Hopping freights, eating mulligan stew around the fire barrel, late-night dancing in the hobo jungle to harmonica glitch funk and techno-blues – if the gasping economy births a new hobo culture, the music will already be taken care of.
"Hobotech," a mix of electronica and old-time tunes described on its Facebook page as "the sound of Ozark Mountain futurefunk, dirty electro gospel and glitched-out whomp crashing into Delta blues," started as a riff around a campfire with a friend, says its creator, DJ/producer Jon Margulies.
"The joke was wanting to create a genre of electronic music that would be the most offensive to New York City bottle service culture possible," he told Wired.com. "It was like, 'Let's make this thing where kids start thinking it's cool to eat beans out of a can down by the railroad tracks.' We called it 'hobotech' and laughed our asses off."
Apparently, it's no joke: Margulies has opened a major show for Bassnectar and played a set on the DoLab stage at Coachella. His latest release – Smotin' at the Water, a collaboration with Haj from New York City bass crew Sub Swara – made it to No. 15 on the electronica chart at massive dance music website Beatport.
He'll be hitting the dusty trail this spring, bringing hobotech to the Euphoria Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and to Electric Poncho, a four-day electronic and dance music festival in a canyon on Mexico's Baja Peninsula.
The notion to actually make this type of music struck Margulies a year after its campfire inception, and he whipped up a proof-of-concept mix using Ableton Live, music-sequencing software about which he has written numerous articles (as well as two editions of Ableton Live Power: The Comprehensive Guide).
He says the hobotech genre wouldn't have existed without Live, which gave him the ability to manipulate and modify snippets of weathered songs by the likes of Lead Belly and Son House, then quickly arrange them with other tracks, to create music different from other subsets of electronica that are sometimes separated only by hairline distinctions.
Ironically, it's also allowed him to pare down his bindle and enjoy some hobo-style freedom. Regarding his musical equipment, Margulies says, "I keep selling off the things that aren't easy to carry around, and replacing them with things that are smaller, and organizing my life around things that are important – not have it be so much about being tied to place or possessions. Obviously it's never been easier to do. My touring setup fits in a backpack." (You can see Margulies in action in David Baren Photography's video below.)
Margulies shuttles between coasts and cities for DJ gigs as well as for his band, Tiny Machines, which makes mellow, melodic music as different as can be from hobotech. Working and wandering, by the way, is what separates the hobo from the tramp (who wanders but only works when necessary) and the bum (who neither wanders nor works).
"Of course it's a romanticized idea," Margulies acknowledges, but he's not just talking about freedom of movement. "Kids now are growing up in a situation where the powers that be are trying to make this world, that could be so incredibly diverse, into an on-message, mass-media-controlled domain. But with creativity, it's natural to have a little more Wild West influence."
Boxcar Willie would probably agree.
Download Margulies' four-song hobotech EP, OK, All Right, for free.
