Life after Dash Rip Rock
Interview with Hoaky Hickel (7-18-04)
By Ronnie

Intro:
This interview was actually inspired by BLENDER magazine. They have a regular feature called, “Life After Rock” – in which former rock and rollers are interviewed about why they left the road to pursue ‘normal’ jobs. Who immediately came to my mind was Hoaky Hickel, the charismatic and legendary bass player for Dash Rip Rock - who left the band in 1999 to become a fishing boat captain! I thought, “Now THAT’S a story!” After a little research, I located Hoaky…err, I mean Ned Hickel, who now resides in Florida. I originally called him on a Saturday and we arranged to have the interview the following morning. What, you ask? Sunday morning? This has to be a first for EAR CANDY!

On Sunday morning, when we first started talking, I called him “Mr. Hickel”, to which he quickly responded, “No! It’s Ned or Hoaky. Mr. Hickel sounds like my Dad!” Although Hoaky now leads a completely different life than his previous rock ‘n roller persona, he still has that infectious Hoaky humor. He answered all of my questions directly and the only time there was a long pause was when I asked him about leaving Dash Rip Rock.

And what about BLENDER? Well, I’m still gonna submit Hoaky’s answers for their “Life After Rock” column. So…who knows?

Right: Hoaky in 2004

E.C.: You are in Florida now?

Hoaky: I’m in Miami, Florida. I live on a boat.

E.C.: You also got married?

Hoaky: Yeah, my wife Gail – she’s beautiful…intelligent. I’ve got a new dog, a Welsh Terrier and his name is Bodie. We’re just a happy family.

E.C.: You work as a Marine Inspector now?

Hoaky: A Marine Surveyor is what it’s called.

E.C.: What does that job entail?

Hoaky: If you wanted to buy a boat, most times a larger boat – yacht size…and if you needed to borrow the money for it from a bank…the bank would require the yacht to be surveyed, which means it gets inspected. Also if you were buying a yacht and you needed insurance for it, the insurance company requires an inspection of the vessel in a report. Basically I work for customers and also work through the customer for the banks and the insurance company.

E.C.: When did you start doing this?

Hoaky: After the music group in 1999.

E.C.: Did you have to get any licensing or certification to do this?

Hoaky: No, there’s no license necessary in the state of Florida. However, but generally to get employment you have to belong to one of two organizations – called SAMS or NAMS. And what they are, is they’re societies of Marine Surveyors. You have to pass like tests and inspections to belong to their organization. A lot of insurance companies or banks won’t accept work from people that are outside those two organizations. And this organization has continuing education every year and you have to continue to upgrade and over the years as time goes on there are various things you have to do.

E.C.: So, was boating always something that interested you?

Hoaky: Yeah, all my life I grew up on boats basically. The way it all happened with me – after I got out of music I was curious about what next step was going to be. I always wanted to fish. I wanted to be a fishing boat captain. So, I moved down to Miami and I bought a fishing boat and I became a charter boat captain so to speak. I take people out fire hire. After about 6 months of that I realized that wasn’t my can of worms. I didn’t particularly care for it much. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of interaction with people on a very close, personal basis. And I had had enough of interacting with the public. (laughs)

So after that I tried to figure out what was my next step. I knew I liked boating and I knew I liked boats. When I bought the vessel, my fishing boat, I had to have it surveyed to borrow some money from the bank for it. I thought back upon that, about the person who surveyed the boat for me and I realized that I knew more if not twice as much more than the person who surveyed the vessel. There’s a school north of here called Chapman, Marine School…and they offer a three-month course in surveyors. Kind of gives you a heads-up on how to become a surveyor. So you take the school, the night course, and afterwards I joined the society and hung my shingle out, like a doctor or lawyer would. And advertise in various marine publications. And people call me and that’s “here ya go”. (laughs)

E.C.: When I first heard that you had left the band to become a fishing boat captain, the first thing that came to mind was the old Dash Rip Rock song, “Houseboat”!

