason why I didn’t want to make it a traditional tribute show, and [not make it] an impersonation show where I pretend I’m him. It’s not that type of show, so I didn’t want to go down that type of road, because I wouldn’t be able to do it justice in that sense, but I could do it justice by playing in my style, and honouring his music, and bringing his music to a more modern setting, and a more modern production. That’s the whole premise.

We really wanted to do something to celebrate, because this year is also 50 years since he died… It’s perfect timing to do it this year, and it’s just planned as a one-off tour for Australia. It’s one of those things that I’m nervous about because I don’t want to stuff it up, because it is a one-off. Having said that, there’s a lot of shows to work with, so if the first show doesn’t go that great, we have to learn, like I was at the beginning with Harts. Just learn, and figure out ‘ok, this is working, and this isn’t working’. It’s like a stand-up comic almost, who goes to venues and [reads the crowd] and adjusts. This show will be one that’s a work in progress because of that. I just hope we nail it before the second show, because that’s the Melbourne show, and it’s one of the big ones. I have to nail that one regardless. 

With originality, I think people will get people very enthusiastic about the whole prospect, to the point where they don’t feel the need to harshly critique. 
Yeah! That’s a good thing, and I want people to be like that. There’s nothing worse than going to see a show like this, and having that critique mindset already, where you look for the negatives already. I hope people come to the show openminded about different aspects that I’m interested in, and [openminded about] where music is at today… There’s still going to be opportunities for things to be pretty traditional, sounding as if Hendrix was to play today, but that’s not everything in the set. That’s something that I’m hoping people bring an open mind and positive attitude along for. It’s supposed to be a fun thing, and not a hard, documented, really realistic interpretation. It’s a celebration of his catalogue, and to celebrate 50 years of Hendrix’s legacy… I don’t think anyone would go into it already trying to critique it. 

When did you decide to include the Purple Haze cover in your Harts set? 
That was completely random. When I first started, I didn’t have that many songs, so I played all the songs that I had. To [what] I was speaking about before about learning things as you go and as you play more shows, it didn’t click to me that encores were a thing. I played my set, [and was] headlining, I’d have to come back on and do something. I didn’t have encores planned in the early days, just because I didn’t think of it and I didn’t have enough music. I used to throw in a cover child of Voodoo Child or Purple Haze, or something the audience could get into. Before I did that, I used to just play whatever my most popular song at the time was again. I’d play it twice because I didn’t have anything. I started throwing in a Hendrix cover and that’s what led to this project.

People would come up to me after the show and say, ‘man, that was amazing’, and ‘it would be awesome if you played a whole show of that’. It didn’t really mean much, but when more people keep saying that every time, there’s a whole demand and audience for it. That’s where it started, through the encores. When people started seeing a lot of shows of me, they came to expect that there’d be a Hendrix cover in there. Sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn’t, and it was just luck of the draw… I would have loved to have done this earlier, because this is going back a few years that people requested this. When I met Austin Hendrix in New York and I spoke to him about the idea, that was in 2017. The problem was that I couldn’t really dedicate time to doing something like this because I had so many other priorities with what I was doing with Harts and that was always going to be my priority.

I just had to wait for a gap in the cycle of things, and it came last year. I wanted to do the tour last year, but the venues we looked at were overbooked, so we had to push it to 2020… It’s fitting and it’s almost like it was supposed to only be this year. I’m excited about it, but it might start clashing when I start rolling out Harts music. There’s a new Harts single this week, so the timing is going to be very busy! I wanted to do it in between album cycles, but it’s tying into one of them. It might be good, but it’s going to be a busy year. 

Can you talk about the Harts single, and when it was first conceived?
It’s been in the making for a while. It’s a weird one. The way I write music… when I’m not having an album out, I just write music and whatever comes out will come out. It doesn’t really fit a specific genre or style. I have a lot of ideas that are just choruses, or verses. Every time I want to work on my old stuff, I just pull out an idea that I would have started and conceived years ago. Because of the nature of my writing style, it doesn’t sound dated, or like it was supposed to come out two or three years ago. With this single, I wanted to come back after a couple of years of releasing music with a song that was an essential Harts track, but also hinting at the direction that I’m moving forward [towards].

I dug through my archive of songs, and I found one really cool chorus and built around that. That’s the single, and it’s one of the freshest sounding things I’ve done. I’ve said it to a couple of people, and everyone comes back with the same feedback that it sounds like [me], but in a whole new, fresh approach. I hope that people like it. It’s one of my favourites [in terms] of production. The production on it is something I’ve tried to improve over the years. I think it’s a great track. It’s a song about the mindset that I’m in this year and moving forward. It’s called Twenty Somethin’. 

It’s dealing with the new decade, the year 2020 and its approaching my final years of my 20’s. It’s a lot of stuff; I’m also playing at the T20 World Cup. The number 20 just kept coming up over the last couple of months and it was playing on my mind. This number was following me around, so I [had to] write lyrics about this. I put that into a song, and it’s just an accumulation of my feelings moving forward. I think my fans will love it, and it’s my first introduction into a whole bunch of new music coming out this year. I’m excited about it. 

Purple Haze has set up so many things for you musically and has helped shape your musical trajectory, but what Hendrix song has had a profound effect on you on a personal note? 
I think my favourite Hendrix song is Machine Gun. On a personal note, there’s something about it that’s not necessarily lyrics. It’s in the rendition where he plays the guitar. You really feel something uneasy in the song. There’s a haunting uneasiness and confliction. There’s some sort of conflict going on within that song, with the sound of the guitar that sounds like a machine gun, and what he’s talking about [like] war. That song has touched me on a personal level.

It’s a bit upsetting because I can’t find a way to fit it into the set yet, because to do it justice you have to give it its full space to move. It’s a 12-13-minute song, and if we have 90 minutes in the set, that song takes up a good chunk of it. If people aren’t familiar with Machine Gun, I don’t think people will be able to sit it through. Sometimes Hendrix went way longer, like 19 minutes. Who’s to say we won’t feel inspired and go on too long? Because the song really can show it. That song is one that looks like it won’t be in the set, but it’s definitely my favourite Hendrix tune. Maybe if it were in the set, I’d feel too pressured about it. I’d be like ‘oh shit, it’s coming up next’, and I’d be a bit scared to butcher it because I think of it so highly. That was one of the first Hendrix tracks I learnt and played as a kid getting into guitar.

I’ve been working on a Harts documentary for a few years and collecting footage, and it’s still not done, but I’ve been filming my whole life since I started the Harts project. There’s a clip that I hope eventually gets used of me playing Machine Gun and I’m about 18 or 19 years old. It’s hilarious because it’s actually surprisingly good. I think I was better back then than I am now! I have no idea how! Or maybe I filmed a flukey take! When I saw the footage I was like, ‘damn, I can’t ever remember sounding that close to the actual recording’. How did I even do that? I hope that clip eventually gets used. It’s hilarious because it was filmed on probably the first iPhone, and maybe because the quality is crap you can’t tell. It ties in this project so well, and it was almost 10 years ago now. 10 years later I’m doing a whole tour of playing Hendrix music. That kid in that video would have never expected to be doing this. It’s crazy how life works like that. 

HARTS PLAYS HENDRIX 2020 
Tickets on sale via: hartsmusic.com