BLVCK HIPPIE: Dig the new (Memphis) breed

STAMPED throughout with the unmistakable Memphis guitar-driven, soul, grit, and swagger, BLVCK HIPPIE’s triumphant 2024’s ‘Basketball Camp’ album justifiably earned frontman and founder JOSH SHAW high praise from far and wide – with opening track ‘P&H’ drawing comparisons to Brit rock royalty, The Cure.

“Oh, I love when people bring up The Cure, and I love that song so much,” he said. “It’s named after an old dive bar here called The P&H. It used to be on Madison Avenue and one of the oldest bars in midtown Memphis.

“When I moved back from college to come to Memphis, I’d gone to Toronto with my brother for a week, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I’d just graduated and didn’t know what to do with music.

“Then I just thought about it and I was like, ‘this is all I want to do’. So I came home, I got on Google and I was looking for ‘open mic nights in Memphis,’ and the first one was ‘P&H Monday Nights‘, and I went to every single teenage open mic night for the next five, six months. It was the first time that I was really playing my own songs in front of people I didn’t know, I didn’t know anybody in the room, and they were obviously so nice warm and inviting and this made me first of all proud to be there, glad that I came back home, and then it just gave me a sense of purpose. It was the first time I played my music where I felt at home, so that’s what I wanted to encapsulate in that song and kind of honour it.

“We lost the club because of Covid, but my band played one of the last shows, I think the next to last show they ever had there, but it was my introduction to Memphis. The Memphis music was P&H, and I loved that place so much, that’s why I wanted to make a song that felt like that.”

With an EU/UK tour currently drawing to a close, Shaw is set to begin work on his next album, one that will be given time and space to breathe – and not recorded within seventy-two hours like debut long-player, ‘If You Feel Alone At Parties.’

“I’ve been working on it for the past seven months and in terms of recording and stuff, I’m not used to having time,” he explained. “The first album we did in basically three days, the other one we did in five. But like the demo process, recording the albums in three and five days, yes it was crazy.

“The first one was ten-hour day, ten-hour day, twenty-one-hour day. I was falling asleep, waking up doing synth parts, taking a ten-minute nap, and then the second record we did at my house, we had like five days to kind of work on it.

“But now I kind of want to take my time, I haven’t had the privilege for the past four years to just sit for a second. We been like hitting everything pretty hard, so I wanna take my time, and just kind of see what happens. I feel like when I got off tour last summer, it kind of all just came to me a little bit. I had been working on it, but the concept of the record finally came. I have been demoing since last March, but around July 2024 was when the whole concept of how to connect everything together kinda hit.

“I’ve been cooking for the past seven months and haven’t even played any of the songs really for the rest of the band. I do a lot of the writing, so normally what I do is give them something, but this time I want to make sure I figure everything out before I involve others. That way we can streamline it. I think I’m most likely gonna track it and start recording when we get back from Europe, and probably do it again at my house.”

“I’m proud of where I am now currently, I feel like I’ve been growing a lot of targets, growing a lot of learning, and we took the last half of 2024 off for touring just to kind of like reshape things.

“I started working on the new album and started reconnecting with like why I started doing this in the first place, and I feel like through the growth I’ve gotten through that time, I feel like I may not be at the mountaintop that I would like to be, but I feel like I finally have everything within myself to get there, and for the first time in like the entirety of me doing music, I do feel I have what’s in me to make this record that in my mind will be something I am so substantially proud of, that it will be my mountaintop.”

And with only four dates of the current tour remaining – London March 19th, Amien March 20th, Bordeaux March 22nd, and Viareggio March 28th – Shaw and his band will be forgiven for appearing somewhat reluctant to return Stateside.

“I feel like Europe – and touring overseas – is just so crazy because it’s just a different everything from how it is in the States. I feel like in the States and DIY touring, we’re roughing it, sleeping on floors and stuff, but in Europe they’re feeding us and giving us places to stay, everybody’s really nice to us and it’s so cool.”

Further information & ticket details HERE

(Main photo (c) Trevor Cullum)