To listen to an Eric Himan song is to get a glimpse inside the artist; the songs come from a personal place and no topic seems to be off limits. Everywhere All At Once covers everything from romantic and familial relationships to homophobia to breast cancer to hurricane survival. And it's these emotional constants the listener can identify and relate to.
A couple weeks ago singer-songwriter Eric Himan granted me a phone interview and we talked about the evolution of his music, love, humor, and the pitfalls and advantages of managing his own independent label.
The new Album, Everywhere All At Once has been out a few weeks now. How is everything going?
It's been amazing. It's weird because it's my most creative to date. I just happen to start touring on it and people are slowly starting to come back to me and telling me, "Oh, I like this song." Or "I like this song."
It's not like an overnight success. It's slowly building and I think that's really neat. When I first sent it out I was getting nothing back and I was getting nervous. 'Cause it was like, "Uh-oh. Why am I not hearing anything?" But now I'm starting to get a lot of feedback. It's been doing really well.
Do you approach marketing differently now than when you first started?
Oh definitely! You learn what does and doesn't work. At first I marketed a lot to the LGBT community and I've done a lot within it, but now I'm trying to do stuff outside of it as well. So, that's been a challenge, but definitely a step in the right direction.
Since you're marketing differently, do you approach songwriting differently?
I think with this CD more than ever. I try to write more in the moment now, instead of just a reflection. With my other CDs, even if it was in first person and present tense I still wrote it with a bit of hindsight. With some of these songs I just wrote in the moment, how I was feeling and where I was going. I think that was something that opened me up a little bit creatively.
Is exposing some of those personal and more intimate sides of your personality, like you do in some of your songs, difficult?
Well… sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Some subject matter I get a little nervous about playing out because I don't know how it's going to get taken and I really like to give a back-story before I bust into something.
In one of them my partner's mother was going through breast cancer for the second time. She is such a happy chipper woman that you wouldn't know she is going through this horrible ordeal. She touched me in some way that I really wanted to give something to her, say something. But not something cheap like, "Oh things are going to get better," or "I'm just so sorry for you," lots of tears. So I said, "You know, all I know to do is make you a song. This is what I can give. It may not be this and it may not be that but I just want you to know you mean a lot to me because you touch me in some way." I thought that was enough. That's why the song isn't really that long. It's called "What I Can Give."
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