Magic City Hippies talk tour life and new record

We had the opportunity to catch up with Magic City Hippies while they were en route to their next tour stop. The trio made of Robby Hunter, Pat Howard, and John Coughlin also just released their latest album, Water Your Garden. They make their way up to Seattle on Friday February 12th at the Showbox Market and this should be on your calendar that night. Howard did not join this tour round and we had bassist Guillermo Belisario on the call with Hunter and Coughlin.

playXear: Where am I catching you at the moment?

John: We were just getting breakfast and our engine overheated so we are currently in a mechanic shop in South Salt Lake, Utah.

playXear: You’re about half way through your current tour, how’s it going?

John: We just ended our fourth week of a seven week tour and it’s been incredible. We’ve been a touring band for the last five years now, and obviously the last two years we were not on the road so it feels good to be back. It’s probably been the coldest one yet, I mean East Coast cold is different than West Coast cold. It’s wet and it sticks to you and it hurts, and you can feel it in your soul. We absolutely love it thought! It’s for sure hard but playing the shows is so much fun and the people are here to party.

playXear: Is this the first tour since 2020?

John: We had a fall tour in August/September last year and we got about 60 percent done before we all got Covid and had to go back home to recover. We are back completing the task and it feels great. I remember the first show from that one and it was crazy, I almost hurt myself on stage from jumping around so much, I had so much to let out. This one feels like we’re finding our groove and catching fire.

playXear: Does this one feel better from the fall one in terms of Covid?

Robby: They are getting there, we just had a venue that waived the Covid mandates and that was new for us. I think it’s a sign that things are starting to get better.

John: We started this tour thinking that it might be a big gamble, beginning right at the top of the year, but we had to take that leap of faith. We’ve been very impressed by the turnout, especially in some of the small towns, it feels like they have a lot to let out, like I did that first show.

playXear: How did the band get started?

Robby: Everything started in Miami at this little bar called Barracuda at the Grove where I would go and play along with a rotating cast of musicians. The first time I played with Pat, the drummer, he was subbing in for the drummer that I had at the moment and we just clicked. It was love at first sight, he became the producer of the band, and we wrote a whole bunch of songs together. John was living with Pat at that time and he subbed for a bassist at a show. Honestly we were just playing for beer on Friday nights and it was this crazy, sweaty, drunk rock club that tons of college kids would come to. After that we started playing gigs around Miami and eventually we took a gamble on a little mini tour to meet a booking agent, who really liked us and booked us a national tour opening for Hippo Campus. That was crazy as we toured in this car I just bought, and we toured the country with that thing, it broke down twice on us as we chased a bus around the States. That was about five years ago and we’ve been touring nationally since.

playXear: What role did music play in your early lives? Did you play music growing up?

Guille: I started playing the violin when I was eight and I have this family school of music growing up always and I’ve been playing live music since, being a part of the Miami scene. That’s how I met the boys, one of my close friends was dating Pat and we went to one of their shows as a three piece. I was honestly taken away by how tight they were, we ended up hanging out and I’ve been playing with them since.

Robby: I used to play on the side of the street busking for a good year in the beginning. Music has always been a part of my family too, we don’t have any musicians, but it has been a big part.

playXear: How did you come up with the name?

John: We were living in this house and a lot of people came to hang out every night. Some of our friends in the same scene would come out and say, “You guys are a whole bunch of hippies,” and it stuck. Magic City is from what Miami is called so after briefly being known as the Robby Hunter Band we changed it.

playXear: What was the creative process for your new album “Water Your Garden”?

John: All the music before this one was me, Robby, and Pat. The three of us were in the studio four-five nights a week, really working out the details of every song, versus this one we were all quarantined in our separate homes in different time zones. Robby was in Montana, Pat in Los Angeles, and I was in Miami. We started this for the first time separated and because of that we all made mini-productions of the songs before we sent them in. It gave the songs a bit more focus by the time they hit Pat, who is the producer of the band. Our last album, “Modern Animal,” is one big world that we’re building but for this one the songs came in their own little world that we built out kind of like a solar system all lined up now. The magic of the band is the three of us in the studio which happened when we came together to record.

playXear: What are your hobbies outside of music?

Robby: I love driving my little red scooter in the snow around the mountains, that is a hobby I really like to do.

John: I have a similar thing going on in Miami where I like to ride my bike around the bike trails. I’ve also started singing a bit and it brings me a lot of joy without the pressure of jumping of stage and doing it. Kind of singing along to Chet Baker songs in the morning, it’s like meditating a little bit. The guys are only partially sick of it, but we have three more weeks.

Guille: I currently have a hobby or a bad vice, I’ve been online gambling during the tour. It’s online poker with fake money but it’s ridiculous.

playXear:  Any plans after the tour?

John: Not at the moment, my birthday is in April so might go back to Puerto Rico for that. The tour is going well so we might take a couple of days in New Orleans on the way back to have a couple of sleepless nights.