Today, we are pleased to debut the new video by Super Cassette!
On Super Cassette’s new album, the band mixes whimsical ’80s video game references with, oh you know, THE IDEA IF LIFE IS EVEN WORTH LIVING? The band’s new track, which seems inspired by AJJ, Jeff Rosenstock, and classic era Tegan and Sara, finds the group juggling heavy question with Nintendo bleeps.
Indie-pop songwriter Shane Rennison’s Nice To Meet You EP is an earnest five-track collection of songs that feel like a peek into Rennison’s wide-open heart and his beloved home in the Catskill Mountains of New York. That’s where he made many of the memories that fuel his music, which recalls the craftsmanship of The 1975, the sugary synth highs of Passion Pit and the effortless pop prowess of Harry Styles.
With a band name like Old Heavy Hands, you know there ain’t no messing around with this group of rock and roll lifers from Greensboro, NC. Somewhere between the rugged worlds of Drive-By Truckers, Lucero and Whiskey Myers, Old Heavy Hands might be their most under-valued cousin in the Southern Rock meets punk and Americana island – it’s no wonder they are referred to as “”y’allternative”.
What better way to send summer off than with a song about a legendary BBQ joint that hosts great live music, good eats, and plenty of Friday night controlled chaos? Sometimes the catchiest, most memorable, and overall fun songs come from a fairly simple concept. With today’s premiere, delivered by none other than The Helltones, we are blessed with all the above and then some! Grab yourself a plate, pull up a chair, and dig right in to “Black Star Pirate BBQ” immediately!
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Greensboro, NC “y’allternative“ outfit Old Heavy Hands’ new album Small Fires lives at the inspired intersection of southern rock, Muscle Shoals Americana, alt-rock, and youths wasted on punk rock ambitions. Now grown men, collectively they’ve built families, survived cancer and beat addictions. It’s this raw tenacity and musical prowess that’s allowed them to share stages with acts like Jason Isbell, John Moreland, Lucero, Joshua Ray Walker, Tyler Childers and many more.
Small Fires was produced by Danny Fonorow, engineered by Ted Comerford & legendary producer Mitch Easter (R.E.M. Pavement, Wilco, Drive–By Truckers) at The Fidelitorium. Additional recording was done at Earthtones Recording Studio with Benjy Johnson (Eric Gales, King’s X, Mike Watt) and mixed by Henry Lunetta (Machine Gun Kelly, Bring Me The Horizon, 5 Seconds Of Summer). Then mastered by Greg Calbi & Steve Fallone (Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Taylor Swift, Bon Iver).
The name Old Heavy Hands comes from an trash-talk term of endearment inside of the Legacy Irons Tattoo shop where Nathan James Hall (vocals, guitar), Larry Wayne Slaton (vocals, guitar, keys) and David Self (lead guitar, vocals) make their living. Josh Coe (bass, mandolin) owned the bar next to the tattoo shop, and John Chester (drums) worked at the bar across the street. The band formed naturally from hanging out in Greensboro’s tight-knit music community. Songs were born during acoustic sessions inside the shop, and finished in their practice space built in Hall’s barn—filled with snakes, spiders and chickens and overlooking fields of tobacco that they occasionally whack golf balls into. They brought in their friends and family to contribute to the record, including local venue owner and troubadour in his own right Josh King of House of Fools.
Small Fires kicks off with “Runaround,” whose themes work as a thesis for the album with its big guitars and self-revelatory lyrics about having an awakening when it comes to your own behavior. It’s a song about letting go of your own agendas and thinking about people beyond your own selfish wants. Hall sings, “I was just a boy / You’re an innocent flower / Did everything I can do in my power / to keep you safe / But that ain’t what you want.”
“I kept going back to the same shit,” says Hall. “I started to think to myself, ‘maybe you’re the problem in the story.’ I don’t want to be a dickhead and not treat people the right way. Things changed when I got cancer. I got hit with my own mortality. After that, I wanted to walk a little slower. Take my time. Be more self-aware. I didn’t want to be stressed about shit that didn’t matter, or make something out of nothing and make it hard on everybody else. It’s time to be an old man I guess. [laughs]”
The ironically titled “All the Time in the World” starts with Slaton’s wailing guitar riff and settles into his earnest and gentle vocals, “It’s hard to love a man so cold / harder yet to understand.” In the song’s bridge, we’re greeted by angelic backing vocals welcoming us to the other side, leading us to the bombastic ending punctuated by Self’s virtuoso guitar melodies.
“I’ll normally play a part over and over until it doesn’t suck,” says Self. “Sometimes I’ll just hear this melody in my head, like it came from a dream. It’ll just come to me, and I’m like, oh shit, that just happened!”
The cosmic country number, “Coming Down,” builds into massive grunge guitars and call-and-response vocals reminiscent of Vedder and Cornell’s Temple of the Dog. It’s a morning-after-the-party lament that has Hall’s conscience weighing on his shoulders. Broken noses and regret are lyrically echoed in the refrain, “I’m Coming Down / Time’s running out.”
The “Be My Baby” drums and guitar harmonies of the heartbreaking power ballad “Shelter Me” captures the heartache and feeling of futility in an uncaring and unforgiving world. It was written in response to the injustices that caused the deaths of folks like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The request for shelter, safety and justice is brought to bear through lines like, “Can’t shake the situation/ Pointing cameras at the proof / We can’t breathe or sleep at night / With those devils on the loose.”
Hall’s voice is laid bare in “The Flood,” amongst a cacophony of organ and horns. There’s a gospel feel to this song about cleansing waters. The biblical flood may have wiped humanity from the face of the planet, but it left room for a new civilization to grow. Things happen in life, but there’s an ebb and flow to it. “Storms come and they go / The wind will always blow / Just tried to hold on tight / We’ll make it on through this night,” Hall sings. It’s a song of resilience.
