Interview: Dave Hause kicks back against the darkness

Dave Hause knew that he would never make another album like 2019’s Kick. Recorded while his wife was pregnant with twins, Hause’s fourth solo album retains the energy and aggression of his past work with the Philadelphia-based punk band The Loved Ones while providing a cathartic push back against the daily onslaught of political/environmental/social issues that threaten to swallow us all.

“I think it was important to write from the perspective of not having children one last time,” says Hause from his home in Santa Barbara, just days ahead of heading back on tour. “In a lot of ways, it was terrifying in 2018 to consider having kids in this climate, in this political climate, this social climate. I knew that I would soften quite a bit after having kids, it’s just what happens. And I wanted one more document of the sort of anxiety and frustration and urge to fight for your humanity before I had kids. Because I think a lot of those songs I probably would have just scrapped once the kids came. Because I think I would have been like, “Yeah, I’m not really in this headspace,” and we would have lost at least 5 or 6 of those songs, just due to not being in that place anymore emotionally.”

While there are moments of pain and darkness on Kick, including the haunting closing track “Bearing Down,” a tribute to Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison who died in 2018, they’re offset by rousing anthems like “The Ditch,” a balance Hause fought to maintain on the record.

“I just don’t know what good making a record full of despair does anybody,” says Hause. “It doesn’t do me any good. I obviously have favourite records that are filled with despair, but I don’t listen to them. You know, I don’t listen to [Nine Inch Nails’] The Downward Spiral. I love it, I think it’s wonderful, but it’s…it really feels like an albatross when I put that record on. I also think at this point, for me, I do feel responsible as a person of my age and as a guy that employs a couple of people, my band, and I’m a husband and a dad and an older sibling, I’m trying to take that role seriously. Things look hopeless right now. The climate’s a mess and democracy is in decline in the western world, and things look bleak. That’s sort of where the record title came from. What do you do when you feel like you’re drowning? And I was on a phone call with [Hause’s brother and bandmate Tim] about it, just trying to suss out where we were at and what we were trying to say and what we were trying to do, and he was like, “Well, you kick.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, right.” Even if you don’t know if you’re going to reach the surface of the water, you definitely give it hell. And that’s what the record kind of felt like. Those kicks where you’re just like, “Oh my god, I think the current is pulling me out to sea, I might not make it.”

Those feelings of doubt and alienation seeped into Kick, including the opening track “Eye Aye I,” which questions the very nature of dedicating one’s life to music in the wildly volatile times we live in: “I used to spit it right back in their face, now I do what I’m told / I used to be bold.”

“Maybe it’s not the same in Canada, where you seem to have a much more firm grip on who you are and who you want to be, but there have definitely been dark moments where you wonder, oh my god, instead of singing Kumbaya and learning how to play guitar, should I have gone into the military?” asks Hause. “Should I have started a business and just tried to make money? It’s the search for resources. When you boil the human struggle down to that, you do wonder sometimes, like, “Oh man, did I waste my time and should I just have been stockpiling bullets and money and the things that will keep me and my tribe from perishing if there’s a run on water or something?” It’s really just a brief moment of doubt in a long history of being in service to the arts and being Liberal-minded and Left-leaning. I think that everybody gets those moments. It’s just a brief moment of that feeling to open the album, and then you get into the nitty grit of it. “The Ditch” more lands on ultimately what the belief is: “If I can’t make it out of this ditch, I better make a home of it.” Try to settle your demons, and settle what you call home, with all the good and the bad.”

Despite having two babies at home, Hause still has a lot on his plate for the future, including scattered shows throughout the year, preparing for a new record, and an upcoming 10th-anniversary celebration of his 2011 solo debut, Resolutions.

“I’ve obviously had a huge life change, and I’ve started to put together songs and ideas for the next record, so we’ll probably start digging in in the spring,” says Hause. “And in ’21, I think we’re going to celebrate 10 years of Resolutions with a couple of shows. We’re digging in on those mixes to see if we want to remaster it or do anything like that, if not we’ll just do some shows in celebration and keep moving.”

Dave Hause performs at Petit Campus on March 8, 2020, with support from Chris Cresswell. Tickets are available here. For all upcoming tour dates visit the official Dave Hause site.