Reviews

Artist:The High Hawks
Album: Mother Nature's Show
Label: LoHi
Tracks: 12
Website: https://www.thehighhawks.com/

Featuring Vince Herman from Leftover Salmon and Chad Staehly from Hard Working Americans, the pair also co-founders of Great American Taxi, from whom also come bassist Brian Adams and drummer Will Trask, the line-up rounded out with fiddler-guitarist Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth and Adam Greuel of Horseshoes & Hand, this is basically an Americana supergroup with a jam band sensibility.

The set opens with the slow swaying nostalgically reflective love song ("The stars on your skin are the map to my home") Diamond Sky ("Play me back that song we heard/Under the goodnight light/Those hours passed from all ears but ours/When it wasn't so cold in the midwinter doldrums/Underneath the melody of the ever burning stars") before picking up the tempo for a country rock swagger and heading 'Somewhere South' away from the winter ice ("Panama, Mexico, maybe the Keys/I don't know/You pick the place/I don't care/If it ain't cold we're going there") on the back of fiddle and Herman's dusty tones. The climate remains a concern with 'Temperature Is Rising', though here we're talking metaphorically rather that meteorologically ("Speaking the same language/No one understands…Words are tangled branches/Wonder if a friend is a friend… Lie's already spread/Echoes all around us/Taking what we want to be fed").

Keeping the foot on the rockier pedal, Staehly's 'Fox River Blues' has a swampy feel as it mingles angling and addiction for its images of running from the past with nothing to lose ("Bait shop, selling drugs…Running with the devil been down on my luck…bank robber on the run/Desperation waving a gun/Going straight to hell trying to hit a home run"). There's a crunchy groove too with Greuel's bluesy, fiddle and organ driven rhythmically lurching title track where Grateful Dead colours splash the canvas and more metaphors swim amid the waters ("I suppose we're all lonely/When we isolate ourselves/When we're searching for a river/So we can worry less…When the road gets a little heavy/I'll jump off the pavement/And into the river flow").

There's more of a Commander Cody thigh slapping Western Swing goodtime feel to 'Top Shelf, Rock Bottom' while Staehly's 'Radio Loud' has a classic Chuck Berry cum Dave Edmunds undercurrent carrying its twang, Carbone's 'Somewhere In The Middle' continuing to mine those vintage rock n blues riffs and rhythms as if Dr Feelgood had been born in Colorado rather than Canvey Island. A piano pumping r&b boogie also pushes 'Same Old Stories' before dropping the tempo for The Band shades of 'This Is What Love Feels Like', closing up the show with Greuel's bass bumping, fiddle bowing jam band blues boogie 'Backwater Voodoo' and the goodtime chugging, barrelhouse piano, gypsy fiddle feel of 'Shine Your Blues' with its "Keep your heart open up wide" message.

Although I suspect the music works better live with a packed crowd (the last track ends with applause) and the band stretching out, this wouldn't at all go amiss belting out of the car on any unclogged highway you can find.

Mike Davies

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