Kinda combining a couple of stories into one here, but I don’t think you’ll mind once you see what they are. First up, the great Dave Hause has outlined the first of his touring plans for next year! The three-week jaunt kicks off February 21st in Seattle and runs through March 14th in — you […]
Kinda combining a couple of stories into one here, but I don’t think you’ll mind once you see what they are. First up, the great Dave Hause has outlined the first of his touring plans for next year! The three-week jaunt kicks off February 21st in Seattle and runs through March 14th in — you guessed it — Philadelphia. Tickets are on sale now; check out the full rundown here.
Last but certainly not least, Hause had the opportunity to record a few stripped down tracks at the Martin Guitar Museum as part of their Museum Series. Check out the video for “Paradise” as played on a 1941 000-28M below!
“Paradise” appears in its original form on Hause’s last album, Kick, which was released earlier this year on Rise Records.
Any week that allows you to take in multiple shows on a headline tour featuring one of the most iconic punk rock bands of a generation is about the best kind of week you could ask for. And so it was last week when yours truly got to take in not one but two shows […]
Any week that allows you to take in multiple shows on a headline tour featuring one of the most iconic punk rock bands of a generation is about the best kind of week you could ask for. And so it was last week when yours truly got to take in not one but two shows on Bad Religion‘s tour in support of their seventeenth (!?!?!) studio album, Age Of Unreason, which dropped back in May on Epitaph Records. If you check this site with any regularity, you’ll know that the first of those shows was the Roadblock Festival in East Providence, Rhode Island, an all-day, outdoor festival show that the iconic Bad Religion closed out. And while a great time was had by all that day, at least from a sentimental standpoint, there’s nothing quite like getting to see one of your favorite bands at a club on your own home turf. You see, a sixteen-year-old Jay Stone would attend his first punk rock show over April vacation of his junior year of high school. It was The Gray Race Tour, and it featured Bad Religion headlining with support from Dance Hall Crashers and Unwritten Law, and the local stop took place at Avalon Ballroom on Lansdowne Street in Boston, and while Avalon isn’t there anymore, it’s since been combined with a couple other local clubs and turned into the House Of Blues, and if you couldn’t guess where I’m going already, this particular show took place at House of Blues and so we’ve made a giant punk rock full circle.
Support on this leg of Bad Religion’s US tour came from Dave Hause and the Mermaid. We’ve obviously been big fans of Hause’s solo career over the last however-many years, and have seen him perform truly solo, accompanied by his brother, and fronting full four- and five-piece bands. So it was a bit of an unexpected surprise (that’s redundant, isn’t it?) to catch the band as one of only a couple shows they were playing as a trio, as Hause’s brother/co-writer/guitar hero Tim was on a scheduled vacation – millennials, man. As he has on each run for the last few years, Kevin Conroy joined on drums while Matt Olsson – normally a drummer whom you may have seen play with the likes of Brian Fallon or Frank Iero – assumed bass duties while the trio blazed through an uptempo set that, if you squinted just right, hearkened back to the early days of The Loved Ones. Hell, they even threw a “cover” of “Jane” in for good measure. While he obviously missed having his brother and right-hand-man on stage, Hause looked like he was having fun prowling the stage and filling in the missing sonic pieces.
Bad Religion hit the stage shortly after 9pm (quick aside – I know it’s passe to say because it’s not, like, supporting the local scene or whatever, but I’ll be damned if a doors-at-7, show-at-8, two-band weeknight bill isn’t the absolute bee’s knees) and immediately dove in to “Them And Us” which, of course, appears in its original form on the aforementioned Gray Race, which I’ll pretend forever was a shoutout to the symmetry yours truly pointed out above. This was my first Bad Religion show of the Jamie Miller On Drums era, and while I have long-since planted my flag atop the “the Brooks Wackerman Era Is The Best Bad Religion Era” hill…Miller can flat out play. He served as the proverbial gas pedal as the band powered through the corners of a twenty-seven-song set that featured songs from more than a dozen albums from the band’s legendary catalog. Brian Baker and Mike Dimkich took turns trading lead guitar licks, Jay Bentley bounded around stage providing thunderous basslines and copious oozin-aahs — talk about guys that look like they’re having fun at this stage of their careers — and Greg Graffin was, well, Greg Graffin. He’s one of the most iconic figures in the annals of punk rock history for a reason, pacing the stage as equal parts poet, professor, and punk rock choir leader. Graffin did spill the beans that next year, Bad Religion will mark their 40th anniversary with another lengthy tour and a book chronicling their legendary career, and it started dawning on me that if one were to try to compose a list of American rock acts that have been are as consistent and vital as Bad Religion have been since the dawn of the Ronald Reagan era, that list might include Bruce Springsteen and…um…hang on a sec…
If you were at all into folk, punk, or Chuck Ragan between 2008-2013, then you probably remember The Revival Tour. For those of you who don’t remember, it’s when Ragan would take like minded people from the punk and alternative worlds and bring them on the road with just their acoustic guitars and their heart […]
If you were at all into folk, punk, or Chuck Ragan between 2008-2013, then you probably remember The Revival Tour. For those of you who don’t remember, it’s when Ragan would take like minded people from the punk and alternative worlds and bring them on the road with just their acoustic guitars and their heart felt lyrics.
While it’s been nearly seven years since the last tour, they have announced a sort of revival of The Revival Tour, in the form of a one night show featuring Ragan along with Dan Andriano, and Dave Hause. An Evening of Revival is set to take place on July 7th at Belly Up in Solana Beach, CA, with proceeds from the event gong to CastHope, a nonprofit organization benefiting the youth of California and Western Nevada through free fly fishing programs.
