“Here’s to life!” Fans around the world can be found singing the chorus of the Roger Clyne-penned fan favorite “Mekong” and toasting their glasses in unison to celebrate life through rock-n-roll. But the inspiration for the song dates back to the time Roger went to Taipei, Taiwan, as a college student to teach English during the day and busk with his guitar at night for money.   Today, as Clyne prepares to record his 11th studio album, he continues to transform his life experiences, inspirations, observations and his own muses into timeless music.  And whether he’s wearing his Converse high tops, boots or sandals, Clyne’s blend of punk rock, country-western and mariachi influences have made him, drummer PH Naffah, guitarist Jim Dalton and bassist Nick Scropos – collectively known as Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers – one of America’s best live rock-n-roll bands.   Starting with the seminal Tempe quartet, The Refreshments, Clyne and Naffah put the fun in rock during the 90s grunge era with a sense of humor. They also started what would become a trademark sound on all future albums by adding mariachi horns, something Clyne was influenced by while in college studying Cultural Anthropology with an ethnography study of mariachis during a three month immersion stay with a local family in Ensenada, Mexico.   The Refreshments’ debut album, “Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big & Buzzy,” became a cult classic. It produced the alternative radio hit “Banditos” which also had significant airplay on MTV and earned The Freshies an appearance on The Conan O’Brien Show. Clyne then penned and performed the theme song for the Mike Judge animated TV series, King of Hill.  In 2017, Here’s to Life: The story of The Refreshments, was released. The feature-length documentary was a hit with fans and critics alike.    Changes within their record label and internal band issues resulted in Clyne and Naffah going on a vision quest of sorts in the Whetstone Mountains near the Clyne Ranch in Southeastern Arizona. It was there that Clyne found inspiration in the rolling hills and the jukeboxes of small town taverns that still played Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash – music he had shed from his youth in favor of bands like Camper Van Beethoven & They Might Be Giants. But after reconnecting with those old country records, Clyne and Naffah wrote and recorded under a new moniker what would become Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers’ debut album, “Honky Tonk Union.”   The album was the perfect combination of classic rock and twang, and fans immediately connected with it. Their independent release, “Honky Tonk Union,” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s internet sales chart in 1999 prompting a call from a Billboard exec to their Manager demanding, “ Who the hell is Roger Clyne and why is he #1 on my chart?!” beating out much better known artists.   RCPM released eight more albums that landed in the top ten of Billboard’s Internet Sales Chart, including a No. 1 debut for their third album, “Americano!” – all without the backing of a major record label and while flying under the radar of commercial radio.   In 2019, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers were inducted into the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame, joining the likes of fellow Arizona legends Alice Cooper, Buck Owens, Glen Campbell, Stevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt and Waylon Jennings.   Later that fall, RCPM was invited by a man who, like Roger, also knows a little something about tequila and throwing big parties in Mexico. The band headlined Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina on the eve of Hagar’s weekend birthday celebration.   Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers have curated their own annual music festival, Circus Mexicus, in the sleepy beach town of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, which draws  thousands of fans from around the world. The festival not only has a major impact on the local economy, but charity events hosted by the band and fans alike help raise money for a local orphanage, support local youth sports and help feed shelter animals.   Clyne not only sings about life in the border-lands, he also produces his own ultra-premium spirit, Mexican Moonshine Tequila (soon to be re-named Canción Tequila).  Owned by the entire band, it was the official tequila at the Arizona Diamondbacks Chase stadium in 2016, 2017 and 2018.  Started in 2011, the award-winning spirit is distributed in multiple states as well as Sonora, Mexico.   Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers have toured all over the US and achieved a faithful following through hard work and great music.  They have done this all while being independent, without the safety net of a label or a label’s radio promotion department.  Dubbed “The Springsteen of the Southwest,” by the Asbury Park Press. The band delivers exciting live performances that garner declarations like the one from emcee Jay Peterman of the Seinfeld TV show at Alice Cooper’s annual Christmas Pudding event, “Young man, you light that stage a-flame!” 

