Bobby Hatfield is a musical scientist, an explorer of sound, experience, and emotions. Well known in the Columbia scene for his piano chops and unique song writing style, his live performances are something to behold– they never disappoint. Read about his growth as an artist, process, thoughts on Columbia and fellow musicians.
“I find art focused on the wounds maybe sometimes helps the pace of nursing those wounds, because it gives them context during their time rather than random infinite tyranny, and creating can be hard during those times but the unchecked loop can be disastrous. But while I breath I hope.”
Bobby Hatfield — photo— Kati Baldwin
JASPER: Tell us a little about how you got started and the projects you have been a part of over the years.
HATFIELD: After 5 year run of The Sea Wolf Mutiny, Numbtongue was an idea to develop and experiment with songwriting and songcraft within purposeful constraints. What can I do when it is just me? What can I write around bass guitar as the lead voice? Can you write a Waltz at 4 beats per measure? And furthermore, can I deconstruct both the art that folks have heard already as well as continue to deconstruct myself as “the self” and the contradictory mechanics of faith and doubt, love and hate, heaven and hell, destiny and choice, hope, and hopelessness, and other rather cliche anxieties into an entirely not cliche expression? What could it mean to take away everything I relied on and create from scratch?
I found myself as the side man on keys for ET Anderson, not out front. This helped me learn a way to exist in the more joyful bombast of TSWM, where I wasn’t the focus but could provoke a response through someone else’s music and be felt rather than heard. Staying busy with that let my musical imagination go a bit wild. My first release, Exhumation, was an attempt to sound as though it was a time capsule discovered in the sands of the internet, as though guitar distortion had never been heard before, to ask the question of nostalgia: “are you worth my time?”
So, if my first release “exhumation” was about an abstract rebirth of sorts, my sophomore release Phantom Limbs is more about wiping the dust off such a creature as me, seemingly just discovered, and seeing who’s there now. And while it didn’t happen in a linear emotional way, what was looking back at me was a person in lament. A person with anger and trust issues. A person who had felt betrayed and not really dealt with or admitted to what that meant. And what I found in that fundamental sorrow was that, through no plan of my own, I found myself yearning to express these emotions in simple terms, and it bothered me that I needed to make beautiful monuments to what seemed less than beautiful feelings. Things like trying to process the sudden suicide of a friend and somehow search the hope. But I’ve learned since making and releasing it that to exude such thoughts doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and creating these songs as permanent places meant justifying the feelings as valid. Literally doing them Justice. We grow around pain and loss and grief the same way rings on a tree reveal their history on earth. And for me this album was a record of a tree still standing and growing in hope despite the damage, and really naming the feelings gives them a wholeness that you can then grow around. They don’t necessarily “heal” in the sense that you ever feel like you did before you required healing, but maybe just maybe you will feel them as apart of you whole. It was a struggle to get this record off my chest no doubt, but if there’s hope in simply admitting hopelessness, to continue on is to live your life carrying it but maybe not nursing it anymore. I find art focused on the wounds maybe sometimes helps the pace of nursing those wounds, because it gives them context during their time rather than random infinite tyranny, and creating can be hard during those times but the unchecked loop can be disastrous. But while I breath I hope.
Numbtongue is kind of this idea that “you can’t taste it but you know it’s there” either because you’ve felt it so much or said it so much or because it’s hard to but words on it, and the new record title “Phantom Limbs” is similar as an idea where these specific instances exist longer after your done feeling them, and I know as I get distance from some of these songs creation, there’s an ability to look at them and the feeling inhabiting them more objectively, which makes it far easier to sing. I hope that what I’ve tried to do with this project is hope.
JASPER: What does your writing process look like? How has it changed or evolved over the years?
HATFIELD: Early on it was almost exclusively me writing and singing from the piano & later a guitar, but I wasn’t comfortable with just learning, so most of my early guitar playing [consisted of] alternate tunings that I felt were unique tonally. But I’ve constantly challenged myself into the next phase of something that might not feel natural to me but then I try to inhabit it in “my style.” I remember spending an entire year exclusively forcing myself to write or compose songs on the guitar in the standard tuning. Just to see if I could fit inside the mold. I liked what I learned about myself as an artist, but oddly I haven’t ever released more than one song publicly that was in standard tuning. I tried to stay in that traditional songwriter vein at first because I didn’t play other instruments so piano felt like a home base, and it still does. As I’ve gotten older and wilier about what is “allowed to be a song” and being my own producer on almost everything numbtongue related…. Inspiration can vary widely.
