{"id":37375,"date":"2017-01-11T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T14:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=37375"},"modified":"2017-01-10T12:06:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T18:06:29","slug":"the-state-of-oxford-music-a-conversation-with-local-drummer-jace-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-state-of-oxford-music-a-conversation-with-local-drummer-jace-hughes\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of Oxford Music: A Conversation with Local Drummer Jace Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jace Hughes<\/strong>, member of local hard rock bands The Heard<\/strong> and Bad Dates<\/strong>, has been an Oxford resident now for a decade. In that time he\u2019s seen the town\u2019s decline of punk rock in the early 2000s, the coming of Dent May\u2019s Cat\u2019s Purring collective, and the lull that is now Oxford\u2019s music scene. Hughes sat down with us to talk shop and his experience making music in Oxford.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a while before I played with anyone here really,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cI didn\u2019t have my drum set and didn\u2019t really know anyone who wanted to get together. There were some late nights drunk jamming, but I didn\u2019t know how to get in the bar scene.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The bar scene, then, consisted of a different musical landscape than we have today on the Square.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started listening to bands around here it was the Hill Country Blues kind of stuff and soft piano, love making stuff\u2026and that was good but once that went away the only thing that was more hardcore was like Tyler Keith and The Cooters, and those are rare [now].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For years the music scene continued to be a fragmented front.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt really seemed like right around the time The Heard came up that like 10 bands popped up out of nowhere. Overnight there was a scene,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cI was talking to Landon [Boyte] about it and it was like everyone was trying to help each other and at the time we had three venues to play at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The comradery everyone felt then combined with the amount of venues made putting together shows a breeze.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you couldn\u2019t get a show then someone else would help you get one or they\u2019d get one and put you on the bill,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cEvery weekend, every other night, there was a show with a three band bill and it was $5. It was awesome. We were all going at the same time. Everyone was making an EP at the same time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This golden age of music in transient Oxford was not meant to last however.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJust like it started overnight, it ended overnight,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cPeople moved out of town, bands broke up or they just got uninterested. It sucked. Brian [Hatch, bass player of The Heard] and I were talking the other day about how we miss it. We miss when there was a scene.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with the musicians departing many of the fans and friends and went with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow it\u2019s like if you play Rock and Roll and play at Larrys\u2019, unless you already have a big following like And The Echo, it\u2019s tough to get people out. I feel like there\u2019s not enough people left who want to listen to Rock and Roll. They want to listen to other things, which is great, it\u2019s just a shame that it feels like no one wants Rock and Roll.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hughes second band, Bad Dates, are currently on hiatus. The primary reason for their break being that despite being well received in Oxford, the shows just weren\u2019t filling out for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have to ask myself the same question about me and Brian working on new The Heard material,\u201d said Hughes.<\/span><\/p>\n

While it is true to say that Oxford has lost much of the scene that, largely, orbited around the late Cat\u2019s Purring Dude Ranch, there are still talented musicians playing in town.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of good bands [in Oxford], but I couldn\u2019t tell you any of them,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cThe only one I still know that\u2019s stuck around is And The Echo. There are these newer electronic bands that I do like, but I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s really a scene around them. Maybe that\u2019s just me being detached though.\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jace Hughes, member of local hard rock bands The Heard and Bad Dates, has been an Oxford resident<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":37376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7887,1],"tags":[3820,9709,5778,5915,7326,7,5779,5807,1769,1986,5,642,1380,4,9710,53,9115,1593,4708,9711],"class_list":["post-37375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-music","category-uncategorized","tag-and-the-echo","tag-bad-dates","tag-brian-hatch","tag-cats-purring-dude-ranch","tag-concerts","tag-entertainment","tag-jace-hughes","tag-landon-boyte","tag-live","tag-live-music","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-music","tag-oxford","tag-oxfords-favorite-new-band","tag-proud-larrys","tag-rock-and-roll","tag-the-blind-pig","tag-the-heard","tag-venues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017-01-10-jace-Hughes.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}