We chat to Hanni El Khatib About His Upcoming Australian Tour

Having first visited Australia back at the start of 2012, Californian rocker Hanni El Khatib will return to our shores over the turn of the New Year for an east coast tour.

Armed with material from his Dan Auerbach-produced sophomore album, Head in the Dirt, HEK and band will bring their raucous, catchy rock sound to shows in Sydney and Melbourne as well as appearances at The Falls and Southbound festivals.

Congrats on your latest record, how have you found the response since its release?
I’ve been touring quite a bit, and the response has been good. This record reached a broader audience for me – you kind of notice that when you start playing shows. Our last show, which was in Moscow last week, marked the hundredth show of this touring cycle, so I’ve been pretty busy! It’s funny to compare where we started out and where it’s at now, and so far it’s been a really positive response.

Compared to you debut, 2011’s Will The Guns Come Out, the latest record sounds more cohesive. Would you agree? Why do you think this is so?
I would say so. I think sonically it pulled together quite nicely. Dan [Auerbach]’s studio has a really specific sound – once you get to know his studio you get to know the sound that comes out of it. Also, it was recorded in a pretty short amount of time – I believe we tracked the record in like eleven days – and with all the same musicians [El Khaitb, Auerbach, Patrick Keeler and Bobby Emmet] so that’s automatically going to make it more cohesive.

My first record was recorded over the span of eight months, intermittently, at a friend’s house by myself, so it wasn’t created in such a quick and spontaneous way. There were songs that were created on the spot but for the most part I was just doing it as a hobby.

So how did you end up meeting and recording the album with Dan Auerbach?
I was in Paris on tour and I played a show one night, and after the gig I was DJing an after party. Dan happened to be in town at the time and some mutual friends introduced us and we just started talking about music and then stayed in touch and became friends after that.

Flash-forward to a few months later, I was ready to record my new album and he had already offered up his studio to me. When I started to plan [recording time] and figure out when it would be possible, it turned out that he was going to be home from tour and we just though it would be a no-brainer for us to work together. It didn’t make sense for me to go in there without him.

How was he to work with?
He was easy to work, we had already established a friendship beforehand and we have the same tastes in music. He could have been the type of producer that just sat back and popped in and out and gave me positive vibes or whatever, but it didn’t make sense to do it that way, at least on this record. He was just like, “fuck it, I’ll play whatever on the album. Let’s just keep it open-ended and do whatever we need to do to make the songs better.”

Where does your eclectic sound come from?
I like all sorts of music and I guess that comes out in the stuff that I make. I listened to Mobb Deep and Souls of Mischief and shit so sometimes I just want to listen to rap all day and then make a rock song.

When I started paying guitar, after I’d discovered Jimi Hendrix and Zepplin and Sabbath and all that typical guitar rock stuff, I started getting interested in bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr and that showed me “you can get a guitar and start a band and play music like this.”

Later that turned into refining my tastes and discovering really old music and then realising that I’m really into soul and funk and old rock n roll. It’s like an endless pit; every single day there’s a new song or new record that I’ve never heard that I think is cool.

So outside of music, where else do you draw inspiration from?
It’s a lot to do with travel – I think the stories you gather from travelling and meeting new people are the things that inspire me to make art and make music.

I used to be a creative director for a skateboard company so, since my early 20s I’ve always been a designer and art directed projects and worked on every angle creatively, in terms of a visual aesthetic. So that turned into my love for the arts and love for design, which is why I still do it today.

For my last couple of records, I came up with the visual concept before I finished the album. That always happens; I haven’t even written all the songs for my next record, yet I’m already thinking about the album cover. I need that to complete the concept, it gives me a goal to work towards so I can stay focused and be consistent.

You were last in Australia at the start of 2012, how did you find that tour?
It was great. It was the first time I’d ever been to Australia, and it was also early days of touring for me; I’d only been consistently touring for about a year prior to that. It was quite a different show back then and I had a different outlook on a live gig. Back then it was just a drummer and me and we’d throw an amp onstage, make some noise and get the fuck off the stage – that was my attitude to shows.

Since then I’ve added and swapped members to become the four-piece that is my current line up. After I did the record with Dan last June, I realised “hey I can write these songs, but there’s a huge difference when I get the right people playing it.” When you get that calibre of musician on the song it breathes new life into it, and you can hear it all over the record. And so from that moment on, I needed people to be able to play as well as that.

I could just hire any session player that can play, but they have to be able to fit the vibe and get along. It’s kind of like figuring out a puzzle.

Is there anything in particular you are looking forward to about the upcoming trip to Australia?
I’m just excited to get out there. I was just in Russia, the fucking tundra; it was like negative seventeen or whatever so I’m viewing Australia as a holiday for me. Even though we have like eight shows or whatever, it’s going to be fun

From when we were there last and from all the Australians I know here in America, it’s just good times and fun people; people genuinely like music out there. Australia is so far for American bands to get to and we rarely get there, so when we are there people want to be there. Unlike jaded-ass people in fucking LA or Brooklyn or whatever where they couldn’t give a shit, where they see two songs and walk out, just so they can say they were at a show… So I’m looking forward to [Australia].

I’m looking forward to the bands that we’re playing with too – I know we have a few shows with White Denim and that’s going to be cool, I think it’s going to be a good night of rock n roll for people.