Hawthorne Heights

“Auto-Tune? I don’t have that. I don’t even know what that is,”
laughs Andrew Mayer Cohen, aka Mayer Hawthorne, on the phone from his
crib in L.A. Born to a musical family in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and
raised on a steady diet of the world’s greatest music, the Motown Sound
of neighboring Detroit (not to mention Public Enemy, Helmet, Frank
Sinatra, and Ornette Coleman), Cohen earned an earnest and encyclopedic
love of a classic R&B style that sounds out of place in the mix of
contemporary radio’s prefab robot rhythm ‘n’ bullshit. So when you hear
one of Cohen’s songs as Mayer Hawthorne—a nattily dressed,
Hitsville USA–throwback, blue-eyed soul crooner—you would
be forgiven if you initially mistook it for some lost and newly
unearthed mid-’60s vintage pop jewel. And you wouldn’t be the
first.

“Peanut Butter Wolf literally didn’t believe it was me,” recalls
Cohen of the meeting where he played the dazzling, dewy-eyed doo-wop of
“Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” and the wistful regret letter “When I Said
Goodbye” for the Stones Throw label boss. “At first, Wolf thought maybe
‘Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out’ was a reedit of an old song.”

“Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” and “When I Said Goodbye” were the first
two songs Cohen recorded as Mayer Hawthorne, and they represented
something of a departure for him. Since the late ’90s, Cohen had also
been known as Haircut, the DJ/producer for Michigan rap crew Athletic
Mic League and the electro-
soulhop group Now On (on whose 2008
album Tomorrow Already you can hear the first hints of
Hawthorne).

“When I first made those two songs, I was still very focused on
making hiphop,” says Cohen. “Those songs were really just an experiment
on the side for fun, something only my family and friends would hear.”
However, reception from his peers was so overwhelmingly positive that
he decided to try his luck with a label he thought might get it.

And after some initial skepticism, Peanut Butter Wolf did get it. In
2008, Stones Throw released “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” and “When I
Said Goodbye” as the A- and B-sides of Hawthorne’s first single
(pressed at some expense on red heart-shaped vinyl), and that was just
the start. “When I convinced him that it was actually all me singing,
playing, producing, and everything, he asked me to record a full-length
album just based on those two songs,” says Cohen. “Which really made me
have to focus, made me step back and have to figure out who Mayer
Hawthorne really was.”

Behind his square-bear glasses and sharp suits, Hawthorne (named for
the street Cohen grew up on) is simply a testament to the grand
tradition of Detroit, the very epicenter of soul. He’s a cat weaned on
the silky-
muscular sounds of Smokey Robinson and
Holland-Dozier-Holland, witnessing firsthand the mighty snare-crack era
of J Dilla (one of too many hiphop stars Detroit has seen snuffed out
in the past five years), and living proof of that dying city’s timeless
love.

The unflaggingly earnest sounds of Hawthorne’s debut LP, A
Strange Arrangement, differ from other recent retro-soul
excursions—such as Raphael Saadiq’s The Way I See It or
Jamie Lidell’s Jim—in their
Michigan-specific
reverence (an exception is the outstanding “The Ills,” an upbeat,
bongo-fueled Curtis Mayfield homage). It never comes off as some
intentional tribute, however, just as the reflection of a lifetime
loving the sounds in his backyard. “Those first two songs were pure
fun, not a whole lot of thought, just natural,” says Cohen. “So I tried
not to overthink it for the rest of the album.”

His Michigan love obviously runs deeper than any conscious intent or
lack thereof, though. Cohen’s moved to L.A. since signing with Stones
Throw, but he still misses “the Mitten.” “I love L.A.,” he says. “But
Detroit is my home; my family is all out there. Everybody that’s out
here in L.A., hopefully we can make some money out here and help out
back home.”

For now, though, Cohen is clearly humbled at the massive response
his sound has drawn. He’s collected props from music lovers worldwide,
including respected tastemakers like Gilles Peterson and Mark Ronson.
“It’s been such a crazy ride, I never imagined it would get to what it
is today,” he enthuses. “It’s very different from just being a
DJ—I’m having to learn a whole lot really quickly—but it’s
been a very gratifying and eye-opening experience for sure. I hope to
be able to continue to do this, and there’s definitely going to be more
Mayer Hawthorne music coming.” Looks like it just might work out after
all.