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No Longer Kicked in the Head, Gary Hedrick is Still Composing

By Cindy Beth Bittker

Hull resident, Gary Hedrick, after touring for 10 years with his band, punk-pop-funk-hardcore-ska band, Kicked in the Head, is settling into his new gig — father to his 18-month-old daughter, Dahlia, freelance graphic designer (Elefhantworks.com) and painter.

After 10 years of exhaustive touring including dates on three VANS Warped Tours as well as opening for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the band called it quits late in 2005.

Kicked in the Head formed about 10 years earlier when Gary started college at Mass College of Art. (He is a '99 graduate with a degree in Graphic Design.) "A gaggle of us got together and played. We started as a joke band." Within about two years, the band had amassed a very large following and began to take their career as a band more seriously. "We played the whole time I was in college. We were in this limbo where we were not a joke band anymore and becoming less and less of a joke band."

By 1998, Kicked in the Head was anything but a joke band, playing dates with the VANS Warped Tour that year and again in 2001 and 2003. "Our really important touring came when the band was just the four of us (no horns)," and toured on the release of their 2000 debut CD, "Thick As Thieves" put out by Resurrection AD Records. They spent the majority of the next five years rigorously touring the northeast and midwest United States.

"Everyone in the band was also an artist and we all held jobs whenever we were not on tour. We would leave on a Thursday and play Friday, Saturday and Sunday, get home at 5 a.m. and then go to jobs on Monday morning. I never saw the light of day. I would either be in the art studio every night or I would be playing, practicing or doing work."

"When you are in a band that tours a lot, you have no social life. You have no other life. It's like being in the army or the special forces, where you just go away and disappear. It's like a security blanket after a while. It's your whole life. The band was primary. Everything else was secondary. On a moment's notice, if we got the right show, we were gone."

As an indie band, Kicked in the Head handled all aspects of their careers themselves; booking shows (initially in venues like VFW halls they rented themselves for all ages shows), promoting their CD to college radio (they would divide up the college radio lists and each make about 500 phone calls from their cell phones to the radio stations while they were touring), creating merchandise (they made their most money from merchandise sales), promoting shows, rehearsing, writing and recording.

The band took a break a year and a half ago to write songs while their drummer Anthony Modano, went on tour with The Street Dogs, who were playing big festivals in California and touring Europe. It was an opportunity that Anthony could not pass up given his understanding that his time as a drummer might be limited by surgery he needed to fix an overuse injury that came about as a result of being a drummer.

During that time each of the band members gradually resumed their normal lives. It became harded to step away from normal life to tour again, being well aware of the demands that touring on a new CD would mean. "We were not as invested in that anymore." We were all working jobs and doing things we never got to do before because we were in a band." Of all the band members, Gary was probably most invested in going out on tour again, but it just didn't mesh with the other band members including Matt Sanocki and Ryan Dowd.

"After Kicked in the Head I was so frustrated I didn't even listen to music for a while. It made me mad! As a musician, if you hear something you really like, you feel jealous!"

Gary is now 32 and hasn't played a show in two years. "I miss it a lot. I had to shift gears a little bit. There's a season for everything." Gary has a daughter, now 18 months old and freelances in graphic design with his own company, ElefhantWorks.com. "I like working with clients and meeting with people who have an idea of what they want. It's a lot like KITH where we had an idea for what we wanted in a song. With graphic design clients, I have to build a brand identity for them. As with songwriting, I have to think about how the audience will perceive what I create. I'm way into that stuff. I love that stuff."

Gary shuffles back and forth between his graphic design work and his other art — painting and mixed media. "My painting is my break from graphic design. I like doing graphic design, but probably as a result of me playing music and having a less disciplined life style, sometimes I need a break from making things under strict guidelines." At this time his paintings are more along the lines of abstract work with some real elements embedded in them. His recent works include references to windmills. "I live right next to the new windmill and I like the imagery of the windmill, so I use that a lot."

"My windmill stuff is my small attempt at realism. I like realism, too — but my brain, due to the fact that I do graphic design doesn't like to do real stuff. Windmills are real and I like taking them out of context and using them as composition. I'm into composition and texture and layering things. I'm like that when I write songs, too. And I'm into messages. I like messages. I like windmills because they have a bigger message other people can connect with. I can pull people into my art a little more with them."

Now settled into a home he built recently, Gary lives with his girlfriend and their 18-month-old daughter. He grew up in Hingham (his father was head of the Hingham Schools Music Department) and hung out a lot on and Nantasket Beach skateboarding with friends. "Back then Hull wasn't as much of a wanted area. It was in the Paragon Park downslide. A lot of houses were totally abandoned. It looked like the ocean had just beaten them up. The house I tore down was from that plywood-finish era."

But times change, and Hull is now full of diverse people from all walks of life who appreciate the beauty of this area and the feel of a small town. What was once abandoned is now rebuilt and as Gary says "There's a season for everything." For Gary Hedrick, it's the season for him to express himself through his art work which is every bit as expressive as his music. Gary has now started "touring" with his paintings, which just came back from his first show in New York City,

You can see more of Gary's work at garyhedrick.com

 

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