The Hackles, made up of Kati Claborn (vocals/guitar/banjo/clarinet), Luke Ydstie (vocals/guitar/bass/keys) and Halli Anderson (vocals/violin), release their album, What a beautiful thing I have made, today. It is available on CD and vinyl and digitally worldwide on Jealous Butcher Records. Listen to or order it HERE.
The Hackles released four singles prior to the album, starting with “Damn the word,” “a sweet, infectious banjo tune” (NPR) which was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered in January. Bob Boilen said, "I'm in love with the melody for this song..." See the video here. “James’ drink”, their second single, was released with a video in January. “Birdcage,” their third single, premiered in February with Glide Magazine who raved, “Lovely layers of banjo and guitar interweave with powerful vocal harmonies that seems to capture the wild frontier spirit of the fishing town the band calls home.” The video for “Birdcage” premiered with The Bluegrass Situation in March. The final single, “Angela”, came out in mid-March, and Country Standard Time called it, “The gem of the release.”
Kati and Luke met in the mid-2000s when they both joined Blind Pilot. They hit it off both personally and creatively and decided to form their own musical project and The Hackles were born. In 2017, Halli, a member of River Whyless and Horse Feathers, moved to Astoria, OR, serendipitously just houses away from Kati and Luke. Their musical lives were already intertwined, Blind Pilot and River Whyless having toured together, but their newfound proximity led to collaboration on several fronts. Halli began recording and playing shows with the Hackles, and Kati and Luke stepped into the line-up of Horse Feathers, led by Halli’s partner Justin Ringle. When 2020 hit, they found themselves at home and unable to tour with their other bands, and began meeting regularly to write, play, and record together, with Halli being involved in the writing process for the first time.
What a beautiful thing I have made is infused with a sense of intimacy. An underlying tension is also palpable in several songs, the result of the world it was created in- more uncertain than ever and also smaller and more interconnected. The whole album is firmly rooted in place, created within a very small radius around where they all live, just above the Columbia River in Astoria, OR. Written and recorded at Luke & Kati’s home and in the Astoria-based Rope Room studio, everyone involved lives nearby and are part of their musical community family.
The Hackles spent early 2023 on tour in Europe and the UK. Paul Kerr of Americana UK praised their performance in Scotland, “the three superb musicians and singers played a set which was at times almost hypnotic. The trio are so obviously in tune with each other that each song was a delight making this a gig to savour.” They have several Pacific Northwest shows scheduled for the Spring and Summer, including album release shows in Astoria, OR on April 7 at Labor Temple with The Horsenecks, tix here; Portland, OR on April 14th at Polaris Hall with The Horsenecks, tix here; and Seattle on April 19th at The Tractor Tavern with The Horsenecks & Led to Sea, tix here.
Information on other tour dates can be found on their website.
1. Damn the word
2. Hum with the worms
3. James' drink
4. Angela
5. Birdcage
6. Pictures of Elvis
7. Water for your bedside
8. What a beautiful thing I have made
9. Steve
10. Alligators
11. First time for everything
Today Americana UK premieres Jerry Joseph’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” the second single from his forthcoming album, Baby, You’re the Man Who Would Be King, due for release on September 29, 2023, on Cosmo Sex School Records. The track, out today, was recorded in NYC and produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, and features a band made up of some of New York’s best players. Listen here.
Joseph recalls, “I just listened to ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ for the first time in a while. The day I wrote it was a beautiful day in a dark time, the election was looming, we had gone through a summer of putting on gas masks and fighting the feds trying to take our city, plus massive fires and Covid, and in the middle of it all were my kids and the oak tree and the gravity of love.”
Eric Ambel remarks, “I love albums that are a journey and as we went along I was trying to bring something different to each of the songs. We were getting some cool stuff and Jerry continued to pull out more interesting things. He told me the story of his recent attempts at the harmonica and as a guy who’s struggled with the harp himself, I felt the joy coming out of the way he played it.
We ended up using that cool harp on four songs including ‘The Man Who Would Be King’. That one really gave me that special throw your hat in the air rodeo feeling.”
The first single, “The War I Finally Won,” was released on July 18 and premiered with Americana Highways who praised "Music lovers should have all eyes on this cross-pollination right now — what better and more complementary duo is out there that could come close to rivaling this team of Jerry Joseph and Eric Ambel in terms of having such disparate strengths? And yet at the same time, two things you can count on from each of them is heights and ecstatic peaks of energy in the flow of the music, and catchy hooks."
After the rollercoaster of 2020 with the excitement of Joseph releasing The Beautiful Madness, the album he recorded with Patterson Hood producing and Drive-by Truckers as his backing band, to international critical acclaim, quickly turned to disappointment when he had to cancel his ambitious touring plans due to the pandemic, he borrowed a vintage camping trailer from a friend, parked it in his driveway and wrote. Most of the nine songs on King came from that session and while working on them, Joseph didn’t have a cohesive theme beyond a focus on simplicity. Joseph recalls, “Loads of different issues came up during early Covid, a lot of intimate family time, spiritual soul searching, dodgy sobriety and the disappointment of releasing the album of my career right as the world closed. All those things were on my mind as I started to work on this album.”
Joseph had long wanted to make a NYC album, having spent a lot of time there. He met Ambel in 2018 when Eric sat in with his band at a show at Rough Trade in Brooklyn and the seed was planted. In the summer of 2021, Joseph traveled to NYC to record the album with Ambel at his Brooklyn studio, Cowboy Technical Services. Ambel assembled a band of stellar musicians including Jeremy Chatzky on Bass, Phil Cimino on Drums, Charlie Giordano on Hammond Organ, Wurlitzer Electric Piano & Accordion and himself on Electric Guitars, Acoustic Guitars, Keyboards, Percussion & Harmony Vocals with Casey Neil on Harmony, Joe Flood on Fiddle, Mary Lee Kortes on Harmony Vocals, and Cody Nilsen on Pedal Steel, adding their skills to a song each. The album was mostly recorded in a week with Mario Viele engineering after which Ambel added some additional recording from his home studio, Evie’s Terrace.
“I had long been talking about making a New York record, I have spent a lot of time there but never made an album there. Eric Ambel assembled a seriously wicked band, and I don’t know what he does, but it sounds like NYC to me.”
Jerry Joseph will be on tour this Summer and Fall, with European dates coming this Winter. Check JerryJoseph.com for more dates being announced.
Catch Jerry Joseph on tour:
August 18, 19 & 20 Discovery Park - Virginia City, MT (with Jackmormons)
August 25 Tim’s Tavern - Seattle, WA (with Jackmormons)
August 26 Sea Monster Lounge - Seattle, WA (with Jackmormons)
August 27 Tim’s Tavern - Seattle, WA (with Jackmormons)
September 7 Greensboro Cultural Center - Greensboro, NC (with Jackmormons)
September 8 Shiloh & Gaines - Asheville, NC (with Jackmormons)
September 9 The Palm Room - Wrightsville Beach, NC (with Jackmormons)
September 10 Heist Brewery - Charlotte, NC (with Jackmormons)
October 7 The Old Church - Portland, OR *Record Release Show