In the days leading up to last Friday’s release of his latest solo album, Kick, Dave Hause and his stellar backing band, The Mermaid, played a small series of sold-out club shows scattered around the country. The shows seemed to serve a dual role involving equal parts getting people fired up for the pending release, […]
In the days leading up to last Friday’s release of his latest solo album, Kick, Dave Hause and his stellar backing band, The Mermaid, played a small series of sold-out club shows scattered around the country. The shows seemed to serve a dual role involving equal parts getting people fired up for the pending release, and testing the touring waters as a parent for the first time (Hause’s wife recently gave birth to twin boys). If Boston show #2 back on Saturday, April 6th, was any indication, both of those roles seemed to result in overwhelming success.
Hause and the Mermaid, with a lineup on this run consisting of Hause’s younger brother/writing partner Tim on guitar, the immensely talented Kayleigh Goldsworthy on a keys and violin and guitar and I might be missing one, Kevin Conroy on drums and Frank Iero/Brian Fallon drummer Matt Olsson on bass) took the stage at Great Scott by storm on this night, kicking their set off with “Autism Vaccine Blues” from his stellar 2013 release Devour. Hause and I have spoken at length about the importance of that album generally and that song specifically to yours truly over the last handful of years, so for selfish reasons, I’d like to think the set started that way on purpose, though in the larger sense, it did seem to set an uptempo tone for the evening that never really wavered from that point on. The set featured a serviceable number of tracks from each of Hause’s three prior solo releases; it’s worth mentioning that his 2011 debut Resolutions sometimes gets overlooked in the wake of the releases of Devour and Bury Me In Philly in the years that followed, but this night’s full-band workups of “C’Mon Kid” and the title track are just as poignant and cathartic as ever. As you might imagine, the set also consisted of a healthy dose of Kick, an album that the vast majority of the audience had yet to hear in its entirety, though tracks like “The Ditch” and “Saboteurs” have already become seeming crowd favorites. A particularly meaningful moment in the evening came when the Kick track “Bearing Down,” inspired by the death of Hause friend and Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison, was followed immediately by the singalong-heavy “The Shine,” a song that Hutchison shared vocal duties for on Devour.
Opening duties for the back-to-back Boston shows were perfectly executed by Portland, Maine’s Weakened Friends. The trio channel everything that was right about 90s alternative music and its more recent stylistic revival. The guitar-heavy buzzsaw attack and guttural vocals evoke Dinosaur Jr. or Sleater-Kinney but with catchy, pop-driven hooks that would make Veruca Salt or early Smashing Pumpkins fans wistfully nostalgic. If you haven’t checked out their 2018 full-length debut, Common Blah, yet, you should really do yourself the favor.
If you’re jonesing for another taste of the upcoming Dave Hause album “Kick” then here’s your dose. Stream “Fireflies” below. It’s mellow but solid IMO. “Kick” is due out through Rise Records on April 12th.
If you’re jonesing for another taste of the upcoming Dave Hausealbum “Kick” then here’s your dose. Stream “Fireflies” below. It’s mellow but solid IMO.
“Kick” is due out through Rise Records on April 12th.
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 […]
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.
Summer festival season is rapidly approaching in the United States, and for the second year in a row, legendary photographer (and underrated bluesman) Danny Clinch has got himself a good one in the works. It’s called Sea.Hear.Now, and it takes place quite literally right on the beach in Asbury Park. This year’s festivities are going […]
Summer festival season is rapidly approaching in the United States, and for the second year in a row, legendary photographer (and underrated bluesman) Danny Clinch has got himself a good one in the works. It’s called Sea.Hear.Now, and it takes place quite literally right on the beach in Asbury Park. This year’s festivities are going down on September 20th and 21st, and while the festival’s larger headliners include Dave Matthews Band and The Lumineers, it also includes a steady diet of punk-friendly musical fare, with bands like Dropkick Murphys, Bad Religion, Dave Hause and the Mermaid, Beach Rats and the incomparable Joan Jett and the Blackhearts scheduled to take the stage. Check out the full lineup, including details on the festival’s surf competition, on the tour poster below.
Ticket info for Sea.Hear.Now is available right here.
Dave Hause has released a new single, “Saboteurs”. The song is from his upcoming Rise Records album Kick, which is released April 12th. The album is the follow up to 2017’s Bury Me In Philly. Pre-orders are up now. Have a listen (and check out UK tour dates) below.
Dave Hause has released a new single, “Saboteurs”. The song is from his upcoming Rise Records album Kick, which is released April 12th. The album is the follow up to 2017’s Bury Me In Philly.
Pre-orders are up now. Have a listen (and check out UK tour dates) below.
Dave Hause is streaming new track “The Ditch”. The song is from his upcoming Rise Records album Kick, which is released April 12th. The album is the follow up to 2017’s Bury Me In Philly. Pre-orders are up now. Have a listen below.
Dave Hause is streaming new track “The Ditch”. The song is from his upcoming Rise Records album Kick, which is released April 12th. The album is the follow up to 2017’s Bury Me In Philly.
September Haze, the new EP from Dave Hause was released on Friday and you can stream the entire thing on spotify. It’s mellower than most of his previous material Hause enthusiasts will still dig it. This EP is a follow up to Dave’s full length Burt Me In Philly which came out last year.
September Haze, the new EP from Dave Hause was released on Friday and you can stream the entire thing on spotify. It’s mellower than most of his previous material Hause enthusiasts will still dig it.
This EP is a follow up to Dave’s full length Burt Me In Philly which came out last year.
