new Howling Hex / Neil Hagerty brings the funk!

Or: any chance at all of snagging the LPs on SSK?

Have you gotten your email blast from iTunes yet? If not, then let us break the news — there’s an exclusive online-only track from The Howling Hex ready for download now! “Sick and Old” is the name — but make no mistake, it’s for the young at heart as well as the sick and old. A song for everyone, could it be true? If it’s coming from The Howling Hex, anything could be true. Neil and co. are capable of anything — and they got the vision to try, too.

Speaking of The Howling Hex, this iTunes exclusive track is a precursor to the next phase — a phase involving more music, a film and even some live shows! It’s only been a few months since the release of the New Border classic, All-Night Fox, but already The Howling Hex are moving on. And why shouldn’t they? Life is short and inspiration is in ample supply. So before the end of the year, look for an all-new Howling Hex album, a DVD package and the wildest concerts you’ve attended in years. The Howling Hex is now a double-digit entity, with a full complement of musicians, actors and artists coming and going under the conductor’s wand of Neil Michael Hagerty.

We’ll have more news on the latest moves of The Howling Hex as soon as their carrier pigeon returns with the details. Stay tuned —

THis is from the Royal Trux yah00 group:

The show: When I entered the theatre (evidently the audience was prohibited at that
time), a woman, who I assume is Neil's wife, had taken control of the staff and players in the lighting configuration, stage set-up, so forth. When the configuration was complete, she disappeared, only to re-emerge (to my knowledge) at the end of the set. She had a very hands-off, distanced approach as in "I'll take care of these social
negotiations and leave the rest to Neil." ~5'6", brunette, old-hipster vibe, drank a bit.
Her affect reminded me heavily of Kelly. "I'm free for this moment."

Watched the opening band. Recorded one song. (I did not realize the members would later back up Hagerty). Short set.

HHex: 7-piece band. Hagerty, Mike Saenz, Dan Sylvester, and four players from The Theater Fire. No female vocalists! (Is Hagerty afraid of putting his wife, if she is indeed his wife and one of the vocalists, in the public eye?) Neil performed all of the vocals, save for occasional accompaniment. He would sing, then proceed to duck and conceal himself behind a monitor that he had draped with a painted gunnysack. I thought he was quite successful in his vocal execution, though I have yet to fully grasp the meaning of this act.

The band performed as a looped video was projected behind them. (I assume this will appear on the forthcoming DVD.) The band performed all songs on ANF, 60m set.
The theatre was half full, ~60 people

I have 3m of "beautiful boy" (Allyssa) footage of images projected in sequence on Hagerty's face. The fire of a baked-bean can set ablaze.

____

Intellectually I understood that the project known of Royal Trux had reached an end (at least through the participation of N&J), but the woman's presence and the full band really cemented that fact.

More later.

http://theaterfire.com/albums/NewMexico/acq.sized.jpg
(note wedding band. This photo is from the theaterfire.com site.)

It took about 25m to achieve a fuller sound. Neil stretched the structure/pacing of the songs very harshly through his actions/antics.

I YSIed the three vinyl-only deals in the Royal Trux thread.

Neil's blog is pretty confounding: http://hhex.blogspot.com/

nope, the keyboard player did previously play with smog and bright eyes tho.

i could be wrong but i don't think anyone who played these shows (the sax player matt bauder and the bassist josh abrams are the only ones i knew) played on the albums.

Will be curious to see what Hagerty fanz have to say about this one ...

What's wrong with the album, Tim?? Has it leaked?? Spill your guts, hombre!!

no-one saw the howling hex recently, did they?
i'd got quite used to the album-every-six-months rhythm, i think they're overdue.

According to the Drag City news page, Earth Junk is forthcoming. A little sleuthing indicates a 9/15 release date.

woo! alright. and on vinyl again, too.
i thought with the last one being only partially hagerty-songs, and the uncustomary delay until this one, maybe they were changing things around a bit. i can't wait, though.

Album cover / track list.
I've gotta say that Royal Trux tended to have much better album art than either principal's subsequent work. The 1st NMH solo album, All Night Fox and XI all had good covers, the rest are quite ugly.

UH transmaniacon has fucking amazing art

and *at first* kinda felt like..
**Actually** worth it.

FYI for those who aren't Mike: Neil's little essay on The Wire -- the acclaimed TV show, not the magazine -- also featured very pointed digs at white people.

(He also recently suggested that a motivated fan might want to update his Wikipedia page.)

The one-act play basically reads like an extension of the little skits in the You Can’t Beat Tomorrow DVD (though it’s very up-to-the-minute; involves “Covid-90”).

Soon as I get some income again, I'll subscribe. NMH is prob the one living *celebrity* I'd most want to meet

He just uploaded a track labeled - "Return of The Rusted Sled" by The Vicksburg Occupation

New band name(?)

Looks like he's used the name for something: https://vicksburgoccupation.yolasite.com/

(that site's metadata includes a ref. to "www.denverbrunchgamesco.com")

It's really something -- this increasingly baroque insularity ("the howling hex is wrecked and is retired/done as a name"), blended with fresh stabs at outreach (the Patreon; "I noticed the wiki looked thin (no surprise) so if anyone wants to fuck around with it, say whatever you want. Just spell my name right...").

https://i.ibb.co/pnfWQbT/Screenshot-20200514-060417-Patreon.jpg

Remember when he sprays the phone in that longform RTX video? Dude was ahead of his time.