On a base level, the term ‘blood harmony’ is simple—it describes the specific sound two siblings make when they sing together. Given that Dave Hause has been writing and recording songs with his younger brother Tim for a while now, it made sense to use that phrase as the title for his fifth solo record. But this being a Dave Hause album also means there’s much more to it than that. Beneath the surface of Blood Harmony, in fact, are multiple layers of meaning relating to Hause’s role as a musician, a brother, a husband, a son and—having become a father to twins a few months before the release of 2019’s Kick—a dad. As such, Blood Harmony is also a reassertion of what family means to him. Even more so because it’s coming out on the label owned by he and his brother. “I thought Blood Harmony was a great title” says Hause, “and really specific to how Tim and I have decided to work over the years. It also pertains to my children because they’ll have their own Blood Harmony. So the germ of the album, the beating heart, is that I’m in a true family. I have a grounded reason to work and a bunch of people that I want to make proud with the work that we do. It’s a family business.” The importance of that was made all the more apparent after the coronavirus outbreak. Hause, with his brother, used that unexpected downtime to make the Patty/Paddy tribute EPs to Patty Griffin and Dillinger Four’s Patrick ‘Paddy’ Costello. After a while, though, like all touring musicians, he found himself without an income. So when his friend and former manager offered him some work nearby as a Covid safety supervisor for the company she set up after contracting Covid herself, he said yes. It was for one of the biggest celebrities in the world, so to prepare, Hause went to LA and worked on two shoots with two of music’s biggest stars. He was shocked at the scant disregard their teams had for their well-being. “These artists are so successful they never need to work again,” says Hause, “but the label and management were pushing to get away with stuff and it was totally unsafe. I was pretty disgusted seeing the industry at that level, and how much of it was simply greed and not caring about the safety of others. We were just starting to roll out the EPs on our own label, and the whole experience just ironed my resolve—I’m a family artist, and I never want to be in a position where people are urging me to do things that are bad for my or my family’s mental or physical health. That’s not what it’s about for me. It’s about connection. So that experience really reinforced this idea of blood harmony. I’m connected to my people, and this is a small little thing that we’re going to keep pure.” You can hear Hause’s passion and dedication to his craft—as well as his determined approach to it—flowing through the veins of Blood Harmony’s ten stunning, sumptuous songs. Written with his brother over a series of weekly FaceTime sessions, they began crafting songs together in January 2021. They’d been writing remotely together since 2017’s Bury Me In Philly so it wasn’t an entirely new process for them, but they modified their approach slightly by giving themselves rigid deadlines. “We decided to get together on Mondays,” explains Hause, “to figure out what we wanted to work on, and by Friday we had to have something you could sing to someone who wasn’t a songwriter. It could be bad, but I didn’t want to just have vague ideas. We called it ‘Pencils-Down Fridays’. Over the course of three-and-a-half months, we ended up with 26 songs.” They traveled with ten of those to Nashville, where acclaimed songwriter Will Hoge took up the helm of producer. Through Hoge’s connections, what Hause calls “a staggering bunch of musicians” was assembled to flesh out the songs he and Tim had written. He’s not wrong. There was Brandi Carlile’s drummer Chris Powell, Bruce Springsteen And The E Street band bassist Garry Tallent, acclaimed session guitarist Tom Bukovac, Jason Isbell’s guitarist Sadler Vaden, and keyboardist Billy Justineau, Mike Webb, and Jen Gunderman, who have played with the likes of Eric Church, Sheryl Crow, and more. Hause is the first to admit that it was a world away from the punk rock scene he’d made his name with as frontman of The Loved Ones. “They say that when you work in any field, you’re happiest when you initially get the respect of your peers,” he says. “Thankfully, I’ve had that respect for some time now. But in this situation, these people were not our peers. They’ve operated at the highest level of the