Review- The High Hawks: Mother Nature's Show
There's a line on the new The High Hawks album that we northerners can feel in our bones. “Driveway’s got a foot of ice / I swear it’s 10 below (ugh).”
Yeah buddy, along about now, mid-February... we feel that one.
That line comes at the start of “Somewhere South,” the sunny second track on the High Hawks’ second album, Mother Nature’s Show. “Somewhere South” is a breezy ode to getting the heck outta here and going somewhere, anywhere, where we can unclench, soak up some sun and have some fun with old friends.
An easy, comfortable warmth runs throughout Mother Nature’s Show. If it sounds like a gathering of talented friends making music, maybe that’s because it is.
Photo by Michael Weintrob
Everyone in the The High Hawks is in another established band, including Leftover Salmon, Railroad Earth, Hard Working Americans and Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. The six musicians come together as The High Hawks, not so much as a supergroup, but rather as a way to hang out with friends and play music.
For Mother Nature’s Show, the band gathered at Pachyderm Studios, just south of Minneapolis. That’s right near the northern end of Highway 61, the “Blues Highway” that mostly follows the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans. And that emerged as an accidental theme of the record, a journey of country, rock, blues from the frigid north to the sunny south, encompassing joy and sorrow, riding high and dragging low.
A little ways down the road from the cozy warmth of “Somewhere South” comes “Fox River Blues,” the story of a desperate man “with nothing left to lose.” A menacing bass line provides the mood, working with electric guitar and fiddle to set a noir-blues tone.
Title track “Mother Nature’s Show” takes a 180-degree turn with a tale of escaping the rat race and finding some solace in nature, where you can be “front row to mother nature’s show,” “searching for a river and a little brown trout love.” The song, may be my favorite on the record, carries a serious Little Feat vibe, about as funky as a fiddle-heavy country song can be.
A bouncy piano carries New Orleans party tune “Top Shelf, Rock Bottom,” about a fella who’s always getting into the muck but somehow always comes out smelling like a rose. “Got in a scuffle down in New Orleans / But I landed in a limousine / Hobo a limousine / The luckiest hobo you’d ever seen.”
“Backwater Voodoo” and “Radio Loud” should be concert highlights. “Voodoo” is a swampy guitar-fiddle workout invoking the spirits of the backwaters to feed your soul. “Radio Loud” rocks with a Wilco-esque piano riff tickling throughout, about enjoying life while you’re working hard and trying to make it. He’s trying and trying, but “boy, you haven’t made it yet.”
“That’s What Love Feels Like” is a sweet love ballad tailor-made for a first bride-groom dance at a wedding.
“Shine Your Blues” is a beautiful album-closer. It’s a joyous sermon, complete with handclaps, about the power of positive thinking. It’s an admonition that sometimes the first step toward feeling better is to act like you’re feeling better: “You’re either gonna let that sunshine in / Or let your darkness cloud your day / Keep your heart open up wide / Shine your blues, shine your blues away.”
It feels like the end of a party with great friends, hugging and slapping each other on the back, basking in the glow of a great night, humming a tune while walking out the door. And they can’t wait to get together again.
Mother Nature’s Show hits the stands and streamers on Friday, Feb. 16. The High Hawks are touring throughout spring, including dates with Greensky Bluegrass.
FInd out more about The High Hawks at the links below: