HOHYUN’s Houston Homecoming
HOHYUN’s first hometown show in Houston was a homecoming and a reconnection with his past.
A year before Jason HOHYUN Lee would perform his first hometown concert at White Oak Music Hall in Houston, he was in Korea, working on his debut album DRAMA.
I had met Lee just three months prior when I interviewed him for this blog. I was taken by his artistry and his self-sufficiency. He had directed his own music videos; produced his own music; and built his own fanbase from the ground up with no team. I had no real role in the creation of DRAMA., other than to help him extract the stories. I wouldn’t become his manager till later. But that night, he decided to revisit his first live performance.
The creation of DRAMA. came at a time when Lee was taking stock of the past four years of his life. The album was something that he told me had “willed itself to be”. It was never supposed to be an album, but rather an EP. Yet after a series of events brought him back to Korea for the longest stretch of time since he was a child, Lee found that he had a lot more to say than an EP could contain. So, one night over Zoom as we were talking about his history, Lee decided to pull up video footage that his mother had filmed from his first performance in 2019.
That year was a pivotal one for HOHYUN: His song “A.E.I.O.U.” had been playlisted by Spotify and, to his surprise, he had begun to find a growing fanbase. In October he followed up that single with Stage Fright, his first EP that pulled from Korean singer-songwriters like Sam Kim, Zion.T and Crush.
In the grand scheme of things, Lee’s first performance was insignificant; barely seen by anyone. The fact that a video even exists is thanks to the Lee’s family’s penchant for documenting so much from their shared history. The stage where Lee performed “Snow”, a song by his hero Zion.T, wasn’t really a stage at all but rather a small space in front of a Chinese bank large enough to slot him and a microphone. His voice was shaky and fragile; as if he sang too loud he might be exposed. He was stiff and still, a boy still taking stock of what it means to perform in front of others. I watched as Lee watched the 19-year-old version of himself who had just begun to focus on music after devoting a high school career to filmmaking.
Lee’s face contorted as he watched himself, a mixture of nostalgia and embarrassment flashing across his eyes. Finally, halfway through, he stopped the video and let out a deep sigh. “I can’t watch this.”
He waved off my objections and questions. “Why couldn’t we watch the whole way through? It’s charming,” I protested. “It shows where you came from.”
“You saw enough,” he dismissed and quickly went back to working on the album.
But that performance would stay in my mind. The more I got to know Lee and learned about the teenager who decided to pursue music, the more I appreciated how driven he was to get out there and be seen, at any cost. In Korea, I found his ambition to unravel his raw emotions while making DRAMA. inspiring and heartfelt.
I learned, too, that there is an obsessiveness at seeing a project through. Lee never does anything halfway. Even at 19, with a small listening base, he still printed albums and t-shirts for Stage Fright. When he was 21 and released his second EP Dreams, Lee went a step further. The singer drew on his filmmaking and VFX effects experience to create a music video for “Demon” that took six months to complete. He filmed a promo video that veered on performance art where he stood on stage, frozen and uncomfortable as an audience boo’d. One day at church, he learned that a friend had gone to a beach in Arizona and decided that he, too, would go there to film the video for his title track.
That ambition pushed him to make DRAMA., an album that he poured his heart and soul into. And eventually, it led him back to Houston, another place that he hadn’t spent a significant amount of time in since leaving for Los Angeles in 2021.
The goal, he said, was always to return home. In interviews to promote DRAMA., Lee was specific that he wanted to bring a show back to his hometown. His fanbase, known as the Hohmies, was the biggest there and they had stuck around the longest, since his first appearance at the city’s Korean festival in 2020.
The choice to play White Oak Music Hall was significant too. Lee had performed there throughout high school when he played bass at different shows for his friends. But playing Houston held personal importance. Lee is one of the only Asian American musicians to make a name for himself in the city. The most widely known, and important, musician to make it out is keshi, a 30-year-old Vietnamese American who grew up in Katy, the same quiet Houston suburb that Lee’s family moved to when he was in middle school.
Lee was 19 when he saw keshi play the House of Blues in Houston. That show stands as a core memory for Lee: keshi was on the verge of signing to a major label and Lee, looking for a way out, saw it in keshi’s story. “That show changed everything for me,” he would tell me a few years later. “I was with a group of musician friends and we all wondered who, out of us, would make it.”
Backstage at the White Oak, Michelle Kim was furiously drinking apple juice. “It soothes your vocal chords,” she explained to Lee as she offered him the juice. Kim, who goes by just her first name Michele in music, was also attempting to meditate. Kim and Lee had met years prior on a music Discord server. By chance, they crossed briefly paths in Houston briefly before Lee left for LA but remained friends. Kim, like Lee, creates jazzy pop music that gives her lithe voice the space to pull you in. In person, I found her to be warm and self-deprecating. It was her first live performance and she was anxious about making a good first impression.
Backstage was cramped; a tiny space that almost astoundingly fit a desk, a couch, and small chairs that were lowered to the floor. But with a full band, Kim, myself, and Lee, the feeling was almost claustrophobic. Kim fidgeted around, breathing deeply, and fanning herself.
“Can you pat my back?” she asked me nervously at one point before going on stage. I attempted to pat all over before she grabbed my hand. “No,” she said and demonstrated. “Like this. Like my mom does it.”
As Kim attempted to breathe, Lee was getting his hair done by his mother, a quiet but kind woman who wore a HOHYUN hoodie with a crossbody bag wrapped around her. Earlier in the day as Lee soundchecked she walked up to me and nervously looked at her son. “He needs his makeup redone,” she observed gravely and let out a laugh.
