About That Song: Dylan Hicks
About That Song #69
In our special series, singer-songwriter Sarah Morris interviews artists about the songs that shaped them.
Hi! I’m Sarah Morris. I’m wildly in love with songs and the people who write them. There have been a few songs in my life that have been total gamechangers—songs that made me want to be a songwriter and songs I’ve written that made me feel like I am a songwriter. About That Song is a space where I can learn more about those pivotal songs in other writers’ lives.
In the 69th edition of this series, I was delighted to talk to Dylan Hicks. A wildly creative artist whose music blends elements of pop, jazz, folk, and more, Dylan will be sharing a bill with me at the Dakota in Minneapolis next month! We dug into his musical past and talked about the making of his most recent album.
Dylan Hicks. Photo credit: Wilson Webb.
Sarah: Hi Dylan Hicks! It’s been a joy of mine to get to know your music over the last few years. I started with your current project, Dylan Hicks & Small Screens, though according to the “partial discography, poorly researched” on your website, you’ve released 14 albums since 1990. Additionally, you’ve published two novels, and numerous essays, most recently via the Substack platform. This past September, you put out the 5-song album Modern Flora, which personally kept me company on repeat one weekend in SW Wisconsin (thank you!). This feels like a wonderful opportunity to discuss songs with you—the ones that made a difference in your writerly journey.
Do you remember the song you heard that made you want to be a songwriter? Tell us about that song.
Dylan: Hi, Sarah! Thanks for asking me to participate in this series. I promise I’ll attempt to answer the question after a rambling preamble. Music was a prevailing interest for me from an early age, but until my mid-twenties, I thought of myself as a record collector who played some music more than I thought of myself as an aspiring musician. My parents listened to most of the prominent singer-songwriters of the early seventies, and that style—“singer-songwriter” as a commercial subgenre, I mean, more than musicians of all idioms who write and sing their own songs—ultimately provided a comfortable model for me to occupy as a singer and performer. (I used to be a bit more of a rocker, but I can’t really pull that off anymore.)
As a teenager, I liked finding my way into music that at first seemed strange and alienating, and I liked being instantly seduced by a melody or groove. I never fell in with a musically partisan crowd, and for me, I guess it was socially advantageous to be simultaneously into, I don’t know, Ornette Coleman and Madonna. So while I had lots of memorable and formative experiences listening to music, I don’t remember one that felt epiphanic in the sense of pointing me down a path as a songwriter. So as not to completely dodge your question, I’ll mention a specific song.
Sarah: Ah! Yay! (Although your dodging was artful and appreciated!)
Dylan: My parents let me pick out 45s from a K-Mart endcap starting in 1978, and that same year I got my first album, Barry Manilow’s Even Now. “Copacabana (at the Copa)” was the album’s biggest hit. A few years later I quietly disowned Manilow: too middle of the road, I thought, and though he didn’t come out till later, I was doubtless trying to distance myself from anything that might raise questions about my sexuality. Now, my Manilow years feel continuous with my midlife sensibility. “Copacabana” is very much a pop song, but it has some hip, jazz-derived chord changes and chromaticism in the melody, and the lyrics (by Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman) are clever—I’m not a consummate and chopsy pro like Manilow, but that’s stuff I sometimes aim for.
Sarah: It's one of those songs that’s easy to sing along with, but upon closer examination, the writer in me goes, “OH! OK! I SEE YOU, FANCIER THAN EXPECTED SONG!” Once you began writing, did you feel like a writer immediately? It took me a few years of writing before I believed it—was there a song that gave you that “a-HA! I AM a songwriter!” moment? Tell us about that song.
Dylan: When I started performing in my late teens, I assiduously avoided seriousness. Partly out of insecurity and emotional guardedness, but my instincts were probably suited by my capabilities at the time; spirited levity can be better than unearned seriousness. In 1992 or ’93 I wrote a song called “Governor of Fun,” still very light but more polished in its construction. I recorded that first with the group Dylan Hicks + Three Pesos, then with a later group doing business under my name. Both versions got some left-of-the-dial airplay. That was encouraging and helped bolster my ambitions to professionalize music. Those ambitions sort of panned out.
Dylan Hicks & Small Screens. Photo credit: Wilson Webb.
Sarah: Left-of-the-dial airplay has bolstered many of us, thank goodness. Your new album, Modern Flora, begins with the 11-minute song “If Spring Comes like They Say”—it’s 4.5 minutes of lush instrumentation before you come in with lyrics detailing a conversation with…yourself, with someone (not me!) named Sarah, with the listener… I felt this bittersweet longing in the phrase “if spring comes like they say.” Can you tell us about that song?
