Interview: Catching Up With Hodera + Stream “North Dakota”

Photo Credit: Brian L. Tice Jr.

Cutting their teeth in and around the New Jersey scenes, Hodera have made a name for themselves with their eclectic rock stylings and deep, rich lyrical content. Their forthcoming album, First Things First, is due out October 20th via Take This To Heart Records with lead single “North Dakota” offering a glimpse into the dynamic path forward Hodera is blazing for itself.

To learn a little bit more about the band, GroundSounds sent some interview questions over to go along with a stream of “North Dakota.” Check it all out below and be sure to pre-order First Things First here.

Hi, Hodera! Congrats on your new album. Can you tell us a little more on who you are and how you first got into making music?

We are a collaborative of musicians from all over NJ and PA. I (matthew) can really only speak for myself on how I first started making music. I started to take it seriously around 10 and was writing songs by 11. This band formed in 2014 after a few failed bands throughout high school and college.

What’s your songwriting process like? Who are some of your biggest influences?

Most of our music I write acoustically, record it with the voice memos app on my phone, and upload it to a dropbox folder that i share with the rest of the band. From there we pick which songs are best and get together to work on them. For some songs the vision is very clear and for others my bandmates take my ideas and turn them into something better and completely different! Our influences are constantly changing and we are always turning each other on to new styles of music. We take a little from emo revival, math rock, indie-folk, 60s folk, grunge, but also some electronic and jam band music too. It’s hard to say specific bands though, as they’re always changing. Some solid influences would definitely be Bright Eyes, Brand New, + and earlier Front Bottoms

What’s “North Dakota” about? How did it come to be?

We were on my friends porch in Indiana, the morning after a show, and Alek showed me a chorus he was writing. When we got home from the tour I wrote the verses about my friend who we had stayed with in Indiana. So it’s kind of cool that the song about her started at her place.

How much of this album was inspired by your travels while touring?

I never really used to write on tour but the past couple years i have been. “North Dakota” was written in Indiana (go figure), “Baltimore” was written in Baltimore and Philadelphia, “Highways” was written in Asheville, “Holding Patters” is a song with voice overs from friends I’ve met all of the country, and two other songs mention cities i’ve visited. Also 3 of the 5 songs that didn’t make the record were written on the road as well. So yea, I never really thought about it but a lot of this record was written on the road.

Any new New Jersey-based artists/venues/purveyors of the arts you could turn our readers onto?

Bands: Sunbowl, Sunflower, and Halogens.

Where can we follow you and where can our readers catch you live next?

Spotify, Insta, Twitter, Facebook, and pretty much all major social media platforms, streaming services, and online stores. All our tour dates can be found at Hodera.net/Tour. Our release show is 11/3 at Brighton Bar!

Any parting thoughts? Open platform!

I just hope people dig the new record i guess. It’s both louder and softer than anything we’ve put out and we took 2 years to really make the best record we could, re-recording a few times and cutting a lot of songs. A lot of the music touches on subjects I’ve tackled in previous releases, but I feel we were really able to lyrically and sonically capture the growing pains of young adults in this record in a way I wasn’t able to before.