Des Moines singer-songwriter Andrew Hoyt isn’t letting the stress get to him. Not the stress that comes with debuting (and having entirely paid for) his first all-original EP of music, Kind of Paradise. Or the anxiety in planning the upcoming album release show at Wooly’s, the first time he’s headlined said venue.
Sure that stress is there, but Hoyt is the type of person to focus on the positive side of things. That positive disposition is clear even through a spotty video conference call we had earlier this week, in which we discussed his love of the ukulele (he’s officially sponsored by KoAloha Ukuleles), his decision to leave his full-time teaching position to pursue music and the sun-drenched vibes he captures on his latest EP.
“I have never recorded a project of this caliber before. It’s the most I’ve ever spent on any project. I got to write and work with my heroes in Nashville, but it was all out of my pocket, so it cost me an arm and a leg and my soul, pretty much,” Hoyt said candidly. “And it’s pretty crazy to spend a lot of money on art that’s subjective. But I feel like if this project is at least paid for, I’d be a wealthy human … Hopefully, after this, I can meet with a team to help me make even more music of this caliber, even better, hopefully.”
Hoyt addresses things like money and anxiety with a refreshing directness. He’s also forthcoming about what Kind of Paradise means to him.
“This project marks two years of personal growth. A lot of things fell around me in my life, family things and a relationship where we had broken up. I left my teaching job in March of 2023. I had a free period. I got up from my desk, went to my principal and said, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to do this music thing full time.’ It took a lot of things to fall around me to realize that’s what I had to do now,” he explained.
“The whole core of the album was truly navigating living on this island of me. It’s called Kind of Paradise. I feel like this project is [putting on the] big boy pants. It’s bringing the fancy wine to the party for the first time. I know that I spent enough to get the fancy wine, I contributed enough to make it a good tasting wine [and] man, I feel proud of this.”
There’s a lot to be proud of, including venturing to Nashville to record with a producer he’d looked up to for years.
“I met with Lucas Mortin. He produced for Jordy Searcy and John McLaughlin and Dave Barnes,” Hoyt said. “Like, I am so grateful to be able to work with those people. A lot of this time I’ve looked at Nashville from afar very lovingly. Then to go in there and everybody’s so welcome and supportive— I’m working with heroes that I didn’t feel like I was ready [to work with] until probably now.”
Hoyt was born and raised in Iowa and still resides in Des Moines, so the recording process entailed multiple flights. “Social media and the ease of travel [helps]. I’m like six minutes from the airport. I fly all the time to Nashville. To L.A. and New York. It’s cheap rent here in Iowa and I can go anywhere. That’s what’s nice about not teaching: I don’t have to tell my boss; I’m the boss. I get to make my hours and do what I need to do.”
Hoyt doesn’t just ditch his landlocked hometown for work, but for leisure — which, in turn, inspires his work
“With ‘Cloud Nine,’ one of the tracks on the EP, it’s very lovingly talking about being on vacation and relaxing. I see the ocean almost like Christmas, because it’s rare that I get to see it. So maybe it has become more special in that way. ‘Let’s escape from our day-to-day lives and go see the ocean.’”
“There’s a lot of ukulele on it, too,” Hoyt added with a smile.
It was a chance exchange with an older kid on a school trip that sparked his love of the instrument.
“We went to the Bahamas in middle school and this cool 9th grader was like, ‘If you want to get the ladies, man, you gotta learn an instrument.’ And so he bought a ukulele at Ron’s Surf Shop, and so I did, too. It’s like a cheap, decoration kind of thing; you have to tape the tuning pegs to keep it in tune. But I was just infatuated by the size of it,” he recalled. “It was a very good introduction to songwriting because I could play and sing. I always wanted to have that outlet. Ukulele was just this passageway.”
“Chris Thile, who plays mandolin in Nickel Creek, when he started he was infatuated with the mandolin and he would draw it. He would just spend hours and hours with it. So I spent, like, four hours a day playing ukulele. And played for five years. I’d write a song, like, every day. It was just this urge to write. They were all bad for, like, four years and they’re still bad right now.” Hoyt laughed. “But Ed Sheeran says, ‘The best way to write good songs is to just write as many as you can.’”
Now Hoyt is an official artist with KoAloha Ukulele, which handcrafts and operates out of Honolulu. “They sent me a custom about six months ago. I got to design it. I put my logo on it and all that stuff. It was wild. Honestly, though, I had this embarrassment because everybody played guitar. People would talk to me on stage, ‘When you going to play guitar?’ I recorded this EP, thinking, ‘No more ukulele for this.’ Lucas said, ‘You got to. It’s you— it’s your personality.’ I definitely play guitar and electric guitar and enjoy doing that on stage, but uke clearly will always be somewhere in my set in some capacity, because it’s just a part of me.”
In her upcoming review of Kind of Paradise, LV music reviewer Elisabeth Oster describes the sun-drenched vibes of the sound. And how even through heartbreak, those vibes still really come across. “It sounds like I grew up in a beach town. It’s very Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz-y, I don’t mean to write that way. It’s just, I love the, ‘Let’s relax. Let’s surf’ vibe. I’ve never surfed [laughs] but I imagine that I would if I lived in a beach town.”
Midwesterners deserve the relaxation that comes with sand and a tide, too, especially right now. And that’s what Hoyt’s current project and upcoming release show aim to deliver, in addition to some surprises.
“I think a lot of people will be surprised and pumped, because it’s 10 of us up there total. I’m usually playing solo. People are like, ‘Wait, you play with other people?’ Having it with nine others on stage will be like, ‘Yeah, I play with other people. Let me show you.’”
This is his first time headlining Wooly’s. He keeps the nerves at bay by imagining he’s the host, not the entertainment.
“I act like it’s a welcoming, like I have a party at my house or something. I have to make sure everything’s clean, the food is delicious and wine’s amazing. How’s it? How’s the wine? But I already have pretty much, like, 85 percent of the show planned, ready to go. So, I need to enjoy it and say, ‘This is our party. Let’s go,’ instead of being worried, because I know that it’ll be fun regardless.”
“That’s what music’s about.”
He illustrated this point with some wisdom he took away from a vocal coach who worked on The Voice and American Idol. “She cut me off within 10 seconds of a song. She was just tough love, which I really like, especially if whoever is talking to me knows what they’re doing. And she’s like, ‘You gotta feel it. I want you to show your heart because music’s about fun.’ Sometimes I feel like you gotta work to make it sound good. She said, ‘Whoa. It is never work. It is always fun. Because that’s what people are there for, to have fun.’ So you gotta have fun, you know? Chris Martin of Coldplay, when he plays in London and then plays in Australia and then goes to the United States on a five-day stint. He’s probably tired, but he is giving it his all. He’s having fun. And you should have fun. Just enjoy it.”
