The High Hawks, an all-star cast of musical friends from Leftover Salmon, Railroad Earth, Hard Working Americans, and Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, are following up their acclaimed eponymous debut with Mother Nature’s Show, out February 16 on LoHi Records. The band is premiering the first single “Diamond Sky,” today at Jambase; the song will be on all streaming services this Friday; pre-save HERE.
Songwriter Adam Greuel shared the inspiration behind the song: “Diamond Sky kind of reflects on the many experiences of good lovin' energy. To me, it's kind of a musing on the way that true love changes over time, taking different shapes, sort of similar to the changing seasons we experience yearly. I really have no damn clue, but I love thinking about it, and love sure is lovely."
Mother Nature's Show was recorded during the dead of winter at historic Pachyderm Studios in the small town of Cannon Falls, Minnesota, just 20 miles west of the banks of the Mississippi and Highway 61. The sextet of roots music veterans arrived at Pachyderm on New Year’s Day 2023, a Sunday, and recorded the 12 tracks included on the record over the course of the first week of the year while a blizzard raged outside the studio.
“There was a certain coziness to it,” says Keyboardist-vocalist Chad Staehly. “We were out in the woods, it was dumping snow, and it was just the work in front of us. It was like, ‘All right, this is a new chapter. It’s New Year's Day and we're gathering together to make a record.’ There was something really cool about all that.”
Vince Herman is best known as one of the two frontmen for Leftover Salmon and many people know Staehly from the jam band supergroup Hard Working Americans, but it’s the group they co-founded — Great American Taxi — that connects all the members of The High Hawks in one way or another. Bassist Brian Adams and drummer Will Trask were both members of Taxi, while vocalist-fiddler-guitarist Tim Carbone, best known as a member of Railroad Earth, produced two of GAT’s albums. In addition, vocalist-guitarist Adam Greuel of Horseshoes & Hand Grenades was influenced by Taxi in his teenage years and even played a few gigs with the group.
With four singer-songwriters — Carbone, Greuel, Herman and Staehly — there was no shortage of material to choose from. They shared demo tapes with one another in the months leading up to the sessions and arrived at Pachyderm with more than enough songs for the record. The song sequence takes the listener down Highway 61, the oft-called “Blues Highway” immortalized by Bob Dylan, that follows the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans, passing through St. Louis, Memphis and the Mississippi delta.
As fans have come to expect, there’s a variety of musical stylings represented — from Southern, country and psychedelic rock to honky-tonk and even a ballad and a waltz — with The High Hawks’ sonic cohesiveness claiming each style as their own. What you hear are six superb musicians in the Pachyderm tracking room, looking at one another, reacting in real time to what is being played and capturing the kind of musical magic that eludes recording artists who build their records part by part. The band’s performances throughout the record are top-notch, and there’s very little overdubbing.
When asked about the authenticity of The High Hawks’ new album, Herman assures with a laugh, “AI had no part in the making of this record.”
Pre-order CD/vinyl editions of the album via the LoHi store — all physical pre-orders (CD/vinyl) will be automatically entered for a chance to win win an Epiphone acoustic guitar autographed by the band.
TRACK LISTING:
1. Diamond Sky
2. Somewhere South
3. Temperature Is Rising
4. Fox River Blues
5. Mother Nature’s Show
6. Top Shelf, Rock Bottom
7. Radio Loud
8. Somewhere In Themiddle
9. Same Old Stories
10. This Is What Love Feels Like
11. Backwater Voodoo
12. Shine Your Blues
