For decades, Dave Hause was that punk rock kid from Philly, first with Paint It Black and then later with The Loved Ones, The Falcon and eventually as a solo musician. But time, experiences and family have a way of softening the edges a bit. And not in a bad way. He’s still that punk kid from Philly, but now with a family at home, his brother by his side on tour and in the studio, and he’s reaching for an acoustic guitar more than hitting those distortion pedals.
With his latest effort, the self-released LP Blood Harmony, co-written alongside his brother Tim (mostly figuratively, via Zoom), Hause offers an emotionally stirring collection of songs that draws from a more folk/roots rock world. Though Dave and Tim have been writing and touring together for years, this album – created during last year’s pandemic – features some of the strongest material yet from the duo, singing of nostalgia, longing, and deep ties created by family. Dave’s wife gave birth to twin boys just months before the release of 2019’s Kick, so the pandemic that forced him and his brother off the road last year, allowed him time to be with his wife and sons back home in Santa Barbara. It also gave him the opportunity to experiment more with self-releasing, including a pair of insured EPs, the Patty/Paddy albums – tribute albums to folk great Patty Griffin and Dillinger Four’s Patrick ‘Paddy’ Costello.
As Blood Harmony was about to come out, Hause spoke with Glide Magazine about the recording of Blood Harmony down in Nashville, the decision to go it alone without the help of a record label and “pencil down Fridays.”
Through all your online videos posted during the pandemic, I felt like I saw you more than just about anyone. And those two Patty/Paddy EPs you put out during that time definitely helped you stay top of mind.
Yeah, it’s funny, that wasn’t intentional. Everything happened with a pandemic right as things were cresting with the last record and we decided to take some of that creative momentum and do something with it. Plus, we had to keep the lights on.
You put those two EPs out on your own label and this new record you’re putting out on your own as well. Is that coming about because you had a decent experience with those two EP’s last year going it alone?
We felt like we could scale it knowing that there’s going to be more people interested in the new record of originals – a record release proper – then this bizarre idea of covering a punk rock singer and Americana legend and mixing the two during quarantine. It took two paragraphs to describe to people what Patty/Paddy even was, and I feel like that left some people out in the cold. But that project did well enough that we thought, “OK with this simple idea that we have a new record would you like to come hear it?” We felt like we could have more success with that even then we did on the EPs, which we felt really good about. It was almost like a testing ground and so far, we’re outpacing I think the last two records.
I’ve seen your brother Tim playing with you on tour and I know you guys worked together on Kick, and I think Bury Me in Philly. Is this the first time the two of you worked together writing every song from the very beginning?
The second time, we did that for Kick as well. He helped me finish maybe half of Bury Me In Philly maybe more. He was helping me, and the lights were really coming on with his songwriting on that record so with Kick I said, “Let’s just write this all together” and that’s why you had a song like “Civil Lies;” that was a Tim idea and so with this new batch, as we sat down to write it, there were so many songs like “Civil Lies” that are Tim ideas. That’s why we’re gonna make a Tim record next – his debut record.
In a podcast earlier this year, you and your brother talked about Pencil Down Fridays, this challenge you had for yourself during the pandemic, where you would work on one full song each week. Is this album the result of that exercise?
Yeah, and his will be too. We ended up with about 30 songs so 10 of them are on Blood Harmony and 10 of them will probably end up on his record, and the rest will be singles or we may just leave them in the vault until we know what exactly to do with them. This is the fruit of that labor. Will get at least two full length albums out of it. If there was ever a commercial for you should be disciplined at this, these are the results of all of that joyful hard work.
Does he still live on the East Coast?
