The journey of a career songwriter is one filled with a seemingly endless series of what can rightly be called “pivotal” moments that can alter the arc of one’s professional career; the death of a loved one, the dissolution of a band, divorce, the misuse of alcohol and other drugs, marriage, worsening societal ills. Even if you’ve got your head screwed on in a manner we’d call straight, each and every one of those areas can seem daunting. When you couple any of them with the growing senses of fear and doubt and insecurity that can come, frankly, with being alive and even remotely paying attention to the world around you, it can prove enough to bring an otherwise strong individual to their respective knees.
In one form or another, Dave Hause has tackled all of those issues — sometimes individually, sometimes collectively — generally in a manner that can be poignant and heart-achingly personal. On his upcoming album, Kick, due April 12th on Rise Records, Hause has yet another filter to approach his life, and his craft, through: fatherhood. When we caught up with the now California-based Hause over the phone last week, he was out for a walk with his twin two-month-old sons napping quietly away in their stroller, affording his wife a much-deserved breather. Lest those who might be afraid that turning 40 and establishing roots on the sun-soaked west coast and becoming a dad would have dulled the daggers that Hause spent the better part of two decades sharpening, fear not; Kick is very much a return to form from the more positive, upbeat themes of its predecessor, Bury Me In Philly. “I think that Kick and Devour are a lot closer to one another than Bury Me In Philly,” Hause explains. “Bury Me In Philly was me moving to California and figuring out what that was going to look like and figuring out happiness. I didn’t want to write a bummed record if I wasn’t bummed. Little did I know that we were going to have one of the biggest heartbreaks as a society that I could have ever predicted.”
There are some weighty questions posited over the course of the ten songs that make up Kick. Many of them, like “Weathervane” and “Civil Lies” and lead single “The Ditch” tangle the wires between the personal and the political and reveal the obviously delicate balances that come with managing one’s own anxieties within the context of tides that are literally rising and a social climate that seems hellbent on allowing it to happen. The ride culminates in the album’s closing track, “Bearing Down,” a track which…well, let’s put it this way: if the Devour track “Autism Vaccine Blues” and its narrator outwardly considering whether or not they’d be better off dead tugged on your heartstrings, “Bearing Down” will use two hands and rip those heartstrings straight from your chest. The song finds Hause not only name-checking Hunter Thompson and Robin Williams (and insanely talented Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison, who provided backing vocal duties on the Devour track “The Shine,” in the liner notes), all of whom died from suicide after lengthy and sometimes public struggles with their own demons, but contemplating his own oblivion and weighing swan diving off the Golden Gate Bridge.
But then comes the pivot, that moment that the narrative shifts from being bleak to being heavy yet hopeful by way of our narrator finding that he’s got a newfound responsibility to be around for a while, and to help those that he’s close to through these difficult times. “What I was betting on with that final verse,” he explains, “was really like the old Buddhist philosophy that life is pain. “Hallelujah, we’re alive, and it’s bearing down.“ It is brutal. And if I can lighten that load for someone else, then I’m serving some grander purpose more than just my own selfish whims.” If you’re lucking, the act of older and going through some of your own trials and tribulations allows you the experience and perspective needed to learn from past mistakes. “I’ve got to stick around and not put my people through hell,” Hause notes, adding “in looking at the patterns of addiction and stuff, you start to realize that ‘wow…I’ve made some messes that I wouldn’t mind not repeating, so I’m going to stay in better touch!’ I look at it as more of a human responsibility.”
If there’s a central theme to Kick, it’s that yeah, the current might be strengthening around us or the ditch we’re in may be getting deeper, but that focusing on that isn’t going to fix it. “It’s a very dangerous proposition to look at the glass as either half-empty or filled with piss! Maybe that could be true, but I can’t really afford to ruminate on that. I have to come up with a reason to look toward the shore despite feeling I or we, collectively, are drowning. I have to. At this point, it’s a job as I have as a dad,” Hause notes, quickly adding that, upon reflection, his new duties aren’t necessarily “new” at all, though they’re certainly more intense. “To some degree, I’ve always had that job. I’ve been a brother and a husband and a friend and a songwriter. I’m supposed to try to be of some good use to people.”