Dylan: Most of that album’s music was written in the months leading up to the recording session, but the songy part of “If Spring Comes like They Say” had been kicking around for a year or so. The story is elliptical and flexible, but, as I see it, the narrator is addressing a romantic partner, and they’re in different parts of the country while navigating a move that may or may not reunite them.
I liked it and didn’t think it needed a bridge or more development as a pop song, but I did think more needed to happen. My group with Small Screens is typically a sextet, but for this album, we expanded to a nonet: saxophonists Christopher Thomson and Bryan Murray, trumpeter Elaine Burt, trombonist JC Sanford, cellist Michelle Kinney, guitarist Zacc Harris, bassist Charlie Lincoln, and drummer Pete Hennig. Charlie, an amazing player, is based in New York now, so Dan Carpel, another amazing player, has since taken over on bass.
Anyway, how it worked for four of the album’s tunes was I wrote draft arrangements and scores for the group, and then other members turned those drafts into final arrangements, in the process enriching the music enormously and bringing in all sorts of their ideas, stuff I wouldn’t have thought of or been able to execute. Then we worked together to realize those final arrangements, all of which leave room for improvisation. Christopher Thomson did the final arrangement for “Spring” and brought in the vernal colors that follow the sung section.
Sarah: “And I was the tireless roofer, pounding in shingles next door / The massive orange star that melted your ice cream / The unicellular spore…”—this is the final lyric in your song “The Unicellular Spore,” presumably the only love song with that title in the world over. The sense of play in the arrangement sounds like springtime to my ears (so maybe it came! Like they said it would!) Tell us about that song.
Dylan: The original conceit was to contrast really big things with really small things. I’m science-dumb, and everything I know about unicellular spores has to do with them being super small. I liked the sound of the phrase, though, and, as you say, its novelty. The song is in 3/4 time, kind of a jazz waltz. Zacc Harris did the beautiful final arrangement. Two of the album’s other songs, “All Thumbs” and the title track, have final arrangements by JC Sanford, and those, too, blew me away. It was very collaborative, collegial, and stimulating.
Sarah: That level of collaboration sounds incredibly joyful, and generous. A year or so ago, my friend shared your song “Twyla Tharp” with me, and it was such an infusion of joy to my heart at that particular moment. I couldn’t stop talking about it! What can you tell me about that song?
Dylan: Thanks, Sarah! That one came together late in 2020 or early in ’21. When I was in my twenties, I had tape-based home-recording equipment, but I got rid of that gear along the way and only bought a digital audio workstation in November of 2020. I was restless to record, and of course, we didn’t know yet how long it would take to safely play in a room together.
I put together the programmed, keyboard, and production elements as I wrote the song and was emulating, in a modest way, some of the Top 40 hits I liked around the time, most of which had four chords repeating in a four-bar loop with textural elements adding variety. I sent the track to Michelle Kinney to add cellos, and to Adam Levy, who plays the overlapping funk guitars. For the lyric, I was going for a sort of sexy dance song I could sing in my own voice.
Sarah: So many musical gifts emerged from artists and their 2020 home studio investments. Do you have any upcoming Midwest shows where we might hear you sing that song, or any other song for that matter?
Dylan: I do! Dylan Hicks & Small Screens is playing with the incredible songwriter Sarah Morris and her simpatico band at the Dakota on Tuesday, March 11.
Sarah: HA! I think because you said such nice things, I’m going to go to that show. But truly, I can’t wait to see you and your band onstage. Thank you for chatting with me today, Dylan.
Listen to “If Spring Comes like They Say”
Modern Flora Album Credits
Personnel:
Christopher Thomson, saxophones
Bryan Murray, saxophones
Elaine Burt, trumpet
JC Sanford, trombone
Michelle Kinney, cello
Zacc Harris, guitar
Dylan Hicks, piano and voice
Charlie Lincoln, bass
Peter Hennig, drums
Music, lyrics, and first-draft arrangements by Dylan Hicks.
“If Spring Comes like They Say” arranged by Christopher Thomson.
“The Unicellular Spore” arranged by Zacc Harris.
“Modern Flora” and “All Thumbs” arranged by JC Sanford.
Produced by Dylan Hicks and Everyone.
Recorded July 6–7, 2023 at Creation Audio.
Engineered by Miles Hanson.
Mixed by Ben Allison, Sonic Camera Studio, NYC.
Mastered by Greg Reierson at Rare Form Mastering.
Photos by Bryan Murray.
Art and design by Richard Barlow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Morris. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.
Sarah Morris is a superfan of songs and the people who write them, and a believer that certain songs can change your life. A singer-songwriter / mama / bread maker / coffee drinker who recently released her fifth album of original material, she’s been known to joyfully sing with people in her Big Green Bathroom.
