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Nick Hodgson of Everyone Says Hi and Kaiser Chiefs Interview

A new phase in his career with a new band


Over the last year Nick Hodgson has moved into a new stage of his evolving music career. With a new itch to scratch, the driven songwriter has a band of similar minded friends who have simply come together to create music under the moniker Everyone Says Hi. Some of the fruits are already available, now we can look forward to the release of the debut album. Nick Hodgson seems to thrive on new challenges, to produce new music comes very easily. I chatted to him this week before the album promotion takes off.



ReturnToSound “Last year you put together Everyone Says Hi, how did that come together because before that you had a solo album I believe. Obviously way before that quite a big career with The Kaiser Chiefs and you've had a spell as I suppose you would call yourself a go-to songwriter, so now you're part of a band again?”

Nick Hodgson  “ Well I did a solo album as you said and then I wrote a song called Only One and it suddenly occurred to me that I should put this out. I'd been writing a lot of songs with other people and I thought, I write songs all the time, I'm always writing songs and I wrote this when something sort of twigs in your brain and you go: ‘oh this is me, this is not for anyone else’. So I started, I wrote loads, I wrote many songs and I thought okay this is my second album. On my first solo album I was very determined to do everything myself, I recorded it all and wrote everything. I just wanted to do that at that time but then this time I just thought well that was that, this is this, let's get all my friends in.

Right. so I just got my first one, Justin Parker, he's a songwriter who wrote  video games with Lana Del Rey. He's one of my best friends so we just thought I'll get him to help with the lyrics and just give me an extra person to bounce off. I then got all the members of the band, I saw Pete the bass player, I kept seeing him in the gym. He had left The Kooks and suggested shall we do some music? I said well I'm doing this album, do you want to be on that? And gradually that just happened, everyone added their bits to the album and the sound of it and it turned into a band”.


RTS “So it wasn't your intention before the album to get this band together, Had you played with these guys before?”

Nick “Yeah I played with most of them before when I did I did a little tour. Solo stuff back in 2018. That year I also had a baby, then we had COVID and then before you know it it's  2023”.





RTS “Everyone I've spoken to there's this gap now isn't there?”

Nick “ Yeah, It's like we've lost that time, it's a real division between two periods of time”


RTS “I've noticed a lot of people I've spoken to have reassessed things during that time and maybe done something they wouldn't have done?”

Nick “ Well that's what I was doing  because when co-writing with people they come around to your house or the studio wherever you work,  you meet new people all the time and then suddenly we were doing the songwriting sessions on zoom and I was like forget it. Yeah.

 I'm not desperate to write a song which is done on zoom. Honestly if we're relying on songwriting sessions on zoom I mean we're really If reassessed like you said and I wanted to do something completely different but that wasn't to start a band it was to do something else I wanted to be maybe a manager. We were looking at bands to manage me and my friend”


RTS “So anything was on the table at that time?”

Nick “Well it definitely took me away from what I had been doing. I did enjoy Covid for one thing. I just listened to loads and loads of new things, I went on BBC Introducing all around the country and listened to all the BBC Introducing every week to discover new stuff that I could work with”.


RTS “Anyone in particular?”

Nick “Well I found a band called Priestgate who have since split up and I recorded quite a bit of stuff with them and a girl called Martha Jean; I worked with her a bit, that was good. I remember we got the demos for English Teacher, me and my friend, we wanted to manage them but they already had a manager”.





RTS “That would have gone well, now you have the band together do you intend sticking or is this just for the short term?”   

Nick “Yeah I do actually think we stick, I think what we've got in this band is really amazing. When we start playing songs together there’s a really, really good feeling. Everyone's done a lot of touring, everyone's done a lot of TV and then radio and interviews and being in videos so we’ve all seen it and everyone's got over it. It's not new anymore. The level of moaning and complaining has decreased and so everyone's just enjoying it for what it is. I definitely think we will continue, well I know we will”.


RTS “Maybe the next album will be more of a co-write maybe with these guys?”

Nick  “I  tend to write the beginnings of songs I like to have a solid thing and then go in and work on it. I just see what comes out and if it comes out all in one go.That would be lyric chords and melody, they're the good ones.


RTS “Did you have songs pre Kaiser Chiefs?”

Nick “I've been writing proper songs since I was about 12. The Kaiser Chiefs didn't get signed till I was 26 I think it was probably our last chance”.


RTS “Now with Everyone Says Hi you are front and centre as the head honcho whereas with The Kaiser Chiefs you may have been on drums with others in the spotlight, does it bring added pressure on you?”

