Friendship is where it all begins for the bluegrass band Head For The Hills. Bassist Matt Loewen, guitarist Adam Kinghorn (guitar), mandolin player Michael Chappell and fiddler Joe Lessard were friends first and a band second. They all met freshman year at Colorado State University during the fall of 2003. “That’s the place where the band started from,” Loewen said. “I feel like for other bands the starting place is a little different, so that’s something we got going for us.”
Jambands.com spoke with Loewen to discuss the strong bond between his bandmates and the group’s rise in popularity.
Upcoming tour highlights for Head For The Hills, include supporting Nickel Creek at the Festival at Sandpoint and a performance at Yonder Mountain String Band’s Kinfolk Celebration.
When did you guys make the commitment to the band and the idea that it would continue after graduating from Colorado State?
I think the group was a really big part of our college experience. It was something that we were always doing and spending a lot time doing. We were in college and still touring, not full time, but we were touring. The momentum was always there and I just think we always knew that we were going to keep doing it, when people graduated.
Has the band evolved into what all of you had envisioned?
Yes and No. I think we’re always looking ahead and always interested in growth. Every new song that gets written – whether by an individual or by a collective process – is still moving forward. I think on this last record, Blue Ruin, we felt that creatively and musically, we finally had a product that represented what we saw as the sound for Head For The Hills. You listen to that record and there are a couple of bluegrass songs and a couple other songs that span the whole spectrum of music that certainly starts in bluegrass but goes into jazz, rock and pop-oriented stuff and more straight ahead classic-country sound. There’s a lot different feels on that record and I think that represents the different ways we think about music, and our eclectic tastes individually and as a group.
What allowed for Blue Ruin to sound that way?
I think part of it was the evolution of our songwriting. Everybody is always growing as writers and people; and getting into a place where people are more comfortable and complete. We also self-produced for the first time. We brought in an outside producer for our previous efforts. That’s a great experience and we’ll go back to that in the future. It was new for us to do the thing where at the end of the day, we were calling the shots, instead of someone else making the final call. That might have had something to do with it.
Tell me about the bond between the four of you.
It’s interesting. We’re definitely a group that is friends. We were friends first, especially Adam and Mike – they’ve known each other for a really long time. It wasn’t like there was something on the table in terms of the band. We all got together and started hanging, became friends and that became the band.
People ask us all the time, “What’s it like to spend that much time with the same people?” It’s a really intense relationship. You’re living with someone, you’re working with someone, you’re really good friends with someone. And then you have the added thing of that, it’s not just that you’re working with someone – you’re working with someone on something that you’re completely 100 percent personally vested in. It’s not just a job, it’s like owning your own business that you poured all of your money and time into. We communicate well and at the end of the day, we value everybody individually.
Can you tell me about your bandmates? Let’s start with Adam.
Adam is the primary writer, and sings lead the most. He’s interesting because it was his idea to have the group and he’s the colonel of the bluegrass thing. None of us were well-versed in bluegrass or had a history in bluegrass before we started the group and he turned me on to a lot of bluegrass. He’s also the guy that works the hardest in acquiring new musical knowledge. He works very hard on theory. It’s aspiring and motivational because it makes you keep up with his progress and level, so you can communicate musically with what he’s got going on.
Joe has been playing violin for so long. The way he learned music is very immediate in terms of his ear. Not only is he a great writer and serves up really cool songs – he’s also the guy that’s like: “We need someone to play this part or play this line or repeat what someone is doing musically.” He can hone in on that really fast. He also switches it up and plays the mandolin.
Mike’s got the electric mandolin rocking, which gives us a different sound. And the attitude that comes with that is that he’s more rock oriented and more into the improvisational side of it and keeping us opened to that. He’s a great business dude and you got to have that in the band too.
What kind of bass do you play?
It’s called an Eminence, It’s not a full upright. It’s a smaller compact body with a lot of tone and feel. To me, in the class of what it is, it’s the best that you could do without it being a full upright. It also has a little bit of an electric tone and still sounds acoustic. Because the body is smaller you can hit certain frequencies harder and it sounds punchy.
You play a number of festivals, what is your approach to those events?
The summer can be good for that because every festival is so different. You do a tour and you play a lot of similar places. With the festivals, they’re different events, different places, different artists and that helps you keep fresh mentally but also provides an opportunity for some collaborations.
What’s next for the band?
We’re playing some new stuff on the road currently. We’ve been writing and figuring out exactly what we’re going to do with all of it. There’s a lot of different options.
