Second Bell headliner Houndmouth readies some ‘Good for You’ tunes
COVID-19 sucked the life out of the music business in 2020, but for Houndmouth’s Matt Myers, it gave him something as well.
Faced with an abundance of time, Myers started writing songs, using “Good for You” – scheduled for release Nov. 5 – as a springboard. That album, Myers told BLANK Newspaper recently, was written pre-COVID and recorded at The Greenhouse, the band’s base of operations back home in New Albany, Indiana, right before lockdown.
It’s sat on the shelf for more than a year now, and while the Delta variant is playing havoc with any long-term tour plans, Houndmouth is slowly returning to the road, including an Aug. 28 stop in Knoxville as the headliner of the Second Bell Music Festival. The new record is something of a sea change for the group, which started out as a ramshackle roots-rock quartet that shared a similar aesthetic to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. “Good for You,” Myers indicated, might be the group’s greatest leap forward yet.
“We recorded it at our place in New Albany, which was a safe environment where it was stress free, and we just reeled everything in and really kept things simple,” Myers said. “I feel like when you strip everything down to the basics, you start seeing and doing things more in tune with serving the song and the melody and all that stuff, and we learned a lot in this process.
“There are a ton of records that just have this overall sense of closeness, and we wanted to go for that and capture that. I feel like it’s a step back in terms of simplicity but 10 steps forward in terms of understanding.”
Houndmouth’s origins can be traced to such simplicity: Myers and former member Katie Toupin started out playing acoustic shows around Louisville, Kentucky, just across the river from New Albany. Bassist/vocalist Zak Appleby was a member of area blues bands, and with drummer Shane Cody, the four started a band and turned heads at 2012’s South By Southwest music conference.
Attendees raved about the glorious, shambling intensity of a sound that combined elements of Laurel Canyon folk, Crazy Horse-style thunder and soul- and blues-influenced ’60s rock, which turned live shows into a hybrid Burning Man-style party and Southern tent revival: members standing atop speaker stacks, stomping across the stage, singing with all of the feverish intensity of an old-time preacher speaking in tongues.
Rough Trade recognized that talent, signed the band and released the group’s debut, “From the Hills Below the City,” in 2013. The album led to a breakout summer, with performances on late-night shows hosted by Conan O’Brien and David Letterman and appearances at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and the Newport Folk Festival. The album wound up on a number of year-end best-of lists, and two years later, the band did even better with “Little Neon Limelight,” produced by white-hot Nashville mix master Dave Cobb. In 2018, the guys signed with Warner imprint Reprise and released “Golden Age,” which pivoted away from the Americana inflections of fan favorites like “Sedona” and flirted with heavier, synth-driven electronic elements.
And now, “Good for You” marks another change in direction. The three songs released so far – “Las Vegas,” “Cool Jam” and the title track – aren’t stripped down in the acoustic sense, but after the intensity of “Golden Age,” they ripple with a languid beauty that says more in the notes that aren’t played than the ones that are.
And that sound is apt to change in the future, Myers noted: He and his two compadres are busy enjoying the journey rather than eyeing any potential destination … which brings us to his gift from the COVID downtime: clarity.
“It’s the self-awareness of creation instead of just churning a bunch of stuff out,” he said. “Like, how can I learn how to do this and spend my time more creatively? I’ve always like songs by John Prine and Randy Newman because they have such a distinct voice and great knack for telling stories in ways that weren’t so straightforward.
“There’s just something about being direct that I’m scared of, but I’m starting to love direct music. I don’t know; I’m kind of back in that zone right now where I don’t want to listen to anybody else’s music, just so I can hone in on what I do best.”
“Good for You” isn’t even out yet, so it’ll be a while before what he’s writing currently sees the light of day, but there may be a surprise or two in the Second Bell set. After all, Knoxville’s always been good to Houndmouth, and Myers has fond memories of strolling from The Bijou Theatre, where the band has headlined a couple of times, down to Preservation Pub on Market Square.
“It’s a walking town, like New Albany, but it’s also a college town, so it’s a little more party-ish,” he said. “Everybody seems to know each other, and it gets rowdy every time.”
For three guys who consider themselves best friends as well as musical compadres, such a reception is always a breath of fresh air. It provides a moment of respite from the weariness of the road, but a little reminder of why they keep doing this thing, through all the ups and downs of industry fickleness and global pandemics.
“It’s just this thing that we want to keep making something and keep getting better at what we’re doing,” Myers said. “When you find a creative outlet and you have people on the same page, you feel like you can do whatever you want and achieve anything. And for us, that’s a collective goal.
“Nobody’s in it for their own self or their own ego because we’re all trying to serve one thing, and we realize there’s power in numbers.”
