People often speak of Memphis’ close connection to other music scenes in terms of the Memphis-Muscle Shoals axis, the Memphis-Mississippi axis, or the Memphis-Nashville axis, highlighting our city’s cross-fertilization and impact. Few speak of the Memphis-Asheville axis, however. That may soon change with the release of a stunning new album by an Asheville band, The Hypos, that has deep roots in Memphis.
Greg Cartwright now splits his time between the two cities, but even as a resident of Asheville for two decades he’s rightly been identified with his hometown of Memphis, where he first made a name for himself as a songwriter, singer, and guitarist for the Oblivians, the Compulsive Gamblers, and Reigning Sound. Having worked with and produced many other bands throughout his years in Asheville, he now meets and even attracts a lot of fellow musos there, and one such meeting led to a collaboration from which The Hypos were born.
Like Cartwright, guitarist and singer Scott McMicken already had an established musical backlog before The Hypos. His first major band, Dr. Dog, was founded in his native Philadelphia and celebrated to the point of making several late-night network television appearances in the mid-2000s. By the pandemic he and his wife, Leann Cornelius, were living in Arizona, but hoping to expand their horizons. Then, as Cartwright recalls, “around the end of ’21 or so, they came up to Asheville, looking to move from Tucson. Scott and I started getting together to write some songs, and just kind of organically, the band became a thing. First with just a bass player, Kevin Williams, and then Evan Martin came along to play drums. Both of those guys are in other bands in Asheville. And it just seemed to gel pretty well.”
McMicken’s relocation came right as both songwriters were looking to collaborate more. “It’s interesting,” says Cartwright, “I think he’s been in Dr. Dog for most of his life at this point. And I was in Reigning Sound for a very long time. So we’re both coming out of an identity, and bringing all of our favorite parts of that bag with us. But it’s also a totally open place where I’m not beholden to any of it. I don’t have to make anything that sounds like Reigning Sound. I’m not even thinking about Reigning Sound, to be honest. I’ve just done that.”
The talents of Cartwright and McMicken, who share writing credit on most Hypos songs, are perfectly complementary. If the Reigning Sound typically embodied a folk-rock/garage-soul approach, Dr. Dog reveled in the rich vocal harmonies and colorful arrangements more associated with Brian Wilson. Yet both admired the other’s qualities. “I always saw Greg as the guy who seemed to be still shooting from the hip and was actually soulful,” McMicken recently told Asheville Stages. “No filters, no decorations — just plug your guitar into the amp and do something amazing.”
And, while Cartwright admits that during Reigning Sound, “there was something about power pop that I was trying to avoid because it seemed more commercial than I wanted it to be,” he hastens to add that “of course I love pop music. I mean, I grew up on the Beatles and Harry Nilsson!” Now, with The Hypos’ debut having arrived on January 5th, the strength of combining those two approaches is revealed.
But the more colorful palette of The Hypos, ranging from doo-wop harmonies to gonzo organ (courtesy of bassist Williams) to Caribbean rhythms, doesn’t mean it’s so much sonic cotton candy. Case in point: the chilling portrait of violence in “Heartbroke Town,” a song by Cartwright and The Hypos’ latest member, Memphis violinist Krista Wroten. “Everybody’s gotta cry some/I gotta heart, it weighs two tons/I said a prayer for my own son/And the curse of a loaded gun,” goes the chorus, and it may be one of this era’s most powerful howls of pain, albeit wrapped in a chugging reggae-tinged rhythm. Wroten’s voice and violin add an earthiness to the song — and the whole album — that brings The Hypos’ sound into focus.
With Wroten and Cartwright’s deep involvement, and the album being mixed by the Bluff City’s own Matt Ross-Spang, The Hypos may be both the greatest Memphis-Asheville album ever made and the year’s most fruitful songwriting partnership. As Cartwright says, “That’s the best part of collaboration. You get to have a lot of fun and be playful, but you also get to learn.”