There’s a genuine art to being able to write a song that uses your own uniquely human experiences and resonates with other people in such a way that not only can the listener relate to your stories, but use them in a way that can move the needle in their own lives. “You know the Leonard Cohen quote “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in?” Hause asks, knowing full well what the answer is. “A lot of times what’s compelling to me is trying to look at the piece of pottery and trying to recognize that it is indeed cracked — and we cracked it! We fucked it up! — But then trying to find that light, because what else are you going to do? A joking alternate title for the record was “Suicidally Optimistic,” and I know that can kinda make the skin crawl, but a lot of times, I think that that’s my outlook.”
As was the case with Bury Me In Philly a few years ago, Hause was joined by his brother Tim for the creation of Kick. The latter might be sixteen years younger than his big brother, but make no mistake; he is not, by any stretch (and to paraphrase a line from the track “Civil Lies”) a kid anymore, displaying songwriting chops that match his previously-established guitar abilities. “Having Tim as my partner now is clutch. His whole theory is that you make a ten song record, and then, long-term, if you end up with three of them in your “greatest hits” set that we’ll play for the remainder of our careers as musicians, we did something right.” Tim not only collaborated on music and lyrics this time out, he takes on lead vocal duties on “Civil Lies,” providing an effect that’s familiar while still adding a layer we haven’t heard on a Hause “solo” album before. I use solo in quotes there, because it may not be that way for long. “I didn’t really want to be a solo guy (at first),” Hause the elder explains. “The financial collapse happened and I grabbed a guitar and just went. I didn’t realize (it would happen this way), I thought I’d be back with The Loved Ones after a record or two, but the cookie crumbled differently. I brought my brother in and assumed he’d be with me for a year or two and then go back to college.” Instead, Tim has turned himself into a vital cog in the process. “I think we’re just continuing to set the table for us combining streams and using both of our songwriting output and both of our talents toward the same end. Ultimately, we may just go completely under the last name so that it encompasses all of our writing,” a trend that’s started already, as evidenced by Kick‘s cover art.
While Hause will have Tim alongside him as he gears up to hit the road with a full band, The Mermaid, for the first Kick support shows later this week and through the remainder of the year, he obviously won’t have his family’s two newest members alongside. In order to gear up for life on the road as a dad, Hause has called on some old friends like Dan Andriano, Pete Steinkopf, Brian Fallon and Cory Branan not just for songwriting input, but for advice on how to best navigate these previously (for him) uncharted waters. While being away from his wife and two little fellas is obviously going to suck, Hause is hoping to use that as inspiration to dig a little deeper – as though that were possible – in his live performances. “I’m going to miss my family. I’m going to feel to some degree like a heel for not being there for first steps or things. I’m going to miss stuff if I continue to tour to support my life. But I’m trying to look at it like a two-pronged approach: 1 – what I do is cool and the kids will be psyched on that and 2- more importantly, if I can lean into that experience and be like ‘well, I’m in Berlin, and I don’t get to do this just willy-nilly; I can’t just pick up and go, it takes a tremendous amount of planning and effort and heartache to be away from my family, I’m going to really dig in on this Berlin show…or these two Boston shows.’ I think maybe it’ll make things shine up a little brighter.”
The new tour kicks off tomorrow (March 27th) in Hause’s hometown of Santa Barbara and takes a baby-steps approach through places like Boston, Philly, New York and Toronto before making its way overseas for three weeks later next month. Tour dates are available here. Kick is due out April 12th, and you can still pre-order it here.
More importantly, you can check out our full chat below; Hause and I have done these a few times, so as usual, we range pretty far and wide.
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