Producer and songwriter Justice Hill, 29, got his start in the Chicago scene in the mid-2010s playing keyboards as a sideman. He also makes soulful hybrid pop under his own name, and in April he released his debut full-length album, Room With a View. On Saturday, August 14, he’ll play a patio show at the Hideout with his group Nightime Love.
I went to Berklee for two and a half years. I dropped out and I stayed in Boston for about two more years, just using the facilities. There was a teacher there who I really liked, my arrangement teacher. He taught me, “Going to music school’s not like any other school. It’s not like you leave and now you’re an engineer. Or you go to school for business and now you have a business degree. You’re a musician when you go to school there, and you’re a musician when you leave, no matter what. You go there to teach yourself how to get better.”
That took me to jams at Moe’s Tavern. I used to go there for jams every week. I eventually started playing for this burlesque show at the Drifter. I got all these weird, fun gigs. There was this one gig we played, where I got to play—I say “got to,” but it was almost “have to”—”We Got the Funk” for an hour straight. It was nuts. We had a 20-piece band, so it was big. It was at Moe’s. The band went onto the carpeted floor, everyone’s drinking dollar beers. It was a good time.
