One hour before the show. That’s when the five members of Hinder allow themselves to start drinking, says vocalist Austin Winkler.
“We finally learned this after being on the road four or five years. We had to put a cap on ourselves. It was getting out of control.”
There’s no doubt Hinder have added a few exploits to hard rock lore. Guitarist Joe “Blower” Garvey has lit his private parts on fire. Then there’s that Halloween concert where Winkler looked into the audience and saw a guy dressed as a clown having sex with a girl dressed as a nurse. In the front row.
“I think it was in Calgary,” Winkler says. “People are crazy.” In addition to having more fun than dudes should be allowed, Hinder has sold tons of records. Their 2005 major label debut “Excessive Behavior” moved more than 3 million copies. In the download era, that’s like selling 10 million a decade ago. The group hit the top of the singles chart in 2006 with “Lips of an Angel,” which sounded like it crawled there from 1987. Hinder’s gold-certified 2008 LP “Take It To The Limit” features “Up All Night,” a song powered by pyro-ready riffs and Winkler’s cement screams.
Calling from the road, Winkler was laid-back as hell. What else would we expect from a guy who gets to rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day?
Have you ever written new lyrics and forgotten where you put them? I did that all the time actually. But with a Blackberry, I just put them into my phone now.
What’s your favorite drink these days? Vodka and anything, to be honest.
How did you find your own hard rock singing voice? It’s a genre where a lot of people just copy Bon Scott, Steven Tyler or Robert Plant. I would just put on songs I loved and sing along with them. My favorite bands are Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones and Gun N’ Roses from 1987. When I started playing guitar and writing my own songs, it took off from there.
What’s the last album you bought? Hmm. I’d have to look in my car that I never even drive. (Laughs). I think it was Kings of Leon.
What kind of car? A Range Rover.
How did Hinder attract a major label bidding war without ever leaving Oklahoma, your home state? (They signed with Universal in 2005.) We dropped a little over $45,000 on some really, really good demos. And we could sell out a thousand-seater in our home town. But none of those labels that were interested, except for Roadrunner, had ever seen us play live before offering us pretty substantial deals, which I thought was pretty peculiar.
You guys toured for a while before the first record broke. Once we got signed we were like, “Sweet, we did it.” And they were like, “Now you have to sell records.” We slugged it out for nine months in an RV driving ourselves before we got a bus. Going back three or four times to places and watching it grow—it’s really cool, man. We definitely put in our time.
Catch Hinder at 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, May 16 at the Greenville Crawfish Boil. Click here for the full schedule of bands.