Yeah, he and his wife own a house in Philadelphia because when you live in Philadelphia you can own a house. I live in California where on the salary of a musician you can’t really afford to live in a house. I want to move back to Philly, and I have for years. I’ve been trying to convince my wife. Working people can still afford homes there. All of my family is there, and my friends are there. But I love it here. It’s hard to even say this because people go “Are you complaining about living in paradise?” No, I love it in California, but things change overtime, and we have twin boys now that are pushing three, so we’re starting to look down the barrel of them going to school and long term, you can’t find a condo that’s not $1,000,000. My wife’s a therapist and I’m a singer-songwriter without a hit. We have an audience, and we have a great life, but we need probably two or three hits to buy a house here. We’ll see what happens, but I can’t imagine we’ll stay here for too much longer. In the eight years we’ve lived here we watched the neighborhood go from Dodge minivans and Ford F-150s to everyone on the street having a Tesla or Land Rover. There’s wealth everywhere.
There’s still plenty of minivans in Philly.
Of course! Those are my people.
So, most of the writing you did was over Zoom?
Yeah, all of the writing we did was over Zoom and we got together right before we went into the studio to polish the songs. On Kick, it was over Zoom and we wrote a lot while touring for Bury Me In Philly in hotel rooms, in soundchecks and stuff like that. And then I flew out there right before we made Kick. My wife is pregnant with the twins, and Tim and I spent a week or so together at his house finishing the songs and recorded that record. Each one’s been a little bit different, but I’ve gotten pretty used to the Zoom writing thing, so we were able to hit the ground running during the pandemic.
You recorded this album in Nashville. Was this your first time recording there?
Uh huh. We haven’t spent a lot of time in Nashville over the years, to my detriment. I was being really pushed towards Nashville in 2013 and 2014 after I made Devour. Everyone was saying “Oh man, you gotta go there.” And what I was hearing – I’ve been therapy for years now and I understand what was going on – what I was hearing was “You need to be a country guy.” And I thought, “Man I’m a Philadelphia punk rocker at heart. This is going to be silly.” I just thought, “Wait a second why are you trying to change me?” And all these years later I realized what they meant. Nashville’s a place where the song is of particular importance and the playing thereof is sacred. And most of the city is pivoting around the axis of music whereas most other places, Los Angeles New York, all of that has changed. I think that’s what people were pushing me towards. Just took me a long time to figure that out. We played at the Bluebird years ago in Nashville when we were writing Kick. That show was sold out and it was really warm and special and people from Nashville were there. And that was sort of my, “Oh I kind of get what’s happening down here” moment.
And you just played Americana Fest for the first time this year, right?
Just this year yeah. It was interesting period. It was smaller than I thought it would be and I think that was maybe indicative of post pandemic weirdness. But it was really great, and it was really fun. I feel like every time we’ve gone there the city is open its arms wide to us. And my arms are reciprocal. I love to be there, and I love the musicianship there and I love the songwriters there. But I was also kind of worried that I would be seen as a carpetbagger there. Coming into town to kind of take their thing. And that’s not my intention at all. Again, I think that’s just a misunderstanding of what Nashville has become. It’s not all country. All kinds of music. When you have that many great studios and that many great players, there’s only so much country music they can be made. So much rock and roll has been made there and hip hop. Everybody is just gravitating towards the place because there’s just so many great creative types. it’s just so natural and fun and I’ve been shocked by how warmly we’ve been welcomed by the people there. I have a pretty established thing already so to go and do something new, a lot of times it doesn’t work, and it feels like it’s working better than I thought it would. It’s great.
And working there you have access to some pretty amazing musicians to work with. For this record, you worked with Sadler Vaden, who is amazing and, I had to read this twice to makes sure I read it correctly, but you also got to work with Gary Talent from the E Street Band, right?
I had to read that twice as well, man.
I know Springsteen is Jersey’s guy, but as a Philly kid how cool is that to work with someone from the E Street Band.