music business that is even possible, so to get their respect was so gratifying. Their kindness and commitment to making the record great because they liked the songs was tremendous. I keep saying that if anybody else likes the record, that’s icing on the cake, because the way we wrote and made it was so wonderful.” While nobody would say the quality of Hause’s previous albums was lacking, making Blood Harmony with those musicians was nevertheless a concerted effort to ramp it up. And it does. It begins with “Northstar”, a tender paean to the direction, comfort and joy his wife and twins have given him that also drives home the emotional resonance and sense of family at the center of this album. It’s followed immediately by “Sandy Sheets”, a nostalgic trip into a past long-gone that references the Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy” in its chorus, and which sounds every bit as iconic as that track. The gorgeous, lilting, paradise of “Hanalai” captures that rare sense of peace when you’re with the person you love and nothing else matters, “Surfboard” injects some rare, good-natured humor into the trials and tribulations of being working class—something that remains, as ever, an undercurrent here—while “Carry The Lantern” and its life-affirming, almost Thin Lizzy-esque riffs double down Hause’s commitment to his sobriety and his family. “A lot of being an adult for me is recommitting to your better angels instead of chasing your own tail,” he says. “That song is about facing temptation but redoubling your efforts to stay committed to the higher things that compel us to be better.” It’s followed by the gorgeous album closer “Little Wings”. Hause calls it a post-script, but it resonates much more deeply and feels more significant than that. In fact, it ends the album the same way it begins—with a tender song for and about his twins that’s full of the purest love and hope. It’s impossible to not hear and feel just how much they and his whole family—that beating heart at the center of these songs—mean to him. It’s a truly beautiful thing.

Produced by David Lowery and engineered/mixed by Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA, Buffalo Jones’ Standing By showcases Spokane, Washington Buffalo Jones’ alt-country indie rock and makes a strong argument for induction into your regular record rotation. Buffalo Jones is Jason Johnson (lead vocals, guitar), Brandon Humphreys (lead guitar), Andy Rumsey (bass), Joshua Martin (drums). “Falling Down On Me” hits the road running with bristling electric guitar accompanied by thundering bass and drums. Johnson’s vocals arrive on a bed of energy humming with the intensity of a muscle car. “Easy Without You” follows with similar hit-the-highway energy reminiscent of late 90’s alt-country torch bearers The Old 97s. Comparison to other Old 97s contemporaries Slobberbone, later-era Whiskeytown, or The V-Roys are easy here, but risk pigeonholing Buffalo Jones into 90’s nostalgia revivalist. The hooks are familiar and immediately hummable, the radio-ready builds encourage window-down fist pumping, and the production is crisp, but that summary doesn’t do justice to the end result whole of the parts. “Intermission”, an album highlight, turns the straight ahead rock approach on its head with a slow bombastic build before erupting into a cacophony of release driven by Humphrey’s guitar work. “Untie your hands, lay down your cards, let me here you”, Johnson sings. “Blow on the Back,” another record high point, features Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker centerpiece David Lowery on a laid back number that brings to mind lazy afternoon sunshine. The good times are over on “Over At The End” as Johnson sings, “Hold onto me we’re going down, crash this thing into the ground, the time for bargaining is past.” For Buffalo Jones, however, somehow hope remains, “when the smoke is clear, we’ll still be standing here, and we’ll pick up the pieces that they need, throw the rest into the sea, starting over at the end.” Worries that alt-country had lost the fire in its belly in favor of a return to an acoustic songwriter era, worry no longer, Buffalo Jones is here to keep guitar driven alt-country rolling in high gear into the 2020’s. Catch them while you can before they embrace American Aquarium’s Burn Flicker Die ethos too whole heartedly; here’s hoping Buffalo Jones is here to stay. Snag a copy of Standing By today and jump on the Buffalo Jones train before it jumps the tracks. H.R. Gertner Americana Highways