Interview: Hairpin
New York indie-rock band Hairpin is forging their path as a band. Comprised of Nate Pozin (vocals), Henry Buckingham (guitar), Ryan Couto (bass), and Alex McGourty (guitar/producer), they all independently followed parallel paths. Growing up in California, they attended UC Berkeley and later moved to NYC, where they formed Hairpin. A DIY ethos lies at the heart of the band, with McGourty producing the band’s material in his home studio, allowing the band to, in his words, “get weird with our sounds and do whatever’s in our heads without being beholden to the sound of the producers or studios we’d work with. We can move fast and we can also take our time, whatever the track needs”. With musical influences that include Radiohead, The Strokes, Soundgarden, Bob Dylan, and Frank Ocean, they feel inspired by the musical legacy of NYC and, says Pozin, are “constantly pulling inspiration from our daily confrontations with (and observations of) people and settings of all kinds. There’s plenty to write about and comment on in this city”.
Having a large group of supportive friends, they have organically grown a fast-growing fan base from which their friends told their friends, who told their friends, and so on, resulting in every show the band has performed in NYC selling out. Considering the band formed in 2021 and didn’t start releasing music until last year, they feel fortunate to have had such an instant positive response. Although the band plans to keep releasing singles for the time being, they hope to release a full-length album, as well as music videos, at some point in the future. With a couple of California shows coming up in San Francisco on 11/9 and Los Angeles on 11/11, these guys have massive ambitions as a band and will no doubt achieve great things! Make sure to follow Hairpin via the following links to stay up-to-date on all news, tour dates, and new music!
You all grew up in California before moving to NYC and forming Hairpin. What can you tell me about growing up in California and cultivating a love for music? What was your journey leading up to this band?
Alex: I always wanted to be in a band but there wasn’t really a scene in the bay growing up that made sense for me. The early 2000s thing in the Bay Area wasn’t a sound that really resonated, and I don’t know what was happening in the 2010s. I think we all moved to NYC in part because music happens there.
Ryan: I started playing bass when I was 12, with the purpose of starting a band with a couple of my friends. I played in a few different bands throughout high school with scattered gigs in Berkeley and Oakland. That really kicked off my love for music, though I’d always been surrounded by it. My mom plays guitar and sings, and that was a constant presence growing up.
Nate: I grew up with music playing in my house most days. My dad plays piano, so I started with that and quickly moved to the drums in fourth grade because no one else I knew was playing them. I grew up playing in bands throughout childhood and into my teen years but always as the drummer. I never really tried writing a song until I asked my girlfriend to prom my junior year of high school. In Orange County where I grew up, I was fortunate to have a tight-knit group of friends that supported my high school band through years of playing tiny Southern California venues. I always knew I wanted to get out of California, though.
Henry: My parents tried to give my older siblings the gift of music but it never really stuck with them…my mom grew up playing classical piano so she figured she’d give it one more go with me and gave me a guitar for my birthday in 4th grade…a blue Ibanez acoustic electric. The first song I learned was “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” haha. I was pretty much hooked immediately and have always had a guitar around me since.
What led you guys to want to move to NYC and form Hairpin? What were your goals for the band and it’s sound going into it?
Alex: Moving to NYC was actually incidental.
Ryan: Yeah, we all moved here after college but completely by chance. We didn’t start playing together until I’d already been in NYC for about 6 years.
Alex: For my part – I think the streaming age is feeding us a lot of ultra-palatable, greatest-common-demoninator-type instrumentals behind some really unoffensive vocals – I just wanted us to pack a bit more interest and influence into every dimension of our tracks. We’re making the stuff that we wish we were hearing more of.
Ryan: Exactly that. The slick, greatest common denominator, most inoffensive Spotify playlist-tailored genre is everywhere these days and something we want to avoid.
Who would you guys consider to be your musical influences?
Alex: Radiohead, Phoenix, James Blake
Henry: Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Television, The Strokes
Ryan: Nirvana, Khruangbin, Sublime, The Strokes
Nate: Frank Ocean, Bob Dylan, The Strokes, The Hellp
What do you find most inspiring about living and making music in NYC? In what ways do you feel the environment influences you and your music and how do you feel NYC differs from California in that regard?