He and Billy Joel are the kings of Philadelphia 80s and 90s stadium rock. It was a stunner. It was interesting because Gary knows that everybody there is well aware of what he does. He’s really gracious about it. He’s really giving with his time and his talents, no pun intended. And was willing to answer whatever questions we asked. There was some nerdery going around for sure, which I think had a real leveling effect on some of the other players as we were getting comfortable. Tom Bukovac has played guitar with some biggest players in Nashville and even he turned into a fan instantly, more so than me. It was hard, because I was in the boss seat. It was a trip man. He was so humble, the guy walked out of the studio with four or five bases in gig bags, opened up the trunk of his car loaded them in, and he turned to Tim and said, “I’ll see you in Philly” and to me he said, “And I’ll see you in Santa Barbara and we’ll get sushi and go to the gig.” And he’s talking about the gig wherein he’s playing bass for Bruce Springsteen! It’s such a trip. But we kept it cool we kept it professional, but also humble. We definitely thought it was fucking cool. But within a few minutes after the song gets going and you’re playing music and that’s the joy of it no matter how big the reputation of the person you’re playing with happens to be. He made as many errors as anybody else did, and that’s a humbling thing. And he also had as many great ideas as anyone else did. There’s a leveling that goes into playing music.
You also worked with Will Hoge on this record. Obviously, he’s a musician himself and you’ve worked with a number of producers who also happened to be musicians in their own right. Is it different to work with a producer who also happens to be a musician and a songwriter versus a producer who is just known for producing?
Yes, two records with Eric (Brazilian, The Hooters). That had an influence for sure and then Will as well he has an established solo career. Yeah, that’s helpful to me because I just feel at the end of the day, you’re in good hands if you’re working with another songwriter, typically. My first record I made with Pete (Steinkopf) from The Bouncing Souls, and he’s a songwriter as well. That was helpful. The second record I made there weren’t songwriters at the helm, but the process was really great.
I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s crucial, it’s just a little bit broader than the songwriting thing. Are you working with people who have the song as the finished product as their main goal? When that’s the case, no matter what their job is, I think you can get good work done. It’s when ego gets in the way and when there’s an agenda that you have a problem. The guys who do the best, and we’ve had the fortune to work with a lot of great people, they don’t worry if the coffee came cold. They get focused on the real job at hand which is taking these songs that are in your brain and taking them all the way up the mountain top and make it great.
You’ve obviously had a couple songs in the past that are reacting to what was going on with the Trump administration. Was it tough over the past year, working on this record, being forced off the road and not knowing what was coming next, for you and Tim not to write solely about the uncertainty and dire issues? Did you have to make a conscious decision to avoid writing about the pandemic, politics, riots, etc.?
No, that’s a great question. I feel like I got a lot of that out of my system in making Kick. Because Kick was about, OK if the water is coming up in your drowning, which is what it felt like for those years, what do we do? That’s what the title is in reference to. You kick. You do your best, you kick back, you push back. And so, I felt like going out in 2019 and part of 2020 and playing those songs and delivering that kind of idea and getting that off my chest was enough. And I was looking for something different. I’m glad we made that record when we did. I knew my perspective was going to change.
Yeah, it’s hard to top a song like “Dirty Fucker”.
(Laughs) Right. Going into Blood Harmony I knew my life was so much softer now. I said this in an interview the other day, having my kids is not stopping the ice caps from melting. It’s not stopping these archaic abortion laws from getting fucked with in Texas and stuff like that. But my focus is on my sons. My sweet little innocent sons. So, I think there’s a softening to my perspective that came in and that’s what I was kind of taken with. And we were writing all kinds of songs in that first portion of the year, Tim and I. And I think having been about a year into the pandemic or so, I was so tired of reading and watching things about it. I’ve had enough. I wanted something else. And that creativity became like a little life raft. I could get into this songs and Tim and I could come up with other ideas. I was sick to death about hearing about that other stuff. So, it wasn’t so hard to avoid it. There’s not a lot of that in the record if any. The thing that I think where they overlap is more on longing. There’s a lot of longing and Blood Harmony. Everyone was sort of longing for something different, to go back to some sense of normalcy or to see friends and family they hadn’t seen. So, I do think that’s the theme in Blood Harmony that would date it to the pandemic. It’s that sense of longing.
Photo credit: Jesse DeFlorio
