Have you ever had the ‘Hat Man Blues‘? Maygen & The Birdwatcher, the Minnesota based bluegrass influenced band certainly have. But, perhaps it’s not a concept that you’re familiar with – well the band’s Noah Neumann explained it all when he told Americana UK that “To us, ‘Hat Man Blues’ is a song about control. That could be about control in a relationship, control in a family, or even control in your own mind. Sometimes control can feel good and we may not know why. And a lot of times it feels like that can blur reality and make truth difficult to see.”
The song comes from the band’s second album – “The Americana Dream” – which, in a rather timely manner gestures towards a reimagining of what “the American dream” means, shifting away from the aspirational nature of the concept itself and moving towards a full embrace of the literal definition of Americana: the vast geographical, historical and cultural expanse that reflects Maygen & The Birdwatcher’s roots as well as their country as a whole. When that translates into music though it is, clearly, an evolving sound pushing towards something quite different from the band’s debut album “Moonshine” – and that’s a good thing, it’s good to know where you’ve come from but it’s great to have somewhere to go to as well.