Henry: For me, it’s the history of this place. I live a few blocks from the studio where Gordon Raphael produced Is This It, and I walk by the bar where James Murphy played his first DJ set every day. Waking up every morning and being surrounded by the ancestry of my favorite music is the best possible inspiration I can think of.
Alex: Seeing James Murphy out on the street all the time is like – damn, this is really the place.
Ryan: They’re both such special places with such different sounds and legacies. I’d like to think we still maintain a fair amount of inspiration from our California roots, which I think comes across in the nostalgic sound of a lot of our songs.
Nate: In California, everything was pretty chill. Indie surf rock made sense. We had big garages to rehearse in, and thankfully our neighbors were cool. It was peaceful. In New York, we’re mashed into tiny spaces… and for some of us, our apartments/studio is a refuge from all the ridiculous stuff happening outside. Of course, the environment is inspiring because of its legacy and all that. We’re also constantly pulling inspiration from our daily confrontations with (and observations of) people and settings of all kinds. There’s plenty to write about and comment on in this city.
In being an independent band that self-produces your material, how do you feel that has helped you in writing music and getting your name out there so quickly?
Alex: It’s super nice to control our destiny like that. It didn’t start that way though!
Henry: Yeah - it took some trial by error to realize that the best producer we know is actually in the band. We’re really lucky to have Alex working the DAW - it means recording is less of a formal X-hour window in a pro studio and we can lay tracks right when the idea strikes us.
Alex: I think being a one-stop shop is a huge advantage for us. We can get weird with our sounds and do whatever’s in our heads without being beholden to the sound of the producers or studios we’d work with. We can move fast and we can also take our time, whatever the track needs.
Ryan: From the super high level choices of tone down to the small details, having a member of the band as the producer has been a huge help in having a unified vision and sound
Nate: We’re just comfortable with each other too… and in Alex’s home studio. It feels like home to me <3
Along those same lines, what are your thoughts on this trend in music, with so many artists having the ability to be so independent and get their music out there on their own?
Alex: It should be an incredible time for music because of how the tools have been democratized, but it doesn’t feel like that because we don’t have good ways to sort the good from the bad anymore. I think what we’re hearing is almost always the stuff that just has significant investment promoting it, and that’s hardly ever the best thing.
Ryan: Very much agree with that sentiment.
Nate: Agreed. I think early on in our careers though it was quite motivating to see bedroom pop explode. It gave us the idea that we could make and release music ourselves. It broke down a huge barrier to entry, for me at least.
Henry: Exactly…its kind of a double-edged sword. Like…we hear the music that is being pushed by labels (those are typically the songs that are getting prime playlisting spots) - which is frustrating, but at the same time it’s empowering to know that we have the ability to make music we’re proud of and music that we feel like can go toe-to-toe with a lot of stuff out there.
Having formed in 2021, what can you tell me about the early days of the band and getting started? What was it like forming on the heels of the early days of COVID-19 and the shutdowns?
Alex: Nate and I started a band in February of 2020 actually. I produced our first song and the demo was called “coronavirus ravages williamsburg.mp3” – literally at the moment when Covid was an abstract thing that wasn’t yet local or able to be taken seriously. It got real days after and then it felt like we had to sit on our hands for a few years before we could really start getting together and recording and playing shows. I’m mad because I felt we were ready to go then, but I’m still grateful that we’re where we’re at now.
Nate: Stimulus checks were lit.
Alex: Covid was a gateway into modular synths and therefore no good songs came out of that first year.
Ryan: it definitely felt like there was an increased hunger and desire for live music as we were getting started. Many people hadn’t been to a show in a year or longer at that point.
Henry: Yeah exactly…people were ready to get back into venues, but at the same time, this also led to a wild up-and-down year for the industry and us (we had to cancel a headline date because 3 of the 4 of us got COVID two days before).
Nate: We had also never played together as a group before COVID-19, so along with the hunger for live music once venues started opening up again, I think people were just down to see what we were doing.
