Dave Hause’s ‘Blood Harmony’ Is a Defiant Welcome to Americana

Dave Hause used to be a hardcore kid. Having grown up in Philadelphia, he spent his 20s playing in punk groups like The Loved Ones and The Falcon (a supergroup with members of The Lawrence Arms and Alkaline Trio). Even in his early solo career, which began in 2011 with Resolutions, Hause stayed closer to folk punk than most records coming out of Nashville.

But on his fifth solo LP, Blood Harmony, Hause leans into the sounds of roots music and the roots of his own family. The album is a tribute to what he often refers to as “the family business,” referencing his longstanding musical partnership with younger brother Tim Hause and the record label they co-created in time for this release. It’s also an homage to his wife and twin sons, who were born just before the release of 2019’s Kick and grace the cover of Blood Harmony, and the way that parenthood and sobriety can change a person entirely.

Written in just three-and-a-half months during the height of the pandemic, the Hause brothers committed to regular FaceTime songwriting sessions. On Mondays, they’d check in and discuss what they wanted to work on that week; on what they dubbed “Pencils-Down Fridays,” they’d have song snippets to play for each other. Come May, they met in Music City to record the 10-track album with producer (and lauded singer-songwriter in his own right) Will Hoge.

The cast of Nashville pickers and players Hoge assembled gives Blood Harmony its heartland sound. Garry Tallent of The E Street Band plays bass and Sadler Vaden of The 400 Unit (also of solo acclaim) plays guitar. Additional guests include Chris Powell (Brandi Carlile, The Highwomen) on drums; Tom Bukovac (Carrie Underwood, Vince Gill) on guitar; and Billy Justineau (Eric Church, Brothers Osborne), Jen Gunderman (Sheryl Crow, The Jayhawks), and Mike Webb (John Prine, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson) on keys. Hoge himself also plays throughout the record, a highlight of which is when he strums Cowboy Jack Clement’s old mandolin on the earnest, yet comical “Surfboard.”

Despite the perfectly pitched production, Blood Harmony is clearly rooted in Hause’s rocking, rollicking, sing-along wheelhouse. “Plagiarist” carries this musical thread with its distorted, chunky downstrokes during the verses, before bursting into a hopeful strum in the chorus. Hause’s vocal range also showcases this beautiful collision of influences, as he switches from a singer-songwriter croon to frustrated yelp in the distance between a verse and a chorus on the song-of-the-times “Snowglobe.”

“Gary,” an apologetic song about bullying that’s one of the most affective on the record, also exemplifies his voice, as Hause howls in the outro “I’m trying to make right the shit that we put on your plate,” before maintaining that pitch in the refrain, “Hurt people hurt people / I hope you don’t hurt anymore.”

Still, it’s Hause’s commitment to family, to blood, that bookends the record. Opening with “Northstar” and closing with the sweet ballad “Little Wings,” both songs were written at, and for, the twins. And throughout the journey between those two songs, Hause proves he’s integrated his scrappy roots well and deserves a spot among this genre’s most sincere songwriters, even if they came to these styles from somewhere elsewhere.