The Nashville roots-rocker has a new album coming out on Friday — which he ingeniously promotes with sweat and stories about John Prine
Hey, it’s hard to sell records these days, especially as an independent artist. So we give props to Will Hoge for literally sweating to get his music heard. To promote Wings on My Shoes, his superb new album out Friday, the Grammy-nominated Nashville roots-rocker hopped on his Peloton and led a 15-minute exercise workout featuring all those class-or-cult? catchphrases.
“1, 2, 3, up!” Hoge hollers at one point. “You got a towel? Wipe yourself off with it,” he commands the next. When his headset mic falls off during one intense pedal, he’s unfazed. “We got this shit under control,” Hoge quips.
But the best part isn’t the committed instructor cosplay — the singer throws himself fully into the Fielder Method here — it’s the real-life songwriting stories Hoge tells while he cycles. “John Prine’s Cadillac,” for instance, was inspired by spying the late songwriting legend in traffic in his Caddy, with a “shit-eating grin on his face.” (Hoge paid tribute to Prine by shooting the video for the song at Arnold’s meat-and-three in Nashville, Prine’s favorite lunch spot.)
Hoge filmed the whole outrageous workout not at a professional cycle studio, but in his home, on what appears to be one uneven floor: His bike sloshes around like a Tilt-a-Whirl missing a few bolts. But it’s all part of the charm, and Hoge, one of Nashville’s sharpest wiseasses, is in on the joke.
“I gotta get myself ready for all this touring that’s coming up,” he says. “I guess this was the cheapest way to do it.”
Hoge will break a sweat a different way when he headlines Nashville’s 3rd and Lindsley on Sunday. He’ll play AmericanaFest in September too, before launching a U.S. tour in October.