You guys have played several shows in NYC to sold-out crowds! What do you love most about playing live and being on stage?
Alex: We’ve had the pleasure of selling out every single show we’ve played. I think it’s insane – I hadn’t ever been part of any public performance in my life up until Hairpin and in our first show we sold out a 250-person room. A lot of people grind for years before they get there and we just had it right away.
Ryan: I just have such a blast up there. It’s fun as hell to play music for people who want to hear it. I think back to some of my favorite live music moments and how special they are to me, so the opportunity to provide that for someone else is just an awesome gift.
Henry: Yeah…I agree with that sentiment. I have so many core memories from concerts I’ve been to (John Frusciante's Melting Faces on Parallel Universe, Tom Petty’s Learning to Fly encore, etc) - these are moments I’ll think back to when I’m on a plane with no WiFi or no headphones for a movie. I’d love to ONE DAY be able to create a memory for someone else like the ones that I remember so fondly.
Nate: We’re unbelievably fortunate to have a big group of friends that support us at every show. Those friends began bringing their friends to shows, and their friends brought their friends, and so on. Organic - no TikTok or viral moment (yet). My favorite part about playing live is seeing people enjoying themselves. And I love being able to export the magic we create together in the studio to a live setting. Seeing people react to that is special.
What do you like to do outside of music?
Alex: I love tennis, I love soccer, and most of all I love BonBon (is this a hobby enough?)
Ryan: Biking, basketball, also bonbon (pls sponsor us)
Alex: BonBon sponsorship when for real? Collab when? Going to DM BonBon this write-up.
Nate: I basically just look for Margiela's leather jackets online.
Henry: All things outdoors!
You have released a string of singles since last year, the most recent being “Rearrange”. What can you tell me about this latest single?
Alex: It’s been through an incredible transformation.
Nate: We’re proud of it. It started as an acoustic ballad… we actually performed the first verse at one of our first shows a few years ago at Chelsea Music Hall. It then sat in our vault, untouched for years. At some point a few months ago, I finally wrote a second verse and a chorus to it… kept sending it to the band, but no one cared. Classic! Finally, I think Alex listened to it and was like “This is cool, but the second verse should be the chorus”, and that kind of cracked it.
Alex: The part that is now the chorus was at first this like, afterthought tailing verse to the demo on the edge of the mp3. And I was like – we gotta chuck the existing chorus and swap this in – it was so locked in my head after the first listen. I pushed around the parts and sent it back to Nate and then we worked backward from there, rewriting the lyrics to fit. Nate’s best vocal takes are usually when he’s relaxed and alone at home singing in a soft voice so his roommates can’t hear lmao. It’s usually hard to recreate that magic when we develop the demo, and in this case, we just kept the delivery from the demo because it sounded special.
Ryan: We’re really happy with how it turned out. So wild to see the process of how a song can change over time like that.
Do you have plans to release an EP or LP in the near future? Any music videos in the works?
Alex: I think at our stage an LP is bad business. We’re still finding our sound and trying on different approaches. The LP is going to be heavily planned and cohesive.
Ryan: Would love to work on something longer form and other forms of media (eg videos), but for the time being we’re focused on creating and releasing as much great music as we can as quickly as we can.
Henry: Yeah…I love digging into a favorite artist of mine’s new album, but I think the unfortunate fact of the matter of the industry in 2023 is that 90% of consumers don’t have the patience to listen to an entire album’s worth of music, especially for an unknown artist. For us, that means that the single-by-single strategy is our best initial path. That being said, our backlog is kind of getting too big for a single-by-single strategy and might necessitate an EP.
Alex: When we drop an LP no one will have heard a cut off it until it releases. We’ll have singles compilations and we’ll have albums, and the albums will be totally fresh. I miss that experience so much – I still remember my first listen to In Rainbows and Blonde. You couldn’t skip because everything was new.
What’s next for Hairpin? What are your goals for the band going forward?
Alex: We’re touring!
Ryan: Hyped to get to play a couple shows in California!
Henry: Stealing my family’s car to take on tour!
Alex: We have massive ambitions.
Nate: Become the biggest band ever.