The Triangle-based quartet Hooverville-John Bemis, Greg Hanson, Paul Dowds and Nathan Logan-has released a new album titled Follow That Trail of Dust Back Home. The disc is an outstanding follow-up to their debut record, Lucky Rabbit's Foot.
The Hooverville sound begins with an affinity for traditional music and songwriters such as Merle Haggard, Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Greg Brown. Both the Hooverville albums vibe Americana in its broadest sense, encompassing influences that range from Bill Monroe to Lead Belly to Rodney Crowell. Of course, Follow That Trail is comprised entirely of original tunes by Bemis, Hanson and Dowds, so their myriad influences have served as a point of common reference for a music that's becoming distinctively Hooverville.
Load up Follow That Trail in your CD player and take it from the top. By the fourth song you'll catch the drift. All four tracks are twang-rich numbers, but stylistically they're not of-a-piece. "Carrying This Heartache" comes the closest of the four to the work of old-time balladeers, while "Another Sweet Dawn" has the rhythmic thump of classic country, except that the bass guitar is pushed up in the mix and suspiciously funky. "Rain Song" is a paradigm of modern folk, while "Honey"-a Paul Dowds tune-feels classic country, but the intricate layering of the mix is a rock approach, and Hanson's harmonica is played in a folk style (and would be absent in a purely classic country arrangement). In other words, the guys in Hooverville have been seduced by genuine country music, yet have remained open to other propositions.
Hooverville finds its genesis in the meeting of Hanson and Bemis-kindred souls who grew up in vastly different regions and got up with each other in the Triangle.
Hanson calls Mount Vernon, Iowa, home. The little Iowa burg features a little college-Cornell College-and is a short distance from the University of Iowa at Iowa City. Hanson is, in fact, a graduate of the U of Iowa, where he majored in Anthropology and Psychology.
Bemis grew up in Oriental, NC, on Pamlico Sound-the sailing capital of North Carolina-where boats outnumber residents 3 to 1. Oriental's town Web site, www.visitoriental.com, claims that Oriental is, "pretty much in the center of things." That's only true in the most refined sense, i.e., boating on Pamlico Sound, so an intelligent guy like Bemis was bound to leave for college. He opted for another center of things-UNC-Chapel Hill.
Living in close proximity to the U of Iowa, and being keen on music, Hanson allowed that he was very much aware of the music scene that developed in Iowa City. Indeed, this particular musical hotbed is noted for producing talent the magnitude of Greg Brown, Bo Ramsay, Dave Moore and, recently, Brown's incredibly talented daughter, Pieta. Bemis, meanwhile, enjoyed his stay at UNC so much that he remained in the area after graduating and presently teaches elementary school in Hillsborough.
Hanson's path to the Tar Heel State was a bit more circuitous, and involved a young woman, as do the paths of many young men. While a student at the U of Iowa, Hanson met a girl named Megan O'Connell in France during a summer school program. Following the summer, they kept in touch. They both ended up applying for the same archeology job at NCSU. She got the job, Hanson got the girl. They first moved to Chapel Hill in '93, eventually ending up in Raleigh.
Bemis explained that he met Hanson in 1997 through a mutual friend. "We realized that we not only had an interest in a lot of singer-songwriter music- which we enjoyed playing when we got together-but also we were interested in a lot of roots music-you know, bluegrass and Irish tunes and such," he said. "We recognized that we had quite a kinship."
Hanson affirmed that Bemis and he were instantly simpatico, noting that "John was the first guy I talked to who, when I mentioned The Flatlanders, actually knew who I was talking about. I knew that was good. "We started playing together. We got up and played Townes songs and Merle Haggard. We liked what Gillian Welch was doing, too, even though she was new. We weren't re-inventing the wheel. There are plenty of people playing traditional music. We just loved the sound-the Louvin Brothers harmonies, for instance. We figured out that we could really sing together, so we thought why not write? We both had writing backgrounds.
"Over time we wrote all the songs that appeared on our first album-Lucky Rabbit's Foot," Bemis said. "We were writing stuff that tended to play to our strengths at the time. We loved singing together-we loved the harmonizing- and we were particularly fond of the brother acts like the Louvin Brothers. We wrote things that fit what we enjoyed most." When asked about their songwriting, and Hooverville's increasingly eclectic sound, Hanson was upbeat.
"It's definitely evolving," he said. "Sometimes the old-time roots come through, but now it's more of a mix of different elements. I mean, there're definitely rootsy elements, like more blues influence on some of the songs. There's also some Tex-Mex influence, and even a nod to Celtic on a couple of tunes.
"A lot of it has to do with just bringing a song to the whole band," he noted. "One guy hears the song one way, another hears the song a different way. You either all agree on something, like, say, that a song is a honky-tonk shuffle, or you let the idea compete and see what works."
When Hooverville started, it was simply the Bemis/Hanson duo. While that approach was pretty elemental, and allowed them to sing together, it was an instrumentally limited situation.
"John and I were wanting something substantial on the bottom," Hanson said, "so we could free up ourselves both vocally and instrumentally. Once you do that, all of a sudden you can phrase vocals differently. Now and then you can almost stop playing and the music's still going. You can think about how you want to deliver a vocal line. I mean, music is all about the emotion. It's not about, hey, look at this great guitar player, because none of us are that great. We want to convey the emotion of the song."
In speaking about the motivation for bringing bassist Paul Dowds into Hooverville in 2000, Bemis added a thought on the instrumental aspect. "As time went on we realized that the songs we were writing could be expanded musically," he said, "that we could do some other interesting things if we had some additional members." If a bass player offered new musical possibilities, then what about a bass player and a drummer? Enter drummer Nathan Logan. "Having a drummer and bass player allows Greg and me to do some other things, instrumentally," Bemis added.
"It's hard not to rock out once you get a drummer," Hanson laughed. "A lot of the songs that are on Lucky Rabbit's Foot were written as if there was a rhythm section there. Some weren't, of course, but some of those songs could really swing out with a drummer. Those songs are more honky tonk and less folk."
Hooverville will be doing a house concert in Hillsborough April 8, and they'll be performing during the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance, April 20-23, in Silk Hope, NC. Also note that at Shakori Hills, Hooverville will also be performing a set with Katherine Whalen, a founding member of Squirrel Nut Zippers, an accomplished jazz singer and, according to Hanson, also a fine singer of Americana tunes.
Check out Hooverville online at: www.hooverville.org and for more information on the Shakori Hills Festival- www.shakorihills.org
QUICK FIX
Queens of the Stone Age:
Over the Years and Through the Woods
(Interscope)
Continuing in the vein of bands that rock very hard, try this live joint from Josh Homme and friends, tracked at Brixton Academy in London. Visceral stuff.
DISCOLOGY
David Childers & the
Modern Don Juans:
Jailhouse Religion
(Little King Records)
On the subject of North Carolina musicians who rock and write intelligent songs in the bargain, let me suggest that you run out and buy Jailhouse Religion. Childers lives in the vicinity of Charlotte, and when he's not playing hellacious rock tunes in the Americana vein he practices law. The Modern Don Juans, however, are Childers' lawless side, so don't expect any sort of tame music. He may write songs as topical and wry as "The General Belgrano"-observations on the Argentinian cruiser a British sub put on the bottom of the Atlantic during the Falklands War-but his highly literate lyrics come wrapped in pure rock music. The album comes packaged with a DVD, which features the video for the title track.