Sometimes it’s a lyric I like that falls out of my mouth acapella and then I try and find chords around it. Sometimes I start with a drumbeat that is lyrical itself already and I try to write against a unique linguistic beat. Sometimes I start with a bass line. What’s interesting is often a song will start on one instrument and end up totally focused on another one by the end. That is the case with my new song “I Will You Will” off my new record, it is very piano heavy live. But it began on acoustic guitar strumming the chord progression in a completely different key, than it is now., and all I had was the words “I never thought I never thought I would give up on you” just strumming 8th notes in standard tuning. That one idea that fell out randomly gestated for about 6 months or so, maybe longer. Now you won’t hear a single acoustic guitar on the song on the record because it was the vehicle that got me there, not necessarily the end product.
Because I still love the concept record, some songs are born out of a communicative necessity in relation to the rest of a record of songs. Sometimes I realize “wow this song needs better track coming before it” or I hear an entirely new idea that should come after a song that already exists, and I’ve always really tried hard to make sure track 7 is interesting because records are risk of the sagging middle by track 7. I feel like a lot of artists in the past used tracks 7 for a perhaps average or mediocre song at times. I try to avoid mediocre or anything that takes up unnecessary space. I like writing with the sense that everything has purpose and identity musically, even my singing voice, which I will fundamentally alter to fit the song if I can manage to make it sound convincing.
JASPER: Do you have any tips or tricks for finding inspiration or getting over writer's block?
HATFIELD: I find that it helps to chase rabbits even down their holes, and record yourself doing it. It may feel and sound dumb but if you watch and listen later, the replay can be informative even if uncomfortable. But also allowing writer’s block to be the block it is and let it rest, just walk around it, and move on to something different entirely that may feel freer or more fun and distracting. You can always come back to that block later; it is not the end of your world. Sometimes paths are dead ends for you. Walking around the block in the road can also be “maybe this is boring and I should juke styles right here and don something surprising just to hard left it both for myself and the listener so we can walk away from this dead end in real time together” and then you can decide if you want to repeat the phrase that dead ended and it feels like a pattern then that just has a dead end. Music is helpful in that it is a mercifully repetitive and endlessly self-healing of its mistakes in that way at times. It can also be deciding to rest and recharge and come back at it fresh in the morning. I need this advice because I am notorious for working 5+ hours straight in an idea that I hate later, but sometimes you have to see where the rabbit hole goes. I’ve sadly had a lot of success grinding an idea for five hours to a place I think is finished and sincerely liking the result of my efforts so I guess sometimes the advice is take a wrecking ball of ego to the writers block and destroy it by force of will.
JASPER: How do you know when something is done?
HATFIELD: The easiest answer is it’s done when it’s done? But the clearer answer is it’s done when you can hear everything you need to hear and feel what you want to feel. I find that it’s always a moment with my songs where I smile and say “oh there you are” as if it was always there until it finally makes sense what I want to hear.
JASPER: What is your favorite or least favorite show you've played in and why?
HATFIELD: Favorite shows: all house shows. I have never played in a bad house show. The Price Street House Show was probably 2013 or 2014 with my old band The Sea Wolf Mutiny. It was up a flight of stairs on the second floor of this house right off Main Street in downtown Columbia SC. At the time I was playing this 250lb Yamaha cp60 keyboard that required 2-4 people to move so it was a quite a chore to get it up to a second story. We passed out tambourines. It was so hot. There was this guy reading poetry as the opener and he was incredible, absolutely slayed, one of the coolest opening acts ever at a show. I think his name was Connor. The energy of a house show is already something different because it feels personal and special and no one else is here but us and it’s always very “all hands-on deck” we’re in this together audience and band and crew alike … but that normal vibe was on absolute overdrive by the time we played this night.
We played something called Dead Tree Festival another time that was a house show of equally ineffable and palpable anticipation that you could cut with a knife, but the show was shut down by the police 3 songs in. The floor was also beginning to “smile” under the weight of the humanity standing on it.
JASPER: Who are some of your favorite local artists and why?
