Mike Hosty territory
Oklahoma’s one-man band, Mike Hosty, delivers his 16th album.
It might be easiest to sum up Norman musician Mike Hosty in his own words: “I’m big on ideas.”
Among his near-future recording plans: an album composed solely of songs where he only talks, a “mumbling country” album and assembling a Latin rhythm section in a studio, over which Hosty plans to play the blues. If these ideas sound incongruous, it’s because they are, or because you haven’t yet seen Hosty or his Hosty Duo in concert and don’t realize that he’s a common thread strong enough for it all to make sense.
If the latter is true, and you’re an avid Oklahoma music fan, it’s safe to say your required reading isn’t complete.
Start at Hosty’s weekly “One Man Band” show at Norman bar The Deli. Late every Sunday since 2000, a rowdy assemblage of townies and college students congregates at the charming dive for his residency, which showcases Hosty’s formidable instrumental skill — he’s the guitarist, singer, drummer and kazoo player. It’s also a performance art piece, in a way: topical lyrical asides, commercial audio samples, back-and-forth conversations with the crowd, comedy bits, free pizza and a humble merchandise display at his feet. It’s not necessarily a typical Hosty show, and that’s by design.
“Year after year, I keep adding something to it,” Hosty said. “Multiple instruments, a sampler, looper, different guitars. I always try to keep it like a talk show, like you’re watching a late-night show with songs, jokes. Make people laugh.”
‘It meant something’
Those laughs seem important to 46-year-old Hosty, who just released his 16th album, simply titled “Uno,” recorded at The Mousetrap studio in Norman, with producer Carl Amburn. Hosty himself performed all instrumentation on the album (save for a couple of guest vocalists on “turkey gobble sounds”). As he does onstage, Hosty treats all of the songs with equal deadpan levity, right at home on crunchy blues opener “Gonna Get Ya,” an ode to everyone’s favorite shirt-ruining fair food, the “Turkey Leg” and on “Barfight,” what Hosty calls a “talking song I just made up.”
There’s subject matter everywhere to Mike Hosty, which makes sense if you consider his original career path.
“I wanted to write jingles,” Hosty said. “Like [singing] ‘You shop Cimarron Pottery!’ or ‘Jewelry is the gift to give …’ They get played on the radio more than actual songs. Everyone knows them, and they’re fun to do. I got on a degree path, and OU offered nothing that had anything remotely to do with jingles.”
Hosty said his advertising degree quickly became worthless once the internet happened and renewed his focus on music. He credits a high school friend named David Rice for urging him to commit to performing music a few years prior.
“My first show was in 1987 at the Mistletoe Bash. David said, ‘Hey, get a band together, and I’ll put this party on,’ “Hosty said. “We were completely awful, but it was so much fun. He was a great motivator, a most likely to succeed guy. That’s where I got started.”
The following years saw 250-plus shows a year and plenty of miles, many of them as half of the guitarand-drums outfit Hosty Duo, though lately he’s enjoyed, as he puts it, “playing with himself.”
“I like the freedom to play, to go in and out of different things at a moment’s notice,” Hosty said. “It’s been really inspiring after having done the same thing for a long time.”
It has been nearly three decades of constant shows since the Mistletoe Bash, but everything came to an unexpected halt in 2014. The previous summer, an off-the-cuff conversation with a cardiologist friend at a party encouraged Hosty to see a doctor, who told him he had one year to have open heart surgery to replace an aortic valve.
“I asked if he’d give me an echocardiogram before the party, and he said yeah as a joke, but that really led me to get a diagnosis,” Hosty said. “I’d always been told I had a heart murmur, but it was a shock.”
He had the procedure in January 2014 and stayed offstage through April 2014 after being released from a weight restriction — he couldn’t lift his own musical equipment — and undergoing cardiac rehabilitation. He said the health scare lit a bit of a fire, creatively.
“I went in the studio and tried to record every single song I have. It was a desperation thing; I wanted someone to hear them,” Hosty said. “And it really made me look around at what I was doing, for sure, and take a second look at some of the things I do and places I play.”
For 2017, it appears Hosty’s dance card is full; a glance at his website shows him booked solid through June with local and regional shows, including gigs at songwriter havens like Austin’s Saxon Pub and Denton’s Dan’s Silver Leaf. For all his onstage whimsy, at the core lies a serious musician and a road dog, continuing what he always prefers and what few people stick to these days — aiming to make connections with music fans, face-to-face, and show them his many, many ideas.
“I want people to have fun and listen to songs,” Hosty said. “Interact, engage them. As soon as you see them start smiling, you’re onto something. I understand that hype is important, but I’d rather someone listen to a song and buy a CD because it meant something to them and they want to support it. That means the world to me.”