Will Hoge finds himself in quite an interesting place in his music career. “When you’ve done anything long enough, you can look back and realize you’re so much more successful and further along than you ever could hope,” says the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter on a telephone interview while “barreling down the highway” toward a show in Boston. “And at the same time, you can realize you’re also nowhere near as successful as you thought you wanted to be when you started.”
Granted, at 51, Hoge can feel both feelings concurrently, and with good reason. An accomplished songwriter of songs such as Eli Young Band’s massive hit “Even If It Breaks Your Heart” and an established and longstanding artist behind powerful songs such as “Strong” and “Middle of America,” he has much to be proud of. He released his latest album, Tenderhearted Boys, earlier this year. Sometimes, though, he can feel that he hasn’t done enough.
“There are moments when you can catch yourself wishing you were a bigger star so you would be able to pay a band a bigger salary and provide health insurance and things that would come with that kind of success,” Hoge admits. “But I also don’t want to have to miss more of my kids’ lives. It’s really a balance you just try and maintain and create with some semblance of sanity.”
It’s this sanity that the Nashville native hopes to find and showcase come November 17, when Hoge brings his headlining tour to the Southgate House Revival in Newport. And for a longtime political warrior, he says these emotionally-charged times have added extra depth to his travels around the U.S.
“One of the great things about being out here is that you really start to realize that there are a lot kinder and more compassionate and caring people than one might think,” says Hoge, who has made his political views known on songs such as 2012’s “Ballad of Trayvon Martin” and 2018’s “Thoughts and Prayers.” “There may be a lot we don’t agree on, but we do agree that there’s some level of decency and actual democracy that does need to be maintained.”
Luckily, music has a long history of uniting us all. “That’s the great thing,” he says. “I don’t expect everybody to share the exact same political beliefs that I do, and my shows aren’t political really. But there might be a show where you might hear something that makes you think.”
Hoge has been hard at work as of late “doing a lot more production for other artists,” he says, while also putting together a new recording studio. He’s been remixing and remastering his first two albums, Carousel and Blackbird on a Lonely Wire, for re-release early next year. Thinking back on his career, he says he can’t help but recognize Cincinnati’s importance in his development. “It was one of the first places I played outside of the South,” he recalls. “It was the first place where I felt like I was somewhere different. So I always loved it just for that.”
There are other reasons why Cincinnati remains in his heart, many of which have nothing to do with his professional life. “My wife has deep family in the area,” says Hoge. “Her great grandfather was a writer there, Robert Schulkers (author of the Seckatary Hawkins children’s books of the 1920s and ’30s). He had lot going on in Cincinnati and published a lot of books, so that makes it an even more special place.”
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