“I wrote ‘The Flood’ at my brother’s house at the beginning of the pandemic,” says Hall. “It was one of those long nights of talking politics. Then we started talking about this story that my grandfather used to tell us. These people he knew in coastal North Carolina, in the Outer Banks. They had this street justice, where they’d tie someone up in a fishing net and toss them in the water. They would find people in the marshes covered in fishing nets. The smell of the marsh is that sweet sulfur smell. That’s where that line in the song comes from. Back in the ‘50s there wasn’t really any infrastructure out there in the Outer Banks. They’re pirates. They still talk like pirates. It’s called Ocracoke Brogue and it’s this weird mix of Queen’s English and southern redneck. They’re all basically descendants of Blackbeard and pirates like that. Blackbeard lived in North Carolina on the Outer Banks. So these people never left the islands.”
“Between You and Me” is an ode to Slaton’s grandfather, his father figure who taught him how to play guitar. He passed away from cancer at the same time as Hall was in the thick of it. It’s a song about dealing with grief and honoring the lives of those who’ve touched our lives in meaningful ways.
The misery-loves-company propulsive rocker “Old Demons” is a song about hard drugs and leaving that life behind for the ones you love.
“Scoreboard Lights” is about coming to terms with your own limitations, but more importantly, finding camaraderie in the things you love—from little league when you’re a kid, to joining a band, to watching your own kids join their own little league teams. It has a rowdy sax solo that’s perfect for SportsCenter replays.
Hall, Slaton and Self’ each took a verse on the emotional and ethereal “Hands of Time,” a love song to their mothers. It includes references to the music they loved like James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. Self’s mother had passed away a year before they wrote the song. The band was sitting on the porch listening to voicemails that Self had saved of her voice, and his lyrics came from those messages.
“That was the closest I ever got to participating in a seance,” says Slaton. “We sat out on the porch at The Fidelitorium. We listened to those voicemails. We played her favorite song, ‘Born to Run,’ over and over again. It was like she wrote his verse for him. And it was insane. I got chills as it came together. It was one of the coolest writing experiences I’ve ever been involved in.”
Album closer “When the Lights Go Out” deals with out-of-body experiences with psychedelic drugs, and leaving those days behind. The title of the album comes from this song’s cheeky lyrics, “I think I used to have a little more patience / But I lost it all in a couple small fires,” an inside joke reference to losing time when smoking weed. The song’s southern rock ethos taps into the spirit of pop punk catchiness before ending in an anthemic gospel chorus. It’s a majestic and cathartic end to an album about growth and leaving childish things behind.
Hall and Slaton met in early 2000s in their touring punk outfits, Hall’s Priority One (Greensboro) and Slaton’s tomsawyer (Chicago). Hall lived in a punk house at the time and bands touring through Greensboro would stay with him. Slaton’s show got canceled, and he ended up staying with Hall for a week. They became fast friends and Hall eventually moved up to Chicago to play bass in tomsawyer. “We were wearing the same band shirts,” Slaton laughs. Hall eventually left Chicago to go back to Greensboro where he opened the tattoo shop. Slaton followed suit and came down to Greensboro for a “permanent vacation,” and started tattooing.
Slaton and Self began playing guitar together at the shop. Hall joined in, and the three haven’t stopped playing music together since. Josh King and Jordan Powers of Greensboro band House of Fools wanted to record their songs, so they were forced to grow out of just being three guys singing and playing acoustic guitar. Their 2016 self-titled LP found Hall, Slaton and Self being backed by members of House of Fools, including King and drummer Jack Foster (Sarah Shook & the Disarmers).
Their 2018 alt-country album Mercy was recorded in Wilmington, again by Powers, but now they had put their own band together.They connected with Ink Master judge Oliver Peck, and he decided to put out the record on his fledgling label. Just before the album’s release, Hall was diagnosed with cancer. Their post release plans had to be put on hold as Hall fought and beat cancer over the next couple years. Through chemotherapy and the love and support of his friends and family, Hall had a new way of looking at the world.
They recorded the pro-marijauna anthem “Red Red Eyes” just as Hall was feeling better. They released it as the world shut down for the Covid pandemic. Old Heavy Hands buckled down to write and record Small Fires, itself an inside joke about smoking weed. Now, many years and three albums later, Hall, Slaton and Self are still inseparable.
“I got three times better at guitar between Mercy to Small Fires,” says Slaton, “There was a lot of sitting around with D [Self] playing guitar, watching this motherfucker, play over stuff. Then I started noodling over stuff. Over COVID I started playing keys, took singing lessons, and learned to produce. Everyday, I work to learn something new about my craft.”
“I used to be a pretty severe alcoholic,” says Self. “We just wanted to party and we didn’t really care. And now I feel like we care. We’re more driven to accomplish the goal, versus aimlessly playing drunken shows.”
“I got a lot off of my chest.” says Hall. “Just to let go of some of that shit and move past it. This record helped me let go of those things. So the next one will not be all about drugs. [laughs]”
“After the record comes out,” says Slaton, “we want to play as many places as we can. My two favorite singers in the world are Nate [Hall] and my wife. They’re both amazing natural singers, you know, so I always feel like I need to work my ass off to try to keep up with both of them. Me and Nate have more than enough songs for another record. So we’ll keep working on the next one. Bigger and better!”
“Truly stellar country music songs, the way country ought to be. Great thought provoking lyrics, great instrumentation and vocals, and plenty o’ twang.” – Twangri-La
“[Old Heavy Hands] paint a picture of struggling and making good on promises… tugs at your heartstrings.” – Americana Highways