Hoaky: Right! (laughs) Bill and I…always fishing a lot. He fishes a lot and I fish a lot. So, it was sort of a natural progression for me. He moved off to Nashville…and I moved down here and I really enjoy it.

E.C.: When I last interviewed Bill [Davis] and asked him how long Dash Rip Rock would continue, he said that when its no longer fun he’ll quit. Was that your case? Did it stop being fun?

Hoaky: Uhhh….(long pause)…yeah, when it stopped being fun, it was time to quit. And it stopped being fun for me. The band had progressed to the point to where we had accomplished things we wanted to – and we missed out on other things. And we didn’t get the ‘brass ring’, you know? With Bill moving to Tennessee, we just started to drift apart more. For myself I was basically looking to the future – I didn’t want to be 40 years old and playing in a bar in Minneapolis on a Tuesday night. I was looking around, trying to figure out where I wanted…I needed to take a stand somewhere and do something.

Unlike Bill, who is the singer/songwriter type, I was more of just a backup guy. Just a ‘hired gun’ so to speak. I new I didn’t wanna do that, I didn’t want to end up at the Holiday Inn playing – that was our big joke - “do you wanna end up at the Holiday Inn when we’re 60 years old playing?” Thus became my move…and I’ve become real happy with it actually. I go to bed now when I used to get up. (laughs) The funny thing is I get up at 6:30 now and that’s when I used to go to bed! It’s a different, lot healthier lifestyle. I quit smoking, I’ve gained a bunch of weight.

You know, I still miss it. Don’t get me wrong - every once in awhile I wish I could strap on an axe and go ‘rock out’. That’s life, buddy.

E.C.: Do you still stay in contact with Bill?

Hoaky: Not really…not much at all. We drifted apart over the last couple of years. We did a few reunions and we’re talking about doing an upcoming one. A buddy of ours is in some legal trouble back in Louisiana – Curt Landry. So we thought about putting together a reunion show with Fred, from Cowboy Mouth, in September or October. Fred’s arranging it all, I haven’t spoke to Bill directly about it.

E.C.: Oh, also when I talked to Bill, he said you were living on a “million-dollar yacht in Florida…”

Hoaky: (laughs) I don’t believe that is quite true! I actually have a place on land and a boat. I have a house near the water and the boat. I spend even amounts of time in boats.

Right: Hoaky with Dash Rip Rock in 1998

E.C.: I’m also reviewing the Dash Rip Rock DVD…

Hoaky: Oh! You know, I haven’t seen it and I don’t have a copy of it yet!

E.C.: It is hilarious! It includes the film “The Band, the Myth, the Legend” plus a bunch of later day clips.

Hoaky: Oh how funny - no I never ever got a copy. I’m almost leery of watching it! (laughs)

What’s funny is that I recently ran into Scott Jones. He was our roadie for years and years. He ran a video recorder almost constantly while he was with us. God he probably has a hundred hours of Dash Rip Rock on stage, backstage, behind stage, under a van, in a tree. He now actually drives tour buses for rock bands. He’s still swearing that he’s gonna put together something and give it to us one day. Lord only knows what he’s got stored in there. Tours out West…he’s got all our tours. So he has some very unusual…I don’t know if I even wanna see it! (laughs)

E.C.: In the DVD are a lot of conversations with the band. In one scene you were asked about your very first band, called “High Voltage”?

Hoaky: Right, a heavy metal rock ‘n roll outfit.

E.C.: Named after the AC/DC album?

Hoaky: Pretty much. And my next group – new wave came along, so we changed to “Scooter and the Mopeds”. And from there, that’s when I met Bill, cause he was in another new wave band.

E.C.: Also in the DVD, Bill said that when he met you, you were a jukebox repairman?

Hoaky: Yes I was. I worked for Automatic Music Company and I repaired jukeboxes and videogames in bars. I was constantly traveling around to different bars. It helped me when we were a ‘bar band’, so to speak, because I was quite familiar with the workings and how to deal with people in drinking establishments. It was great…I’d go to a country bar to fix a pool table, I’d go to a gay bar to fix a pack-man machine. In a country and western bar I’d fix the jukebox because Merle Haggard wouldn’t play. It was a very interesting time in my life.

E.C.: You joined up with Bill Davis to form Dash Rip Rock in 1984?

Hoaky: Yes…1984 I believe…what’s funny about that job is that I was on call all the time, I had a pager. We’d go to a Thursday night gig at a bar in Baton Rouge and the pager would go off in the middle of the set. So we’d just hurry up and end the set real quick and I’d go take care of the call down the street and then come back and we’d play some more. A funny situation.

E.C.: How did you get the nickname “Hoaky”? Was it a childhood nickname?

Hoaky: God, that’s funny you asked that because I’d almost forgotten how that came about. It was not from the band, it was prior to the band. A group of neighborhood guys that we hung out with – everybody had nicknames back then. It was the early ‘70s and everybody was getting high or something. Everybody was “smoky” or something. The guys just called me that because ‘hoaky’ is a term or an expression…”you know, “that’s hoaky”. One of the older guys called me that day and it just kinda stuck. And actually I was proud of it because I was like the leader of the gang and he called me that. So, it gave me an identity I suppose you might say. Only now, I’m just known as ‘Ned Hickel’. (laughs)

E.C.: Dash Rip Rock was my very first band interview in 1995, when I wrote my first article for Pop Culture Press. I’ve gotta find that tape because it has the “lost Hoaky interview”!

Hoaky: (laughs)

E.C.: Why I call it that is because while I was interviewing Bill before an Atlanta gig , you sat quietly until we finished and Bill got up to leave. I thought the interview was over and was packing up my stuff when you said something like, “turn on that damn recorder, I’ve got something to say!” You proceeded to tell some very interesting and entertaining stories and you kept offering me beers. When I explained that my doctor at the time told me to lay off the alcohol, you said, “Well, I’d find another doctor!” Your part of the interview didn’t make it into the Pop Culture Press article, but I’m going to try and find that tape and put it in a future issue of EAR CANDY. I still remember the story about your dog tearing up your Sex Pistols record because it was possessed!

Hoaky: Yeah, he thought it was a Frisbee and he picked it up off the floor. I came home and the damn thing was crystal on one side and the other side looked like a kid on Ritalin had gotten a screwdriver and gone nuts to the other side of the record. I couldn’t figure out what happened to it. And I realized that he thought it was a Frisbee and was trying to flip it over. That dog was possessed…or on drugs, one of the two.

E.C.: About your time with Dash Rip Rock…what was the best part and what was the worst part?

Hoaky: Worst part was traveling. And the best part was playing. Without a doubt. If you could just have all the bars within like a hundred mile radius, it would have been better than driving thousands of miles to play three shows. But then again, you can’t really say that because sometimes the PLAYIN’ was the worst because of the horrible conditions of the venue or the people or the show or whatever – and the travel was the best. Like when we’d get to go to Europe for a month every summer. So we’d go Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland - and go to the Russian border and everything else. So…it’s a toss up.

Something I’ve learned out here, now that I’m out of the music and not playing anymore and back working with people – I thought I couldn’t live without…going to the bars and the clapping and the applause. I just didn’t think you could live without that sort of thing. I didn’t think that there was anything else in the world, it was the greatest thing in the world. And there’s still truly is nothing like the feeling of getting onstage and playing. But you know, there are other things out here. There’s a lot of really good things out here that you don’t have to stay up till 4 in the morning to experience. I’m really happy I’ve got my health and I’m allowed the opportunity to pursue these dreams around the Bahamas and Caribbean. I just came back from a two week trip over in the Bahamas on a boat. It’s just wonderful. There IS a life after rock and roll!

E.C.: Finally, what music do you listen to when you are out on the boat?

Hoaky: What else would you listen to in the Bahamas? Jimmy Buffet of course! Well, lately some Leroi Brothers, "Check this Action", Pontiac Brothers "Fuzzy little piece of the World" and some Marcia Ball.

PAST EAR CANDY ARTICLES ABOUT DASH RIP ROCK:
Over the past years we have had many articles about Dash Rip Rock. Here is a list of them: