Old Heavy Hands “Small Fires”

Electric southern rock that’s both grown up and rebellious at the same time.

“Heard you were leaving town with some other boy / Looking back on everything that I’ve destroyed / Full of misery and heartache,” reflects Nathan James Hall on ‘Runaround’, the opener to North Carolina’s Old Heavy Hands latest release ‘Small Fires’. “I was just a boy and you’re an innocent flower / Did everything I can do in my power / To keep you safe / But that ain’t what you want,” he further adds, both the insightful nature of the lyrics and the roughness of the vocals against some loud but ever melodic guitars letting you know exactly the kind of jagged, perfectly produced southern rock you can expect to enjoy from the album.

If you’re wondering where tattoo artist Hall’s astute nature may have come from, he gained it in part when cancer stopped him in his tracks and a new found self awareness was forced to emerge. “Just rolling in the bed / While regret still fills your head,” he bemoans on ‘Old Demons’, adding: “Giving up on time cause there ain’t too much left”, words that feel especially heavy with knowledge of his diagnosis. ‘The Flood’ sees Hall take on the subject of a biblical flood that has wiped the human race from the planet, but it’s the theme of resilience more than disaster that comes through loudest: “Storms come and they go / The wind will always blow / Just tried to hold on tight / We’ll make it on through this night.”

‘Coming Down’ has a hint of new wave to it before it builds naturally into something far more grungy, backing vocals added by Larry Wayne Staton adding some real sonic bite. Apart from backing Hall, Staton’s impressive vocals, with shades of Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, can also be heard on ‘Hands of Time’, a song that starts with a soaring 70s Lynyrd Skynyrd quality and references James Taylor, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Although Hall and fellow bandmate David Self also take alternate singing duties on each verse of ‘Hands of Time’, Staton can be heard performing solo lead vocals on some other very strong tracks.

“I got stoned there on the couch where we had conversations / Tonight they disconnect the phone / In 70s stained glass photos, you and her and the congregation / And a lifetime of lessons to carry alone,” Staton sings vibrantly in tribute to his late grandfather and father figure on ‘Between You and Me’. On ‘Scoreboard Lights’, the idea of learning to enjoy and treasure the things you like to do, no matter your skill level, is looked at cleverly through the prism of a child competing in Little League baseball, while the powerful ‘Shelter Me’ sees Staton look for comfort from an uncaring world that lets terrible injustices occur (“Maybe you can shelter me / When I need some place to hide”).

In the bio for Old Heavy Hands, they are described as having had their “youths wasted punk rock ambitions”, but with one listen to ‘Small Fires’, those youths don’t seem so wasted: while it’s an album that shows growth, maturity and the ability to self reflect, it’s also built on a defiant punk attitude that’s a vital part of why it sounds as good as it does.