Howlin Rain Announces 'Under The Wheels, Vol. 2'

Article Contributed by Calabro Music Media | Published on Thursday, September 3, 2020

Pre-Order For Limited Edition Vinyl, Cassette & Digital Begins On BANDCAMP FRIDAY This Week, September 4

Howlin Rain has announced 'Under The Wheels: Live From The Coasts, Vol. 2,' the second edition in a planned series of live album recordings, will be released October 30 on Silver Current Records. Pre-order for the collection begins this week via Bandcamp Friday on September 4. Formats include a one-time, small pressing of limited edition color vinyl variants that feature deluxe metallic rainbow foil jacket printing with stoner's delight album cover art by long-time Howlin Rain-affiliated artist Arik Roper, as well as, cassette and digital formats. Listen and share the album's first single "Calling Lightning Pt. 2" here.

On 'Under The Wheels, Vol. 2,' Howlin Rain's trademark rock 'n' roll bombast and intricately woven, extended improv passages swirl into a distinct form of storytelling, expressed through spiraling energy and a near-constant flow of form and melody. As a companion to its Vol. 1 predecessor, this latest offering is also drawn from North American coastal tours in 2018 and 2019 that came in support of the band's most recent studio album, 'The Alligator Bride.' Curated by Howlin Rain founder Ethan Miller, it presents favorite song performances selected from different shows along the way.

Here are some thoughts from the audience floor and backstage beer cooler on those 'Alligator Bride' tours of 2018 through present from friends, fellow road dogs and the extended Howlin Rain family.

"The last time I saw Howlin' Rain ignite a stage -- at New York's Brooklyn Bowl in the summer of 2018 -- I could never have imagined the profound silence that surrounds me two years later. In a world without the sustenance and sacrament of live music, my long, loud memories from that night -- Howlin' Rain bringing The Alligator Bride to life in a rush of joy and cascading guitars -- have been big medicine, keeping me sane and psychedelicized. Now there is a record from that tour to prove I wasn't dreaming -- and spread this band's cleansing might until we can all meet again in true, electric communion." - David Fricke (MOJO / Sirius XM Radio / Rolling Stone)

"Howlin Rain plays and the stars burn blue. Black dogs spit diamonds on red magik floors as Ethan weeps and wails his burnt earth poetry to the shining sinners and dirty dreamers who dance at his feet. Rock ’n' Roll in his hands is a living, breathing beast." - Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes)

"Our first tour ever was with Howlin Rain and I can't think of a better band to be watching when you are experiencing being on tour for the first time. Every night: deeply great music, ace level performers, fun energy, and real guys when off stage. Garcia Peoples would compare shows on the drive to the next club and all say what our favorite Howlin Rain set was. We'd sing along, we’d dance. Just a great thing to be a part of. I remember the first show of the first tour talking to Danny and saying, "if they’re gonna be like THAT every night we have to step up our game!” We may have a different approach, but what we've seen on tour with them is what we strive for in a live setting, which is putting on the best show of someone’s life." - Tom Malach (Garcia Peoples)

"There was a lot of ecstatic dance happening up there…" - Tim Green (Louder Studios)

"A shimmering scuzz riff battered in the goopiest deep-fried jalapeño popper. I was front row, middle row, and nose bleed all at once for the mighty Howlin Rain. Right now, I'd give anything to lean against a PA speaker they are blasting through and get some free brain surgery." - Ryley Walker

"I first saw Howlin Rain in 2006 on a Tenderloin acid bender in San Francisco where the people of the street saw into my mind before I could even smile back. The band laid into me that night. A radiant telepathic alchemy. I was trailin' their bus from then on. Years and beers passed. The band kept shredding. Wake up in 2018. Golden Gate Park. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. The Howlin Alligator Blues Band was serenading Brides and playing Rain songs on a porch of pretty mud and blades. Those electric voices, mined from the same dirt, blood and laughs as the first wave of psych freaks who left that park famous, soared into our sunburnt brains. My wine got better. I danced home and played guitar." - Christian Eric Beaulieu (Diamonds of Reno/ Anywhere)

"Soaring choruses, lost-in-itself, world-imploding jamming, nihilistic-Allman Bros guitar swipes topped off with real cool hats." - David Nance

"The sweet strains of Howlin Rain pull you into a groove of musical transpiration through the decades that leave you nostalgic for the show you just saw and, through Burroughs-like lyrics, into a next level transcendental rock experience. All your friends are here." - Caitlin Mattisson (Artist/ Illustrator)

"Every morning on tour Howlin Rain would roll out of bed and stumble to the van looking ready to rock. Night after night, they would blast off in big rooms with big sound, but I really dug the gigs when they would set up on the floor with no mics on their amps in small, packed rooms like Reverberation Vinyl. Lost in the light show and feeling free to take old songs to new places, the band delivered vicious twin leads, soaring vocals, lockdown drums and bass, and driving riffs." - Dan Greene (Mountain Movers)

"Ethan Miller sings about wheels and highways and the sky, and he's someone who should be doing this. Howlin Rain's righteousness as touring partners is redolent of much, including sheer decades spent on the road. Also, if you grew up in North Carolina and your aesthetic gestated in the ubiquitous radio-rock womb, then their music has flash chemical appeal—sugar-melting and gas-fume instant—and you wish that as a teen punk on your skateboard that you'd heard Howlin Rain coming from those cars whose windows only offered bottles and slurs hurled with malice alongside the Top, Lizzy, Zep, Skynyrd, Outlaws, et al. If it had been Howlin Rain on classic rock radio, if Bent Time-Space and Cultural Hegemony had allowed room on those omnipresent platforms for artists whose experience and musicality plainly earn it, it would mean thereby that we live in a world less cruel, less cynical, with less macho bullshit abounding, with fewer hurled and hurtful things.

Charleston, SC, February, 2020, and a grown man in shorts has without guile asked you "how you came to making 'non-music' as a hobby" and your only response is to silently object to the word 'hobby' and move closer to Howlin Rain's stage and have the brightly sung harmonies briefly hew a porch-swing in your mind until suddenly Ethan's guitar-solo above the band's loosening pocket has secret-handshaking right there and everything then is fine as frog hair, and you get with the reason you're still out there: there are people there with you, avowedly—your people. Howlin Rain is your people." - Jim McHugh (Sunwatchers)