Kim’s sister, who had done Michelle’s makeup, had been recruited to give Lee the touch-up. His band, who he rounded up just days prior, sat inches away from each other as they rehearsed chord progressions. Juan Villanfe, an insane guitarist who could pick up chords within seconds of hearing it, sat on a chair, intently focused on the music coming through his headphones. Kurt Matthews, a drummer from Los Angeles who Lee compared to Miles Teller’s character in “Whiplash”, laughed at something another band member told him. The atmosphere was chaotic but jovial.
Throughout it all, Lee sat quietly and stoically, his eyes closed in an anticipation of the show. As the band laughed and joked, he put earbuds in and drifted off to sleep. Meanwhile, Kim came off stage breathless, her expression one of euphoria. I had caught parts of her set from the audience and she had crushed it. Onstage, she was as effervescent and funny as she is in person.
Halfway down the steps to the green room, she froze. She never promoted her merch, which by sheer perseverance, had arrived the morning of the show. She caught my eyes. “I’m going back out there,” she said and marched back onstage. “Um, I forgot to say,” she told the crowd in a slightly girlish high-pitched voice, “that I have merch available.” The crowd yelled back for her to perform another song and she laughed. “I’ll be at the booth.”
By that point, it was time for Lee to go on stage. As his band slowly entered the stage. I touched Lee’s shoulder. “You’re going to do great,” I said. But he was already in another world, prepared to become HOHYUN, the boy who could make you cry and who might cry himself as he begins to tell his story.
Katy, Texas is a quiet, sleepy town with one large mall, Katy Mills, that is surrounded by a million hotels. The farther you get from the mall, though, the more open fields and dirt you see.
“It’s kind of amazing you came from here,” I said to him one afternoon as we drove back from lunch. “You came from nowhere."
Although, that’s not entirely true. Lee comes from multiple places - Hawaii, Washington, Korea – but his family settled in Katy when he was in middle school and never left. Most people don’t leave towns like this. I should know: I come from a place like Katy, too.
Lee may have moved on but he still remains the same as when he lived here. After the show as we ate fried dumplings in Bellaire, I asked Lee’s friends from high school what he was like as a teenager. His best friend looked up from his plate and sized Lee up. “You wanna know what Jason was like in high school? He’s sitting right next to you.”
In “Simple Times”, a b-side from DRAMA., Lee writes about missing the days when he and his friends would play 공깃돌, a popular children’s game in Korea. “Winding roads have led me yonder,” he sings with some nostalgia. But he’s still pulled back towards a time of simplicity. The song connects Lee to his childhood in Korea but it could easily be about the slow pace of Katy.
Lee’s connection to Houston is complicated by his background. Is it possible to feel at home in a place you only spent a small fraction of your life in? But that night, on stage, he seemed to embrace these connections or, rather, Houston seemed to embrace him. Young fans who had followed him since the beginning lined up at the front of the stage and clutched banners and freebies made by K-Pop in Houston and Crafty Crap.
“I’m really, really excited to be here with you guys tonight. You know, I grew up here. I went to high school here - Seven Lakes High School, shout out. It’s been five years but now, I’m back, guys,” he said after opening with “BETTER DAYS”. “I played this very venue for years before and I had to choose this one because this is where everything started.”
The setlist was heavy on tracks from DRAMA., but Lee, with the help of band members Roscoe Bussell, Jorge Perez, Matthews and Villafane, had retooled many of the songs. “Without You”, a bosa nova track, became a bluesy, jazz production that almost sounded spiritua. His first hit “A.E.I.O.U” transformed from a heartsick ballad to a rousing, Americana performance. Lee even threw in a cover of “The Christmas Song” but added his own jazz spin to it.
Lee might be known primarily as a K-Pop adjacent singer, but he was intent to show that his skills as a musician are much more adventurous. “Cast Iron”, a catchy and underrated single from 2022, for instance, lit up with improvisational riffs from Villafane. Throughout it all, Lee was a showman engaging the audience with funny stories, taking fans’ phones to make videos and take selfies, and cutting out his heart to show what’s real.
“I wanna take a moment to talk about mental health,” he said halfway through the show before introducing an unreleased track called “Tomorrow”. “That’s what this whole project is about, the theme of rain and my depression.” Lee admitted that he had dealt with anxiety and depression for his whole life before getting help this past summer. “It was getting bad enough where I couldn't just deal with it anymore like I thought I could. If I hadn’t taken care of it, I would’ve just crashed and burned.” For a moment his voice caught in his throat and he choked up. “I know it’s hard for people to talk about but I want this song to be a reason for people to know that everything’s going to be okay and that it’s okay to get help.”
“I think that everybody hates me/ Is it true?” he asks in the opening line of “Tomorrw”. The song is still an emotional one for Lee to perform: Midway through, he began to cry. But the hard emotions are also part of Lee’s brand. Before he performed “DRAMA.”, Lee said that “this is a safe space to feel whatever you need to feel.”
Later in the night as Lee met over his fans, I watched as they cried and told him stories about how he had inspired them or made them feel less alone. Lee took each story in with curiosity and appreciation. My mind drifted back to Atlanta, a few months prior, as we drove back to the hotel after spending over an hour meeting fans following his opening set at JUNNY’s tour. Many cried, as they told him that his honesty about mental health had made them feel seen. On the drive back, Lee stared out the window as the city passed us by. He was quiet and reflective after a night of high energy.
After a moment, he looked at me.
“This,” he said with a sense of assurance, “is better than any viral video.”
