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Hanni El Khatib is on the road. The 31-year-old is touring his sophomore album Head in the Dirt, and while he’s not Kerouac, Khatib channels the same punked-out carelessness that the Beat generation helped bring to fruition. When I get him on the phone, he’s drinking truck stop coffee—black, with a little cream—and driving in a van with his band somewhere in the middle of Mississippi. Our conversation is interrupted several times due to a bad connection—the fuzziness on the line is the same kind of static that fills his tempestuous, bluesy rock.
Hanni’s eclectic sound, now in its second coming for his second release, is full of monstrous guitar riffs and huge back beats, it’s a pastiche of iconic American music. His self-admitted favorite thing to perform in is a pair of cowboy boots, but his greased back hair channels edgier street culture—a world he worked in before music. Khatib is Americana filtered through skate punk culture, and he cites San Francisco as a key influence on his aesthetics, more so than the diverse heritage he inherited from his Palestinian father and Filipino mother.
“I grew up in San Francisco and my parents pretty much raised me American,” Hanni said. “I was raised pretty ‘western’ in order for me to adapt and assimilate to the country and culture—San Francisco influenced me.”
Originally immersed in the art and design scene, he started off working first for a corporate design gig and then transitioned full-time to work for former professional skateboarder Keith Hufnagel’s eponymous brand, HUF. Hanni served as the art director of for six years, helping to forge a sly, rugged take on skate staples.
You know what, might as well just say fuck it and work on something that I think is cool and as long as I can pay my rent, that’s fine.
“I thought, ‘You know what, might as well just say fuck it and work on something that I think is cool and as long as I can pay my rent, that’s fine,’” the singer laughs recalling how he quit his hated but lucrative design job.
“Six years later, it grew into a big world-wide company selling to hundreds of retailers around the world. That kind of taught me a lot of what it’s like to work for myself. Then, when I went to quit to do music full time, shortly after that, about a year later [in 2010], I ended up partnering with a record label that I now own, called Innovative Leisure,” he explained.
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Innovative Leisure was run by Nate Nelson and Jamie Strong after working together at Stones Throw Records, and they signed Hanni to their label in 2010, while he was still working for HUF. After years of pursuing music as a hobby, Hanni got serious.
“Hanni's record had all of the elements I'd been craving,” said Jamie Strong of when he first heard the music. “Here was this bad ass rebel rock 'n' roll, but at the same time incredibly soulful, honest & genuine. There was something so unique in his voice, lyrics & music that kept drawing me back to it. I sat in my rental car at Golden Gate park for about an hour listening to it and kept rewinding to certain songs. It was like the missing ingredient in rock music for me.”
His debut album, Will the Guns Come Out, precipitated a tour with well-oiled indie pop songstress Florence + the Machine. And an offer from Nelson and Strong to come on as art director for the label laid the groundwork for his true launch into the indie rock fold.
“The way I look at it is music opportunities, they come and go, and they’re super fickle,” he said. “If you don’t seize that opportunity, it’s not going to happen for you. I recorded an album that people had faith enough to put money in and put it out and I had an opportunity to go on tour that was going to take me away from work for a month and I decided to do that. I haven’t really looked back since, I haven’t had to, luckily.”
Through his role as part-owner and art director at Innovative Leisure, Khatib hasn’t walked away from visual art completely. Like the stereotypical Gemini, the 31-year-old find his passion split, even now, between music and design.
“To have a musician like Hanni as a partner means he can relate to the other artists on that day-to-day level of being a musician, which Nate or myself can't relate,” Strong said. “On the art director tip, that's actually how I first met Hanni. Before I even knew he made music, I knew him from his art and design work. Every great label or brand, has an art aesthetic that can stand the test of time so Hanni helps fill that role in developing a consistent look, feel and identity for the label.”
The label roster that now boasts 12 artists—including recent R&B break-outs Rhye—and Hanni has his hands full managing what amounts to two full-time careers.
“It’s kind of a tightrope walk. At the time when I agreed I had a couple seven inches out and was touring a little bit. Now it’s a bit more difficult, I’m kind of in a different position where I’m on the road nonstop,” he said.
But running the label in addition to creating his own sound hasn’t held him back at all, rather, it’s broadened his ability to interact with music at every level—whether it be design, recording his own stuff, signing bands or even producing.
This is just all about music. I can sign acts and I can produce other artists, it adds another layer of the music side to it. The way I look at it is music opportunities, they come and go, and they’re super fickle. If you don’t seize that opportunity, it’s not going to happen for you.
“This is just all about music. I can sign acts and I can produce other artists, it adds another layer of the music side to it. The way I look at it is music opportunities, they come and go, and they’re super fickle. If you don’t seize that opportunity, it’s not going to happen for you. I haven’t really looked back since, I haven’t had to, luckily.”
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There’s no end in sight for Hanni, who recorded his last album with Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys), one of the only current musicians making any major commercial play within the blues and rock movements. Upon hearing tracks off Hanni’s latest release, or even from 2011’s Will the Guns Come Out, Auerbach’s involvement is a logical move.
The two hit it off over liquor and records in a Parisian bar owned by a mutual friend—within months plans were being laid for their collaboration on Head in the Dirt.
“Dan Auerbach being who he is, it kind of puts you in a position where you can make whatever record you want to make. I was in a great studio, surrounded by incredible players. That was a huge difference for me, actually playing live with other people in a room,” he said.
Despite the great studio and high caliber of musicians Hanni was working with, his second album maintains the same gritty, dusky feel that that made his first record so palatable for crowds sick of glitzy pop and glugging synthesizers. This music feels new, alive, and somehow old too.
“Whatever we could play, we recorded playing live all at once. That was really important, that was definitely how we wanted to do it. We didn’t discuss it, but Dan and I have such similar taste in music and recording styles, that it just happened that way.”
Both the singles off the album illustrate the raw energy that this live recording process managed to capture—“Penny” is both shiny and dirty, celebrating the feeling of new romantic obsession. “Family” is a little harsher, relying on a ‘50s rewind of jarring piano backbone and bringing in the intensity of blood-ties to the forefront.
But there’s been so many arguments over the place of rock in our culture’s current musical climate, towards the end of our conversation I ask Hanni for his perspective on the state of rock and roll.
People are just going make whatever they want to make. At this point genres are so cross-pollinated that it doesn’t really fucking matter what you call it—it just is what it is.
“People are just going make whatever they want to make. At this point genres are so cross-pollinated that it doesn’t really fucking matter what you call it—it just is what it is. I don’t know if there’s even a point or need to even discuss it.”
It’s this kind of innocence, or obliviousness rather, that allows Hanni to make his music work. It’s all visceral, rugged blues riffs transposed over instinctual, fiery rock songs—with an album that feels this effortless, there’s no need to discuss it.
Head in the Dirt is out now via Innovative Lesiure. Buy it here.
