Blake Dowling
Earlier this month, I attended the UF versus LSU football game; it was a glorious occasion.
The Gators won big, and wins are hard to come by this year in the SEC (everywhere, actually). While in town, I got to see some of my favorite old haunts, like Harry’s and Lilians, which have been open for 30+ years.
Some new spots are now favorites, like Mark’s Prime Steakhouse and Hear Again Records. I love the record store and my new but growing vinyl collection. To keep from buying music in four formats (cassette, CD, digital, vinyl), I have limited myself to my absolute favorite albums only on record.
After my latest trip to HAR, my collection now includes “Wake of the Flood” by the Grateful Dead (thx, Doug), Dave Matthews’ debut album, and a live 1977 Meters record.
I brought up music as I hit the tailgate and drove by other awesome spots like the ATO Fraternity house, the new Swamp bar, the stadium, and Gator Beverage. One other thing always pops in my head around Gainesville.
The band Sister Hazel.
I think it was when I was walking downtown that I remembered they had a brand-new record drop this week. Downtown reminds me of them, as they had an early promo shot in front of the Hippodrome.
It was a classic walking shot, a redneck Beatles vibe.
When the band started in the mid-90s, I often saw them in Gainesville as they relentlessly gigged the Swamp scene at spots such as Rickenbacher’s, Market Street, Dirty Nellies, and Gator Meisters.
They also played our fraternity parties from time to time.
This (in one way or another) led me to become friends with the guys and join their management team after they signed with Universal Records and I graduated.
By 1998, they hit the big time with Gold and Platinum records, a #1 song, movie soundtracks, national tours, etc.
I was with them through some epic times, but I moved on to a career in tech around their fourth album. Meanwhile, the OG band Mark, Drew, Jett, Ryan, and Ken are still rocking.
This month, the band released their 13th studio album, and as a perfect weekend was wrapping up, I rolled the sunroof and all the windows down and cruised up I-75 for a listen.
The drive time allowed for a start-to-finish experience, as every album should be enjoyed that way. The artist takes you on a musical journey with a well-crafted record, and each song is placed in perfect order, like the chapters in a book.
Their most impressive accomplishment is, as artists, how they keep doing this.
Let’s take a moment to think about the business of music and artistry. If you are an artist, you have formative years to create your first album. As a songwriter, you might have eight songs you wrote from age 16-20.
Gregg Allman, for example, brought 22 songs to the Allman Brothers when he joined them at age 18 in 1969. They liked 2 of his songs, “Dreams” and “Mellisa” (which Gregg wrote at 17), and they immediately challenged him to write more. Gregg came up with “Whipping Post” written on an ironing board in the middle of the night a few days later.
The rest is Southern Rock history.
The making of a hit song and the magic/luck it takes to blow up is intriguing. What are the odds of a song getting to the right people at the right time? One example of a breakout song from Los Angeles. During the 80s, Poison came on the glam metal scene around 1985 (along with Warrant, Dokken, and Mötley Crüe). They auditioned a local guitarist named CC Deville (they also considered Slash, who would go on to form Guns N’ Roses) when they moved to town from Pennsylvania.
CC brought the song “Talk Dirty to Me” to the audition and played it. He was hired, and that song led to their fame. Their first single for Capital Records, “Cry Tough,” bombed, and when TDTM was released, it exploded on the charts as they toured the nation with Ratt.
This brings us back to Sister Hazel. In 1991, before the band was formed, lead singer Ken Block wrote the #1 hit song, “All for You.” It was on a local Gainesville artist compilation album. I believe it was called “Gainesville Acts,” and I had a copy of it. I loved our local scene in Gainesville; any night, a band played at one of those places mentioned above. After growing up reading about Poison, Mötley Crüe, and the LA music scene, it was fantastic to experience my very own, and the Sister Hazel guys were a big part of it.
So were Creed, Edwin McCain, Hootie, Dave Matthews, Jupiter Coyote, Widespread Panic, Dingofish, Floyds Funk Revival, Tabathas Secret aka Matchbox 20, What it Is, and many more legends of that era.
Check out the new Sister Hazel album here.
For Gator royalty, Sister Hazel’s “All for You” was that song that helped kick it all off from Gainesville to the whole world. First, it blew up on regional radio and then around the nation, and they even toured with the Allman Brothers right out of the gate. After Sister Hazel had their initial success, they turned their creativity into their life’s work and successfully cranked out a new album every few years as long-standing professional musicians. Thirty years later, they still have it. It’s the same original band members who have done thousands of tour dates, plus kids, houses, spouses (how about that for an album name), and everything else life dishes out.
Looking back, the musical fads and genres since their debut self-titled release in 1994 are staggering. From the Nookie to the Macarena to Swifties, the Sister Hazel train keeps rolling through the years. “Sand, Sea & Crash Debris” is the name of the new Hazel record, and as I motored up the highway, the first song to jump out at me was “All Goes By So Fast.”
I think everyone can relate to the song’s message regardless of age because if you blink, another decade just flew by. Singer Ken Block wrote the song with his daughter Alaina, which adds something even cooler to the track’s narrative.
Other tracks like the rocking opener, “Complicated You,” the powerful “Live Again,” and another fave of mine, “Lay your Worry Down,” make for a perfect sonic journey. The guitar work is epic on that last track, Newell out does himself with the leads that keeps peaking and driving the song and album to a fitting and powerful, BIG finale. When I arrived home, I ordered the record on vinyl after listening to it on Spotify, as it meets my criteria for an album worthy to sit amongst my faves. I was also texting with the guys in the band during my drive, and I told them they cranked out a winner of an album.
Ken texted back that they still had it.
For someone who has had a front-row seat to hundreds of their shows and been a part of several of their albums, I texted them back a big thumbs up, letting them know, in my humble opinion, that they do indeed still have it.
From “All Goes By So Fast”:
And it all goes by so fast
Nothing’s made to last
And we’ve all been fooled together
Thinking we’re gonna live forever