Nick “Ah yeah, I mean I was the head honcho in the old band as well but I just sat at the back so it's just basically a change of seat. I loved being on the drums as that was my calling  I just always wanted when I was a kid to play the drums. I played the piano first then the flute then guitar and then I played the drums, drums was always my dream. I was always changing positions in the band (Kaiser Chiefs) in rehearsal when we were writing and rehearsing. Ricky would play the drums while I showed the others the song, you couldn't really do that from the drums.

 I really really like singing, I like doing the front man thing. It comes naturally. I mean if you knew me when I was a kid you'd go, oh that guy's gonna be a singer. I wanted to be right in the middle of the stage and experience it so now when you step on stage you're at the front. You really have a rapport, that's the bit that's so good. I can say something between songs and there's an actual  interaction, when you're in the drums you do feel removed. I love playing the drums but I didn't like that element where you couldn't experience the crowd. In this band now everyone's so good as well. I trust them when they're playing to come up with the bit that's better than I could have come up with. It feels a bit freer; you can just relax a bit more. I think I was very dictatorial in the old days, yeah I mean it's easy to become that way”.


RTS "You’re touring soon around the record shops for promotion of the album?”

Nick “That's the next thing, I know we're doing  Sunday brunch on Channel Four, a couple of gigs on Monday and Tuesday next week and then Record stores yeah”.


RTS “Have you all of the band coming with you or are you doing a stripped down version?”

Nick “Mainly me and Tom the guitarist and we're going to sing acoustically then do a signing. Then the last one is going to be a full band, a proper gig that's in Liverpool”. 






RTS “Lucky Stars” has just been released in advance of the debut album. It has that mid-70s production and sound to it when everything sounded just how it should, do you self-produce?” 

Nick “Yeah I produced it all but I was in the studio with great engineers who mixed it. When you're producing you basically guide the sound, you have an idea what you want it to sound like and make sure it doesn't go too far away”.


RTS “I suppose you do most of that in the studio?

Nick “We pretty much had the arrangement done before we did all the demos in this studio. We then went to a rehearsal room and really, really got it tight as we didn't have very long in the studio, we only had two weeks to record the whole album. We had to be tight, knowing all the changes we then went in and I wanted to get a certain sound. I’ve been listening to a lot of records on vinyl at night after dinner and after everything's calmed down in the house I put my phone in another room and I put a record on. I think oh this is good and that's where a lot of the inspiration came from for actually starting to make an album. I wanted to make an album I could feel good about putting on alongside some of the other records I was listening to. I wanted it to sound like those classic vinyl records”.






RTS  “Brain Freeze" reminds me again of those seventies productions, Elton, Neil Young or 10cc, what's "Brain Freeze" about?”

Nick “Brain Freeze" is about….. you've picked the one song where I can't put my absolute finger on it all the others I know exactly but sometimes you just write a song and you have to figure out what it's about afterwards. I've done that loads of times like oh my god with The Kaiser Chiefs that was one I haven't got a clue what it's about until you've written it and then you go all right that's that and that's this. I do think they're quite similar songs.The first lyric because death runs in your family I just thought that was a cool line”.


RTS “You can leave it at that and let the listener decide that's what a lot of songwriters do?”

Nick “ I can't explain "Brain Freeze" really, it's just a lot of cool sounding stuff and ideas”.






RTS “You've also already released "On the same side" which from my perspective is the big hitter on the album. I know there's a bit of a story behind that song, where was it offered first?”

Nick “We wrote that me and Justin a few years ago and it's one of those you know is good, definitely good and when the person you've written it for who in this case was Liam Gallagher turns it down you  think, oh shit. Where else can it go because it was very specific. So it had to be me to sing it”.


RTS “It does sound very Oasis-ish no doubt about it, were you requested to write the song?” Nick “Justin had been asked to write something for Liam, he asked me to help because I  speak Oasis because when I was 16 it was like it was my world”.


RTS "You wrote the song and he didn't like it?”

Nick “He didn't mention that I mean everyone else liked it, similar in fact with the Dua Lipa one, everyone liked that Dua Lipa song all apart from one person and that was her manager. The record label loved it and she loved it and everyone loved it and then you get one person and in this case it was I don't know who? I heard those around Liam thought it was a really good song, they really liked it. I think he'd said he didn't want to like it because he didn't want a song by a Kaiser Chief”.



RTS “So you don't know that definitely but that's now become mythical hasn’t, I suppose in your world it's going to follow you around?”

Nick “A bit but that's the only response I would have accepted to be fair because he didn't say the song was shit he just didn't want it because it was one of mine, that's probably better. They had a load of beef with us, we were just enjoying it but yeah I think that's what happens  when they see something coming that's about to sell more records than them? I mean we were maybe seen as the new upstarts though they started off very kind and nice to us and then as we got bigger they decided to ….."  


RTS “But going back to "On the same side" now I've heard you singing it I can't imagine it any other way I'll be honest with you”.



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