Meet Stacy Hogan

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stacy Hogan.

Hi Stacy, thanks for joining us today. We’ve love to hear what you’ve accomplished so far and what led you to where you are today in your musical career.
I grew up in a small town in the deep south of Georgia called “Cairo, Georgia”. My parents, James and Debra Hogan had their own band called the “Cross Country Band” that played shows every weekend. My dad played guitar and sang. My mother played piano and sang. My mom’s side of the family was very musical. I grew up hearing 4 part family harmonies during any family gathering. My mom wrote jingles that won advertising awards as well as songs that she would travel 7 hours to Nashville to pitch. She ended up performing her songs multiple times on national television, which was always very exciting for us. Then, one day she gets a call from the legendary Brenda Lee (Rock and Roll & Country Music “Hall of Famer”) saying she saw my mom on TV and wants to record her song on her next album. This led to my mom being mentioned as a standout songwriter in People Magazine. This is not something that anyone expects to happen when living in a small town far away from Music City. Growing up in such a supportive and musical household definitely helped shape my path.

As for me, I started playing piano and writing simple songs when I was 4. The first one I still have on cassette is called “Lonely Dreams”. Then, after seeing the movie, “Amadeus”, and watching it over and over, I started to teach myself the soundtrack on piano by ear. My parents were the ones who had to tell me that was something special or rare. (I had no idea). So, they started putting me in talent shows, and by the time I was 11, I was playing rock and roll piano (Jerry Lee Lewis style) and touring around playing theatres, and events, even opening up for Grammy-winning artist Emmy Lou Harris. I was the little Jerry Lee Lewis kid. I’d kick the chair back and play standing up and play with my feet, etc.. like “The Killer” did. I traveled to Nashville with my mom when I was 11 to play shows at the coveted “Bluebird” and “Stockyard”.. and was featured on the WCTV news in Tallahassee Florida a few times for interviews and performances. Then back to school and normal life during the week.

Shortly after, I joined my parent’s band. Then, I found Nirvana… picked up my dad’s guitar.. started recording my own songs. Shortly after that, I began recording songs for others where I played all the instruments. Then at 15, I started my own little local home studio business. Once I turned 19, a publisher in Nashville, Jim Allison, heard a “one man band” recording I did for a songwriter and offered me a job at his studio if I moved up to Nashville. I was just a couple of months from graduating with a Computer Science degree, but I dropped out immediately and moved to Nashville afraid I’d lose the opportunity if I waited.  I was (and still am) very grateful for his faith in me at an early age..   A few years later, I branched off and started my own music studio/production company (A Writer’s Paradise) that specializes in offering a major label studio sound to songwriters around the world who may live nowhere near such a thing.

Once in Nashville, while trying to build my music business, I also was writing plenty of songs. I was starting projects and becoming part of Nashville’s amazing rock scene at the time with my band “Spout”, then my next project “Lovers and Liars”. I played hundreds of shows. Toured.. which led to management deals, licensing deals, music on MTV Shows, etc.. eventually a record deal with Universal.    Getting support from the local rock station in Nashville, 102.9 The Buzz, meant a lot. They’d do interviews and select my bands to play “Buzzfest” which was always an amazing experience. It’s rare to have a station so consistent in shining light on the underground scene.  Long live the Buzz.

I started writing songs for other rock artists. (Red, Starset, Brian Head Welch (of KORN), The Letter Black, Pillar, etc…) and composed instrumental orchestral music that has been used on everything from UFC Championship to random shows/commercials. I had a side project called “Midnight Mantics” which is fun mega-80 style synth stuff that has been featured on shows including Cobra Kai, Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Comedy Central roast of Rob Lowe, etc.

Then, I decided to start a new rock project to get things off my chest and called it “Sin Shake Sin”. I dove into the studio, wrote a bunch of songs, and recorded them myself. I wasn’t sure what would happen with it if anything. I worked hard emailing fans of other bands literally one by one and asking them to check my music out. It started to work. Word of mouth was spreading. I got a few licensing bites with my songs being used in “Vampire Diaries” and eventually for the end title credits of the Netflix movie “Little Evil”. The director of the movie, Eli Craig, called me up personally and told me that new people will be hearing this song (“Can’t Go To Hell”) for years to come. He was right. People were stopping the movie and finding the song online to stream. My music gained a new audience.

From there, it got featured on some nationally syndicated shows like “Hard Drive”, etc.. it reached #5 on the Billboard radio charts for “Most Added” that week. I was being played in hyper rotation at Sirius/XM “Octane” (which I’m forever grateful for –  thanks to Vincent who believed in the song)… Now, a few years later, streams have gone from one million to 10 million, to now over 80 million. My music was even mentioned by name in an international best-selling fictional novel as part of the scene’s setting.   It’s been alot of work.. but it’s been quite the ride…. one that I’m very appreciative of which I don’t take for granted.

Now I’m in the middle of recording the new “Sin Shake Sin” album and will release the 1st single, “Congratulations, You’re in a Cult” on May 5th, 2023.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
The first thing that comes to mind is having no money and then all of my gear stolen from a Nashville storage unit where we practiced. It was devastating. Especially because that included my (now deceased) father’s guitar he gave me as a “moving away to Nashville” present. This was the guitar he played on stage every night as I was growing up. This gutted me to not only have it happen, but to have to tell him it happened. (It was a very particular guitar, in case this circulates: a blue 1988 Paisley Telecaster with a distinct cigarette burn on the headstock by the tuning keys) – I’ll never give up hoping to find it.

Then there’s driving 8 hours to a gig only to have a pissed-off soundman having a bad day who deliberately sabotages your show with feedback and no stage sound.

A really fun one… having one of the biggest rock managers fly down who brought major label a&r scouts to see an early band of mine in a venue that we’d played 20 times before and had nothing but epic shows until this night… when in the middle of the set, my guitar strap button on the guitar itself comes off mid-set.. guitar crashes to the ground with no way of strapping anything else on because it’s broken…. then the very next song, my guitarist’s amp blows up.. and we’re stuck there in silence trying to fix these issues in front of a crowd.. then a familiar fan/friend thought it’d be funny as a joke to yell “you suck” loudly during the silence, having no idea he’s doing that in front of a&r scouts and our brand new manager (who dumped us that night) who were not “in on the joke”. We’d used all this gear the night before and had a perfect set. None of those issues happened before or after that night… just that night. “the”… night.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’ve always kept my music production business knowing that the more you diversify your income streams, the better.. especially in an industry like this. I love being behind the scenes. I enjoy working with other artists and songwriters. They come to me with song ideas and I help them develop it into something fully fleshed out and then recorded professionally for pitching or licensing. I get to use those “ups and downs” I spoke of earlier to help direct them. It’s rewarding all around.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I see record labels going more and more the way of the dinosaurs. I see people using artificial intelligence to write their music and pretending that’s a good thing. I would love to see songwriters get better laws in place to protect their fair share of compensation.

I also feel that now that rock and roll is back where it’s always come from…. the underground, there will eventually be an anti-bubblegum pop movement sparked by some rock band in the future that breaks through and becomes the new trend…. changing radio, fashion, and minds overnight… as Elvis, the Beatles, or Nirvana did. It may be 10 years from now… but I feel it will happen in the next generation as they grow up wanting to rebel from all the pop stuff their parents listen to.

My daughter spreads her love of “rock” to her pop-loving friends. That’s a good sign to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.sinshakesin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sinshakesinofficial/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sinshakesin
• Twitter: twitter.com/sinshakesin
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sinshakesin 

Image Credits
Jake Warkel