His twitter is chockablock with the most random, inscrutable musings. Like reading replies to questions that you never got to hear from someone else's conversation. I sometimes worry about Ol' Hag.

Nahh NMH is as usual using the message to skewer the medium

neutral milk hotel rules at twitter, are you kidding me? if you can make a twit like "beisbol is the sport not crakerball [cannon v hammer, 1817]" and have it not have any hearts, comments, or recycles at all, yet still maintain 2K+ followers, then you're playing games and you're winning

Aesthetically, I feel like The Best Of was already sort of the “final” Howling Hex album, bookending the project that began with All Night Fox.

Denver felt like something different — it didn’t really feature the New Border Sound any longer (of course, Neil hasn’t lived near the border for years now anyway). The new album is, similarly, a return to more straightforward rock ‘n roll (though you could point out that XI also fit that description, and you’d be right).

Neil has also slowed down, output-wise, which adds to the sense that the old throughline has fallen away. His concerns seem more local and specific now (though no less idiosyncratic) — he’s getting older, we all are.

Lol @ "recycles"

Neil Hagerty

May 18 at 5:20am

Unlocked

BEISBOL

**working out some place sketches & maybe have an origin story [not wholly fact] by Tuesday

BEISBOL USA

The game many of us grew up playing [& it is a game a person can play into their 80s] was known as “Beisbol”— I learned it in southern california, southeastern atlantic coast, Florida, urban townhouse suburb areas, military housing areas, public schools, central summer league. It differs from Cracker Ball (steam hammer versus electric torpedo) in a few general, gentle ways. 

For example:

1 Ball is used for the entire 9 inning game. Ties stand. Ranking by pts.

2 pitching changes per team.

2 non-injury substitutes. Subs cannot be removed once placed, barring injury.

Advancing as a runner from bases may only occur with the standing runner(s) beginning the play with 2 feet touching the bag.

No steals or other between-pitch live ball action.

The outfield wall is deep, 450ft. minimum recommended. Home runs are rare. 

Pitching mound and home plate are the standard distance. 

The typical backstop should be close to the plate and rounded. Passed balls &c. advance runners 1 base and then are dead balls.

Balk rules are loose.

Infield fly = strike (incl. 3rd.)

Double if ball passes wall NOT on fly.

Foul balls are strikes, even 3rd strike.

Most the rules of Base-Ball are intact if not mentioned.

If you want to die, believe in lies.

I was listening to a Silver Jews live 7” from a rate early gig, I guess it was some sort of Drag City showcase. Berman says something along the lines of “before the gig we were playing monopoly with Royal Trux, and they had an interesting strategy. They bought Baltic Avenue, put one house on it and quit.”.

In the Patreon, Neil shared a pretty heavy story about his childhood, and how the incident shaped his character. I guess I won’t repost it here (even though he gave his blessing to the sharing of audio files and stuff), out of an abundance of caution.

Oh snap — his latest upload (from “the cassette vault”) is a 1986 track from the mythic Jet Boys of N.W.!

(...sorry, Jet Boyz)

(...) I must now go all the way back to the first band I had back in DC, Jet Boyz of NW— the band that I put on hold so I could do 1 tour and 1 record with another band— but one thing after another and now it’s decades later. The band name comes from a NY Dolls song with our local info attached; it was a great name because crackers would think it was some “gay” thing when to others it was a dig at private school kids. And everyone always finds it easy to dismiss and gain pleasure from dismissing “rock and roll” so it was a very uncool name, lots to clown with.

In Denver I LIVE in NW so it all fits, and the same kind of folks still plague me personally and professionally— so the mission is ongoing. We will see what the future brings. My only other next move after PATREON is playing on the street, if the city has a system to let musicians do that. If that happens I’ll be painting the Jet Boyz logo on a guitar and getting out there, hopefully get a band together that way. After all the false starts and dead enders I can finally get back to where I started and do it right. (...)

Cross-ref from the RTX thread:

(....)1 year ago, after they torpedoed the trux thing fat possum came back and said they'd let me do a record to come out in the fall of ’19 and they would back the record up with tour support and so on. They buried the record this may I think and still owe me 17K in unpaid invoices for travel, show expenses, sessions, musicians, artwork. The publishing company offered me 0$ for it. That’s 0$ I came away with for all the songs I wrote for the trux record and the solo record.

This is the work that I do and I don’t get to choose the 2 bosses who i work for but if things go bad they blame the musicians & listeners have no sympathy. Things get contorted.

All I know is to stay on the path my father set me on, keep working to get very good at a few things, don't listen to white lies, you can't go wrong with a song-- no one else ever had better advice for me.

A friend had an extra copy of the Hagerty-Toth record that he gave to me this weekend and totally killed me. Singing a little wonky in a few spots, but awesome guitar and fun grooves.

^I was just thinking about that record the other day - would like to revisit it...