Self-taught guitarist Sawyer Hill went from playing in an Arkansas high school garage band to America’s next best country-tinged indie-rocker overnight, after a viral video of Look at the Time flooded his inbox with A&Rs applauding his flair, hair and knack for songwriting.
“You’re an unknown – then all of a sudden 10 million people have seen you,” Hill recalls. In 2023, after being fired from his lab assistant day job, he’d decided to stop “sleepwalking through life” and devote himself to guitar, determined to prove his viral success wasn’t a fluke.
Three years on he’s tallied up over 130 million streams of Look at the Time, opened a North American run for Yungblud, and now awaits the launch of his debut record Everybody’s Home, Nobody’s Happy. “Playing for Yungblud’s crowd was really incredible,” Hill says.
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“Ozzy had just passed and Yungblud was on his rise. Everyone was really excited for rock music, and obviously I’m a rock musician. So it was the perfect storm of this moment between generations and genre.
“I didn’t have to fight the audience on anything – everything we did super-hit. Yungblud taught me how to control a room three times bigger than anything I’d ever played before. He’s a fucking entertainer.”
Hill’s fascination with music kicked off in the early 2010s with classical ukulele. Longing for more strings, he was gifted a $100 Epiphone Dreadnought one Christmas from his grandparents, which he used to write some of his most-played songs.
His love for rock began during a high school lunch break talent show. “I thought it was the sickest thing ever. I auditioned to be in the band with the intro of Stairway to Heaven.” He got the gig and was handed an Ibanez Artcore – although, as it turned out, it had been stolen from a pawn shop.
Fast-forward to present day and he now plays a Gibson 335. “I always found Artcores to play easily until last year, when I went to a Gibson showroom. I wanted a light guitar that’s gonna play similar every time. I really hate a heavy guitar that cuts off your circulation.
“Gibson lent me a 335 that’s super-light and sick. It’s fucking amazing; it plays great. I played that on the Yungblud run with the intention to give it back. Little did they know, at the end of every set I would crash the headstock on a cymbal. I bent the tuning pegs all out of whack.
“Magically they still work, but they were all sorts of fucked. I posted a photo with the 335 on socials, and Gibson said, ‘You look so great, keep the guitar!’”
Hill plays his askew 335 through a Fender Blues Junior after he learned that “you don’t need a giant-ass amp to be super-loud and have a great tone.” He pairs it with a small pedalboard consisting of distortion –always on – plus an overdrive for ripping solos and a trusty tuner.
Everybody’s Home, Nobody’s Happy is a captivating mix of country and indie blues rock, each track tied with a sweep of slide guitar. “Some of the singles might have painted a picture about the record’s totality, but I think the record will catch people off guard,” he says.
You have to act in the world; you can’t just work on one song for three whole years
The 11-track debut rejects country’s notorious themes of love and heartbreak. “It’s half-autobiographical and half what I’m feeling at the time,” he explains. “The songs that are really sad for me are some of the more happy sounding ones, and there isn’t one total message throughout.”
Fuzz-filled track Jimmy’s Gone Numb was recorded using a “crazily” tuned-down hollow-body, paired with another dropped acoustic – and bizarrely, it’s played even lower live. Described by Sawyer as “Johnny Cash meets surf rock,” it juxtaposes the promised American dream and its harsh awakened reality – despite the song’s upbeat feel.
Slide guitar is the “connective tissue,” heard in second-to-last track Lady Arkansas, which is a heartfelt piano-led tribute to his hometown, with a solo that melts like butter, written by Yungblud collaborator Chris Greatti.
“Musicians are overthinkers,” Hill argues. “With the Lady Arkansas solo, I wanted a musical non sequitur, which is really hard to communicate with someone. Chris is a guitar god. We composed it together; it’s really nice how that solo pans over.
“If you’ve been given a talent, you have to do something with it. Otherwise you’re displeasing fate, Mother Nature – whatever you like to call it. You have to act in the world; you can’t just work on one song or album for three whole years. That’s what was so great about The Beatles. They made a song and moved on to the next one.”
