Micah P Hinson
Random Hotel Room, Margareten, 2009
„Alright, the bathroom likes us“, Micah says after he and banjo-player Nick Phelps finished their double feature of “When We Embraced” and “There’s Only One Name” and received some applause out of the bathroom. Micah called us two hours earlier to invite us to his hotel room for the video shoot, because the weather conditions were once more too bad to go outside. So we gather in the narrow Holiday Inn room with Micah and Nick taking their place in front of the window, Micah’s wife sitting on the bed and most of us hiding in the bathroom. Micah’s deep, strong voice not only fills the hotel room; for the second part of the session he turns around, opens the window and sings “Abilene” out into the heavy rain shower. Abilene/Texas is the hometown of his youth, the place where Micah went through some hard times in his life (including drug dependency due, bankruptcy and homelessness), where he started playing guitar and writing songs. Due to the heavy rain there are hardly any people on the street who could listen to the music coming out of the 3rd-floor-window. At least the bathroom applauds again.
- Photography
- Simon Brugner
- Artist
- Micah P Hinson
Random Hotel Room, Margareten
It is a coming and going. People and places are exchangeable. It is anonym and random. This blurred scenery of any hotel room is an elemental state of being for musicians on tour. The romantic motive of the artist as a rambling person is no accident. Yet the raw and pure charm of an idealized restlessness of the artist is soon volatilized by professional obligations. When the spiritual homelessness – footloose and fancy-free – turns into a factual one – bound to engagements-, the routine of the rambling musician is not so glamorous. Not everyone can or wants to live the cliché of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in ever changing constellations in nightly hotel rooms. Again, the illusion of ongoing intensity easily wears out in the normal course of life. The other side of the coin is the idling between the kilometres to travel, the interviews to give, the shows to play. Apart from the joy of making music and playing live, people have their own strategy of how to settle a little and savour the everyday bliss. Be it the recording of a new song on a calm afternoon in your lonesome hotel room – so did Matthew from Phosphorescent when he stopped by in Austria with his Nick Cave-cover of “Right Now I am A-Roaming” – or the companionship by your beloved partner in all that travelling – as Micah P. Hinson was treasured by his wife Ashley.