HATFIELD: Well this is hard to answer because I don’t know if I should answer with latelies or evers. I will go with lately: I fell in love with Gamine like 1 minute and 12 seconds into their inaugural set at GrungeProm we played together last year, just an instant classic Columbia band waiting to happen; it’s like the Cure meets Nirvana and shoegaze; it is not a criticism to say I love that they feel like a work in progress happening before your eyes being born from stone they are personally carving themselves out of, but they could immortalize any moment in the process of that progress and it would be great.
Rex Darling vocalist Catherine (Hunsinger) is just effortless and has such stellar tone under constant control and sounds like it can go anywhere she wants, beautiful voice.
Stagbriar are deep long running friends of mine, and their song “Open Floor Plan” is a crown jewel of theirs to me, I love the way it uses this simple rotating bassline polyrhythmically against their duo harmonies.
Dear Blanca boys will always have a special place in my heart, not the least of which because Dylan Dickerson, their leading man, has been so helpful and encouraging via his role at Comfort Monk promoting my latest release Phantom Limbs.
Death Ray Robin, Desiree Richardson’s solo project is another favorite new person for me. I saw her perform also at GrungeProm last year for the first time and oh wow, is she gifted or what? I knew immediately a fellow meticulous producer who knows exactly what they want from a song they made, and has a tight control of vision and execution to boot, but she not only crafts beats and chord progressions and soundscapes from scratch but there was a moment she abandoned the mic entirely, because she didn’t need it whatsoever and turned her set over to the opera within and it was as mesmerizing to watch her balance it all as it was to hear.
And last but certainly not least my friend Alyssa Stewart, whose project Local Honey opened my Phantom Limbs Album Release last October. Columbia has rarely seen as erudite a songwriter and poet, who also developed a live set that sounded like a seasoned professional after only a couple of public performances. With many years of stage performance and classical vocal performance training, there’s certainly a foundation to explain such ease but it’s such a different experience becoming vulnerable with your own songwriting in front of perfect strangers. And she met the moment of her first outing at New Brookland Tavern with such aplomb, ease, and whimsy, knowing that nerves could best her at moment was impossible. I couldn’t have been more impressed nor have gushed more to her afterwards. I really hope everyone gets to hear her and see her perform her original music in this region and beyond. If she wants it, she’s got a cool music future.
Oh and p.s. I’m happy People Person is a thing again in Columbia.
JASPER: What do you think about Columbia's art/music scene and how has it changed over the years?
HATFIELD: I think Covid brought a lot of communal art experience to such a halt that it altered the reality of the return to normal. It actually feels like there are 5 or 6 music scenes happening all at once right now. I think some folks are playing catch up, but some folks are trying to start things for the first time that they didn’t have a chance to start for two years. It’s a bit difficult to keep up with the sheer volume of scene activity happening. A lot of my peers from before Covid hit haven’t been as active since, and it’s been tricky getting back at it even for Numbtongue. So I think what I’m seeing is almost too much of a good thing? It’s hard to call it bad but I think Columbia has grown performance opportunities given the types of venues that host music downtown has diversified and you still have the old haunts that host music. Places are selling out for shows and it’s kinda crazy overdrive some weeks. It has actually gotten way harder if not impossible to avoid booking a date that doesn’t conflict with someone else’s show lately. Which I suppose is a good problem to have. I think it just snuck up on me.
So I think there’s a fair amount of activity that is siloed and invisible across a few music scenes right now. I do think there seem to be more opportunities now than ever to seek a performance, but it does create the challenge of being able to do anything unique enough as an independent local to make a statement or draw. But as far as cultural growth, I am completely enamored with Columbia’s local non-chain business developments from Noma bistro, Transmission Arcade, Curiosity Coffee, The Warmouth, All Good Books, etc. That’s just the start of a very long list of new businesses over near where I live in town. Downtown Columbia at least seems more vibrant and diverse than ever. So despite the sense of rarity shows might have held in the past, there’s some rare air were all living in still trying to move past Covid and it feels like everyone is trying to get as much done as possible before the world tried to end again. I don’t know maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill. It seems great?
JASPER: What advice do you have for other artists?
HATFIELD: Never stop. If you’re an artist, keep creating. If you’re an aspiring artist, keep creating. You or the world will only be the better for it. Create, oh creator, and thus be recreated.
JASPER: Any other things you want folks to know
HATFIELD: Stream my new record Phantom Limbs, it’s available everywhere.
You can see Numbtoungue this Sunday, April 23rd at New Brookland Tavern with Secret Guest, Summer of Snakes, and Gamine at 6pm. Also make sure to wish Bobby a happy Birthday!