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Interview: Hop Along on comfort zones, folk and jazz inspiration, and Philadelphia’s musical renaissance

With all the stellar releases 2015 offered, Philadelphia indie rock act Hop Along made a splash when Painted Shut came out exactly a year ago yesterday. The album gained critical acclaim by showcasing the band’s ’90s influenced sound adorned with Frances Quinlan’s honest and emotional lyrics. By the end of the year it was hard to see a best of list that didn’t have the LP mentioned; it catapulted the band to new heights as a sought-after live act among independent music fans.

On Sunday, May 8, the latest ace band from the City Of Brotherly Love will be making their presence felt in the Boston area when they play the Sinclair in Cambridge with Massachusetts heroes Speedy Ortiz and Maryland street jazz act Two Inch Astronaut. It’s a match made in heaven for anyone who loves raw guitars and catchy rhythms. Ahead of the weekend’s festivities (and note: Hop Along will also be playing Waking Windows in Vermont on Friday), Vanyaland had a conversation with Quinlan about the band’s beginnings as a solo project, getting out of her comfort zone, the themes behind Painted Shut, Philadelphia’s musical renaissance, and what’s in store after this current expedition.

Rob Duguay: You started Hop Along as a freak folk project and now it’s a full-fledged band. How did you initially get your brother Mark, Tyler Long and Joe Reinhart involved?

Frances Quinlan: Mark was the easiest one to get involved since we’re siblings. The band that he was in were breaking up actually and I’d always wanted to play with a band. It ended up being a really great coincidence timing wise because I was just getting out of school when his band was splitting up. We started jamming at the time with my friend Dom [Angelella] who was the first person I ever went on tour with. The three of us used to jam but Dom got really busy with his band Drgn King so he had to pursue that full-time. Tyler joined a little bit before that, he’s from our hometown and I played a few shows with Joe’s band Algernon Cadwallader around a decade ago so we knew each other for a while. Joe originally was our producer at the time and he played guitar a lot on our album Get Disowned with Dom. After the record was done he just joined the band. That makes the four of us.

I know a bunch of solo artists that have always wanted to start a band but they find it arduous to actually find people who have the time to play with them. Last year’s release Painted Shut was the first time the band arranged everything as a group rather than just following your lead. With that happening, did you ever feel like you were out of your comfort zone while making the album?

I get out of my comfort zone the second I’m playing with other people. That’s the unique thing about our band, I’ve never really told anyone exactly what to do on songs. We always kind of arrange together, there’s a few things on Get Disowned with “No Good Al Joad”, “People Found Me”, and “Some Grace” where I was explaining to everyone how the song was going to go. Everything else with every other song that I start out there’s just always room, especially with those guys. They’re incredible arrangers and incredible musicians so what they come up with goes beyond what I could ever tell them to do.

That’s what I think kept this from becoming just a folk band. What I play is usually rhythm guitar and bass, I don’t write leads. I focus on the lyrics and the vocal melody and that’s comfy for me. With Painted Shut that was the most quickly, except for that solo album that I did a long time ago with Freshman Year, that happened pretty fast. The album took two years to put together because of everyone’s schedules and because of that there was all sorts of room for all sorts of ideas. Joe would stay up until eight in the morning and I would only make it until like four writing new material.

There’s piano and I even played skillet drum on that record, just craziness. I love it and I’m very proud of it. With Painted Shut we had a limit on time for financial reasons too so we knew we had to be ready. Everybody had to know what they were doing for that record, everybody had to know their part pretty well. We had some room to rewrite things in the studio but otherwise we had to know how to play that stuff live, which I’m not used to. I’m used to composing as you go along and you put the record together like a collage or something, I enjoy that.

With Painted Shut it had to be able to be played live because we had to put that backing track down. That was a challenge but I like that none of our records follow a format of ours. We do it differently every time we make a record.

Doing it differently every time must make it more fun and you seem like an artist that enjoys challenging yourself while playing with other people. Painted Shut is definitely one of my favorite records that came out last year.

Thank you.

One thing I discovered that’s very interesting about the album is that the themes of the songs stem from the lives of two different musicians. Jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and folk artist Jackson C. Frank are both known for their influence on countless artists along with being afflicted with mental illness until they both died penniless. What inspired the band to go this route with writing songs influenced by the lives of these two musicians?

Those were two artists I heard about in two different points in my life. I read about Buddy Bolden when I was in school and I was writing about Hope Cemetery in New Orleans. That’s where he’s buried but because his sister couldn’t keep up with the payments he was dug up a number of times. I guess they lost the original plans and by the time they thought about it they didn’t know where he was. No one knows where Buddy’s body actually lays, there’s a little monument in Hope Cemetery saying “Here Lies Buddy Bolden” but they don’t know exactly where.

I heard about Jackson C. Frank while painting a friend of mine’s house. I had Pandora on and I guess it was on the Nick Drake station, “Tumble In The Wind” came on and I was just floored by how beautiful that song was and how ragged he sounded. It was recorded later in his life when he’d already had been homeless for a little while. That’s a pretty incredible, emotional song. I didn’t want to beat people over the head with the story. That’s why everybody in the band is so good, they operate well with subtlety when it’s needed. I felt good about that song when we finished it, I’d been kicking it around for a while.

The music scene in Philadelphia has been experiencing a bit of a rejuvenation over the past few years. Hop Along and Beach Slang both achieved commercial success last year and there’s always been a strong folk and blues movement happening with the likes of Langhorne Slim, Hoots & Hellmouth and Toy Soldiers having roots in the city. As a musician who’s in the thick of it over there, how do you feel about the music that’s been coming out of Philly so far this decade?

It’s great. I definitely see how local music here is getting more noticed by people for sure. I haven’t lived in Philly that long, I moved here in 2008. I came here from Baltimore and there was a great music scene happening there at the time, Wham City was in full bloom and Dan Deacon was doing really well and he still is. When I came to Philly I didn’t see any lack of activity even though I was hearing a lot more about what was happening in Baltimore at the time. House shows were popping up all the time, when one disappeared one came right back up. I will say that a lot more people are moving here right now, a lot more musicians are.

I’m assuming that has more to do with the rent than anything else creatively. It’s just a part of what happens in history, when you look at New York in the ’60s through the ’80s people came because the opportunities to live and work were there. A lot of great bands are popping up in Philly right now but there have been so many great bands to come out of here over the last 10 years. Algernon Cadwallader was definitely one and a band called Bandname was around, there’s so many. You have bands like Dr. Dog that started out playing house shows and The War On Drugs and Kurt Vile. As long as I’ve lived here, it’s been active and it’s great that people are taking notice.

Especially for the past five years people have heard a lot about what’s been going on in Philadelphia musically along with a lot of other cities. After this current tour with Speedy Ortiz and Two Inch Astronaut, what can we expect next from Hop Along?

We just mapped out several weeks of writing on and off for the next record. That’s our next focus is to get another album underway before three years rolls along. It happens so fast.

Do you have a target date for the new album already?

Not yet. Our label Saddle Creek is very understanding and I think everybody just wants it to be good.

HOP ALONG + SPEEDY ORTIZ + TWO INCH ASTRONAUT :: Sunday, May 8 at the Sinclair, 52 Church St. in Cambridge, MA :: 7 p.m., 18-plus, sold out :: Bowery Boston event page :: Facebook event page