Blvck Hippie @ Treefort 2023

Blvck Hippie, an indie-rock group hailing from Memphis, Tennessee, was one of the many powerhouses at Treefort 2023. I had the honor of chatting with Blvck Hippie in the Treefort Press lounge on Day 3 of the Festival before their first gig at Main Stage. Here are some snippets from our conversation.

I remember seeing you last year at one of the sets at Main Stage. Knowing that you played Treefort last year, how does it feel to be back again playing two sets this time around?

“It’s one of my favorite festivals I’ve played, yeah. It’s kind of like this refreshing environment right after other recent gigs which can sometimes feel not as personal, and then you come to Treefort and all the volunteers are asking what you need and you can just tell that people are happy that you’re there. It was also the first place where we were just walking around and someone goes ‘Oh snap you’re Blvck Hippie’ and we were like, woah.”

No yeah that’s really cool. I can imagine it being really validating getting that recognition in such an intentional space. When did you start making music?

Blvck Hippie Treefort Interview: Memphis, Indie-Rock Music, and Meeting Julien Baker

I picked up piano when I was twelve or something like that and then I played classical piano until I graduated high school. Then I went to college, didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life so I was kind of just like whatever. I remember I played piano for a friend of mine at an open mic and someone was like ‘Hey, we need more piano players in the music major you should change majors’ so I changed my major.

So yeah, uhm, through my sophomore year, I went through a lot of personal tragedy and I didn’t really have anything to do with it, like coping skills-wise, so it was around the time I picked up guitar and just wrote about everything I was going through. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it until the beginning of my junior year. I did this weird, lo-fi EP under Blvck Hippie but never really released it. I really only played it for a few friends and on Bandcamp. I didn’t really start singing until then. A year later, I put out an album under Vacant House– if you dig deep enough on Soundcloud you might be able to find it. “Mansion” and “Cloudy” days actually kind of come from that record. I moved into acoustic indie-rock my senior year and then moved back to Memphis after college and have kind of been doing that ever since.

Nice, I like how full circle that is since you started as Blvck Hippie in college and now you’re here playing Treefort under the same name even though you had other projects between then and now.

Yeah, it’s cool– what’s funny about the name is that I went by it initially because it looked cool on Instagram and it’s what my mom used to call me as a kid because I was a weird kid. And then we were under the name Saint John but then we kept getting confused on Spotify for this heavy metal band so I was like okay, something has to give. I was at a show and someone was like ‘Dude, how do you have so many streams’ and I was like ‘What do you mean?’ and he showed me and I was like oh. . . yeah that’s not me. I ended up doing a poll on Facebook asking if people preferred Vacant House or Blvck Hippie and people really liked Blvck Hippie.

Love it. I know you said you were from Memphis, TN – Are you still living in Memphis?

I do, the only time I didn’t live there was the four years when I was in college in Jackson, Tennessee which is like an hour out of Memphis but yeah. Yeah, Memphis is an interesting city, I like it because it’s predominantly Black so it’s nice to come home from touring in places that aren’t and be like, “yeah this is home” which is kinda sick. I mean, there’s a lot of things I don’t like about it since you know everyone hates their hometown in some way.

Yeah, that’s real. Do you like the Midwest more as opposed to the West Coast or East Coast?

Honestly, I feel like my favorite area is the Pacific Northwest. Dude, I love Washington and Portland. The only thing about the West Coast is everything is so far away. We’ve toured the West Coast like twice and it’s always the most mentally taxing because you’re in a car for a lot of the touring part.

Blvck Hippie Treefort Interview: Memphis, Indie-Rock Music, and Meeting Julien Baker

That’s so sick, yeah I love Portland. I’m a transplant from Southern California and I love Portland and just Oregon in general so much.

Yeah definitely– we went there last summer on tour and we got like, super into kombucha on that tour and we ended up drinking so much kombucha in Portland that we decided to start brewing some. Yeah, I think there’s some crazy statistic out there on how much kombucha is consumed in Portland, I don’t know.

I believe it. Yeah, but it’s nice to hear you still have a connection to Memphis though.

Yeah, it’s something I take with me constantly. I feel like it’s not really a hotbed for indie-rock or emo or anything that we do, you know what I mean? So I feel like, even though those bands exist there, there isn’t a lot of attention on them. Everybody’s either stuck in the past on like, Elvis or Stax Records or they’re hyper-focused on like rap exploits.

Which I mean, we’ve got great rap exploits I’m not hating– we have so much good rap. But yeah, I feel like no one really pays attention to indie bands there too much. I feel like, a deep connection knowing that if I’m able to do something with my art, that creates a lane for my city and we can start having a bunch of these Southern bands actually get the recognition they deserve. There’s a lot of talent in the South and people need to pay attention to it.

Yeah, that’s really important. It’s refreshing to hear that you put a lot of intention into sticking to your roots and representing your hometown in that way. Yeah, I’m a big Julien Baker fan and she’s my main artist connection to Memphis.

No way, yeah I met Julien Baker once. She knows a lot of people that I know, but when she was in the scene, I wasn’t in Memphis. And when I was in high school, I wasn’t going to shows. But I did meet her when she played our big festival Beale Street Music Fest. It was kind of funny– she had a bunch of technical difficulties during her set and she was really stressed and after the show, she was just walking and I see her and I’m like, “Oh my God, you’re amazing” in her face and she looked at me a little taken aback and just walks away. Yeah, I just hope that I get big enough so I can like meet Julien Baker again and be like “Hey, I don’t know if you remember this, but that was me and I’m sorry”. I saw her post days later about how the set was really stressful and all that and I felt so bad knowing I was that one annoying person that ran up to her.

Her drummer, I actually used to work with at Guitar Center too, and her producer and her bass player, Calvin, did our first EP – but yeah Matt is so funny. We worked together at Guitar Center for like a couple of months or something before I quit. But yeah, I remember going out with my coworkers, him being one of them, and we’re at this like game/arcade bar and we were all just like watching people play Super Smash Bros– it was funny. Nice dude though.

That’s so funny– yeah I hope you get to meet her again so you could bring that up.

Yeah, I mean I guess I saw her two times but the second time, she was playing “Something” and that was one of my favorite songs at the time. This girl in the crowd was like right here next to me and decided to sing every lyric off-key so the only recording I have of it is just this girl singing the chorus so loudly. The whole time I’m sitting there like “No why”.

Oh my gosh, no. That’s tragic, I’m so sorry. That’s a really intimate song too.

Dude, I know. And I was so close to the stage too. Yeah, tragic.

Haha, well it was great chatting with you, I’m excited to see your set later today.

Yeah, see you.

Be sure to check out Blvck Hippie’s discography on Spotify or wherever you listen to music :)