Photo: David McClister
Country music's rookie of the year is part heartbreaker, part
hipster—and he likes it that way. With his penchant for snappy shoes and DIY
T-shirts (he sports one in the laced-with-moonshine video for his breakout hit,
"Leave the Night On"), Sam Hunt doesn't look like a former NFL quarterback. But
he is. After graduating from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2007,
the Nashville native briefly signed as a free agent with the Kansas City Chiefs.
And though he's since left the locker room days behind, Hunt, who has written
tracks for Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban, and whose debut album, Montevallo, is
out today, isn't your average 10-gallon-hat country act. Take, for example, his
cut "Break Up in a Small Town." Its heartache-on-Main-Street is typical country
fare, but its Drake-like execution—dub step, talking interludes, and
autotune—suggests that the 29-year-old is still calling audibles. Here, we chat
about his surprising summer smash, how he's going through a "plain" fashion
phase, and where those hit songs really come from:
I was surprised to learn you were a jock, but are also
fashion forward. How has your style changed since two-a-days?
I don't know where my fashion sense comes from, exactly. I've
always been interested in, not necessarily being unique, but not necessarily
sticking to the preexisting paradigm—whether it be clothes or music or whatever.
I definitely grew up as a small-town…I guess you could call it the "small-town
football player," according to the stereotype. I wasn’t involved in music at
all. I was a big fan of music, but I only listened to the music that was around
me, which was just country music on the radio. It wasn't until I was 18, when I
was graduating high school, that I went and bought a guitar on a whim. It sort
of changed my direction as far as the stereotype goesDo you have certain designers or stores that you
like?
Right now I'm going through kind of a plain phase. Everything
I'm wearing is really simple. That was sort of a product of pushing, pushing,
pushing, and getting a little more radical with some of the clothes I was
wearing. You get tired of the loud, obvious thing and revert right back to being
very plain. I like doing stuff like, for instance, in the "Leave the Night On"
video, I had on a plain, white T-shirt. I just wanted to do something to it to
make it a little different so I just cut a big strip out of the side, from the
shirttail up to my armpit, and cut a big red strip out of another T-shirt and
just sewed it in there.
How do you get from small town football player to
writing songs for Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban?
Those opportunities to have songs recorded by those guys were a
product of relationships that I made when I moved to town [Nashville] and
getting involved with a publishing company that gave me opportunities to write
full time and introduced me to more writers and guys that I was able to learn a
lot from. I finally found three or four guys that I really clicked with and I’ve
been writing with those guys ever since. I really feel like I honed in on a
sound and a style of writing that best fits me. I had the good fortune of having
those guys hear songs of mine and wanting to record them. I was flattered. It
sort of took off from there.
Photo: Chase Lauer
What is your writing process?
My process has evolved—and is still evolving. I'm still learning
a lot as a songwriter. I try to write down and make a note of ideas that I cross
paths with on a day-to-day basis, whether it be a conversation or something I
hear on the radio, seeing a movie, or just thoughts in my head as I'm walking
down the street. Now, the majority of those ideas are not very good. Sometimes
when I sit down in a room—at first it's with a co-writer like Zach Crowell, who
produced my record—I'll go through my phone and look at ideas that I've stored.
It might not make sense to me at the time, but might spark something in his
mind, or vice versa. A lot of times I'll go into the little vocal booth and
freestyle for 10-20 minutes at a time and he’ll just record little nuggets that
will eventually turn into a song.
What's a bad idea you've had recently?
I can't even really think of one right now. I'd have to go
through my phone and find something ridiculous that I probably have stored in
there. I actually sat in the pool with my phone about two weeks ago and I just
got a new one. I lost a lot of bad ideas, actually.
Did you have any inkling that "Leave the Night On"
would be so big?
No! I actually didn't at all! I always liked that song and it
was fun, but I never was gung-ho about that song as far as having a really
strong personal connection to it. It's not that deep of a song! It's really cool
to see that people are connecting with it. Zach and Shane [McAnally], my
producers, really did a lot to turn that song into something bigger than it was
when it was written on an acoustic guitar.
Does it ever get annoying to sing the same songs over
and over again when you're performing?
Yeah. [Laughs] Yes.
How do you do it?
If I was singing it by myself, I'd be over it really fast. But
singing it live to an audience that appreciates it, and seeing people sing it
back and seeing the happiness and the joy on the faces of the people singing it,
that makes it a lot easier to sing it over and over and over, night after night.
I definitely have that same "over it" thing even when I'm writing songs; I'll
love it for a couple weeks, and then I’ll think, 'I gotta write something new!'
Picking songs for this record has been the hardest thing ever because I feel
like every song on the record has to be the song I wrote today, not six months
ago. I feel like they're too old.
As a writer, I don't feel like anything I write is
good. But sometimes I look back and think, 'That wasn’t so bad.'
Exactly! I have the exact same thing with songwriting. It takes
time. A lot of times, you have to see a reaction. People react to it, and you
think, 'Maybe there was something to that that I just wasn't able to be
objective about.'
