Hockey Dad’s Zach Stephenson is stepping out on his own, with the singer and guitarist revealing his debut solo album will arrive later this year.
Speaking to Rolling Stone AU/NZ at BIGSOUND in Brisbane, Stephenson opened up about the new project, which sees him move away from Hockey Dad’s punchier rock sound and experiment with everything from piano ballads to horns, strings, and pop.
The project began somewhat accidentally, he tells me over coffee, after he found himself sitting on a collection of songs that didn’t quite belong within Hockey Dad’s sound. “It came from a bunch of songs just kind of lingering around on my hard drive for a year or so,” he explains.
One of the earliest was “Roy”, a piano-led ballad Stephenson has been performing during his BIGSOUND showcases this week – his first shows for the solo project. “It was started on the piano and was a different approach to writing songs than I’d done previously with Hockey Dad. I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of fun. This is a new thing.’ And [I] just wanted to lean into doing something a little weirder and kind of writing songs with different sounds,” he says.
“Instead of pulling back and being like, ‘Oh, I should Hockey Dad-ify this thing,’ you know, I was like, ‘I’m just going to commit and make something weird and doesn’t have to be released or whatever.’ I wanted to just finish it and get weird.
“I pulled together a few of those that I found and pushed them into this little box that I thought sounded like one cohesive record and then finally committed. I was like, ‘All right, if I don’t do one now, I’ll never really do it. I’ll do it when I’m like 50 or something.’”
The new record will be released in October, with its first single out next week. Sonically, Stephenson says he found himself looking towards classic pop rather than the driving surf and garage rock Hockey Dad have become known and loved for.
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“I was listening to a lot of New Radicals. That record is one of my favourites. Just the ultra pop sound of it, but a little bit strange in some ways, you know, like a little bit over the top as well, which I kind of loved,” he tells me.
Nick Lowe and the “great pop songs” of the ’60s and ’70s were also influences, he adds, while the album also includes several slower piano ballads – including “Roy”. There are still plenty of pop hooks and jangling guitars, he says, but less of the “fast, tight, blasting rock sound” of Hockey Dad.
“I’m trying to push it in ways like that, get a little more adult contemporary,” he continues.
Returning to BIGSOUND years after Hockey Dad made some of their own early appearances there, Stephenson says it’s been a nice experience “starting from the bottom again, playing all these tight little rooms and trying to get the name out there”.
He continues: “It feels like the first time we were here as Hockey Dad, you know, like starting new. It’s exciting in that way.”
And to Hockey Dad fans – there is no need to stress. He and Billy Fleming are still working together on the band, with a new record also in the works. “No, no, we’re very, very tight,” he laughs, when asked about any potential concerns surrounding the band’s future.
“We’ve been working on new music for this whole half of the year, really, because I kind of finished writing this [solo] record at the end of last year. So basically all this year has been Hockey Dad work, working on the new record and writing.
“I had one song that I thought was going to be on this solo record, but I was like, ‘No, it’s actually definitely a Hockey Dad song’. And I’m glad it went that way because it really, it’s one of my favourite ones that we’ve written lately and a pretty good one.”
