Hometown: Nashville, TN
Album: Spill, out February 17th via Mind Over Matter Records
RIYL: The Weather Channel. Kangols. Drummers.
We all contain multitudes, layers of interests, backgrounds, and abilities that works best when shared in some capacity with others. My work friends don’t necessarily know about my writing for this excellent establishment, nor my love of horror and crime fiction, and few in this world know that I spent half a decade at the FDA and have given presentations on Regulatory Affairs in a professional setting. That notion of worlds colliding (extreme George Costanza voice) gets at why Dad Hats not only gels so well together but finds a way to present a very clear vision of indie punk. Their debut full-length contains some of the best punk hooks in a decade, and their Wonder Years/Menzingers style is like a cup of herbal tea and a purring lap cat on a winter’s night: comforting and warm.
Bassist/vocalist Craig Turner shares that each member brings a different and unexpected background, making for quite the motley crew:
“Each of us has background in rock/punk/indie bands, but we each bring something else to the table as well. Tyler [Coleman] is a drummer turned guitarist, bringing a unique take on the instrument and affinity for odd open tunings. Nate [Sorg] is a synthesizer/electronic music aficionado and has a pedal board the size of a small apartment. Joe [Halberstadt] has played in more bands and in more styles than I can count. I have a sort of classical music/folk music background. Somehow when you toss this all into the blender you get Dad Hats. Musically, we were really just trying to put together a tight, fun record that gets stuck in your head.”
Despite the fact that some of the members have played music together since middle school, very little of this record was composed in the same room, as Turner shares:
“We wrote this album in the middle of the pandemic, passing riffs, ideas, drums, and structural ideas to one another online. I think we only really wrote two songs completely in person (‘Lake Song,’ ‘My Favorite Show is the Weather Channel’). There was no deadline or anything, so we were really able to take our time writing and rewriting, then restructuring if the lyrics needed it.”
