Sawyer Brown
Maybe Gregg "Hobie" Hubbard can't match David Letterman for creative
list-making.But the Sawyer Brown keyboardist can give you three good,
sincere reasons why his award-winning band loves the Northwest: "Great
buildings to play in, like the Tacoma Dome, incredible crowds... and
awfully darn good food. It's a serious place to be," laughs the short
statured Hubbard, whose reputed appetite is legendary within the band.
Hobie and the gang will likely work off any excess poundage during their
stage show, one of the more well crafted and energetic around. Lead
Vocalist Mark Miller is every bit the madman you see on video (with three
knee operations to prove it), and he gets able support from Hobie,
guitarist Duncan Cameron, bassist Jim Scholten drummer Joe Smyth. The band
is consistently among country's top ten concert draws.
For years, though, that's all the notoriety Sawyer Brown could ever muster.
They were considered a great live band, but not taken seriously as
recording artists.Their early hits, like "Betty's Bein' Bad" and "Step That
Step," were crowd pleasers that didn't exactly resonate on any depth meter.
But since 1991, with"The Walk" and subsequent hits, a maturity of
expression and substance has been duly uncovered. Hobie definitely concurs.
"Our greatest improvement is in the material," he says, almost without
hesitation. "It just comes with our having grown up as people. You know,
what you write at 32 is going to be different from what you wrote at 22.
You look at life a little differently, and it's helped our music get
stronger." Certainly the band has exhibited a more socially conscious,
introspective side, demonstrated by"Cafe On The Corner," which touched on
homelessness, and "All These Years," a Grammy nominated piece about the
dissolution of a marriage.
Hobie allows that the heavier messages fit in just as well as the rockers
("Some Girls Do" or "The Boys and Me," for instance) "Songs like 'The Walk'
are also a reflection of who we are. In fact, I'm a firm believer that
ballads last longer."Of course, the hit parade has become so jammed that
the guys are actually faced with a dilemma: what do you eliminate from the
live set? Fortunately for the audience, the answer's usually, "Nothing."
With animation, Hobie says "we don't want to cut out anything. So we just
play a little longer now."
Along with more focused material, you have to credit the advent of music
video for a decent portion of Sawyer Brown's success. For the second
consecutive year,they've been named CMT's Top Video Group in the U.S. and
Europe, where they enjoy a healthy following. "I don't know why," Hobie
chuckles, "I don't even know why we're popular here." Naturally, the
acrobatic Miller, who's practically made for t.V., presents a very watchable
figure. But in recent clips, the rest of the guys are beginning to shine
and loosen up in front of the camera, letting their individual
personalities show.
"The director that we've been working with, Michael Salomon, gets all the
credit for that," Hobie offers modestly. "He's very creative, and he knows
the band so well since we've used him on the last several videos. Each time,
he seems to come up with something new and exciting.
Not that they were strangers to television, though. The band first made its
mark by winning the Star Search competition in 1983 (with original
guitarist Bobby Randall, replaced by Cameron in 1991), after moving to
Nashville two years before from Florida. Hobie and Mark both hail from
Apoka, also the hometown of John Anderson, and formed the band at the
University of Central Florida in Orlando.
"We had done TV from the beginning," Hobie says, " and we were one of the
first acts to start doing videos. There almost wasn't any place to put
them. TNN was just starting out, and they were kind of scraping to have
enough to even fill an hour. It took time to get comfortable with doing
videos, but they're a great way for fans to get to know an act."
It should be mentioned that Sawyer Brown (the name comes from a Nashville
street where they lived in the early days) was also one of the first
self-contained bands in country music. Alabama and Restless Heart beat them
to the punch,although neither played the mixture of rock and hard-driving
country that would define Sawyer Brown. With the proliferation of bands,
would Hobie like to be part of a fledgling act at this point?
"No, I would not, absolutely not," he responds with a laugh. "The whole
picture has accelerated now, and a lot of these new acts aren't given
enough time to develop. They lose some of that building process. I imagine
that's going to shave a few years off some of their careers.
Sawyer Brown was allowed to pay its dues, and that's paid off in the long
run. A decade, which in the music business calendar amounts to "infinity,"
means you've done more than just hang around. In Hobie's view, music and
chemistry tell the bands success story- especially chemistry.
"A band needs a strong focal point," he begins, "and we've got a great one
in Mark. There has to be an individual that the fans can latch onto, but
the other personalities have to come out too. We feel there's more than
enough limelight to go around." Ego clashes are rare, Hubbard adds, because
they "get along so well,which is kind of amazing, seeing as how we play
around 200 dates a year."
In 1985, Sawyer Brown became the first (and only) band to win the CMA
Horizon Award honoring new or developing acts. They haven't taken home a
major industry honor since then, which remains a curiosity. How does an act
this popular manage to slip by the CMA voters? Sawyer Brown's at the head
of the class when the fan shave their say. For the past two years, they've
been named Vocal Band of the Year at the fan-voted TNN Music City News
Awards. Of course, there's always a chasm between how fans and industry
types vote, but this one feels like the Grand Canyon.
Not a problem, though, for Hobie and the boys. "Fan awards mean everything
to us," he asserts, without down playing industry honors. "As far as the
other awards, we don't try to focus too much on it. I'm sure it's a great
moment when it happens, and we'd love to win one. But it's out of our
control. What's most important to us is making music that means something
to people. They're the ones who plunk down fifteen dollars to buy your CD."
They're why Sawyer Brown puts in the hours, not to mention the weeks and
months.This month, the band is releasing a Greatest Hits album which will
include the latest single "I Don't Believe In Goodbye," while working on a
brand new album for the summer. Plus, as we know from their January 27th
T-Dome appearance,another touring season is upon them. "We travel a lot,"
says Hobie, "but we can't complain. The other side of that coin is sitting
by the phone and waiting for ditto ring. Actually," he jokes, "what we're
hoping for now is better routing."
Hardly sounds like someone who's part of a superstar act, though he
wouldn't claim that status anyway. "We're just the guys next door," Hobie
maintains. "I've always said that we are the people we're playing for."
Author: Bob Paxman is a Nashville based freelance journalist. His work has
appeared recently in Country Weekly, Country America, and the London-based
Country Music People. London England, that is. We told you country was
going global, but you just wouldn't listen.
KMPS FM, Copyright 1996 by EZ Communications, Inc. & Hot New Country
KMPS FM.