Digging Up Alt Country Gold: The Music Of Hazeldine

I mentioned in the write-ups to the All Pearls, No Swine from the Naughts that that was the time when I got pretty heavily into Americana. I was a student with a student job, and spent most of my money on seriously building a record collection. One act that I got into pretty early was Hazeldine. I had vaguely heard of them, remembering a short but enthustiastic write-up of their debut How Bees Fly. The album that brought me to Hazeldine wasn't How Bees Fly, however, it was Digging You Up, their sophomore effort that also was their major label debut. For all that was worth. The late 90s were the last great time of chnages and reconsolidation in the record label business, shortly before it would all start to come down with the invention of the MP3 technology and the rise of per-to-peer websites like Napster. But in the late 90s record labels were still riding high, buying up smaller labels or merging for more market power. Which finally meant a huge amount of trouble for Hazeldine. 

Their demo tape that became How Bees Fly hadn't stirred up much interest in the U.S., but German specialist mailorder record store turned specialist record label Glitterhouse were mightily interested in the three females and one male alt country band from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Instead of mere positive feedback to their demo tape, Glitterhouse proposed to issue it as their debut album As a matter of fact, before Breaking Bad I'd say Hazeldine was pretty much the only thing I'd associate with Albuquerque. 

Anyway, so Glitterhouse had issued How Bees Fly which had some reasonable success and critical raves in Europe, so finally a major label, Polydor, came knocking. Hazeldine re-recorded some of the most memorable songs from their debut album, together with a number of newly written numbers, for their much slicker major-label debut, helmed by Jim Scott, at the time producer of some of my favorite artists from that (or any) era: Whiskeytown, Matthew Sweet, Neal Casal, Todd Thibaud. Alas, it was almost all for nothing: Polydor in another tour of record label mergers got swallowed up by the Universal Music group and with it Digging You Up. The album never came out in the U.S. and had a very limited release in Europe. What was supposed to be their big break, almost broke the band. 

Soon, the four-piece band was an all-female trio. Multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Richards (drums, but also guitar and banjo) had started to want to force his ideas a bit too much on his female colleagues, to which they had the natural reaction of firing his ass. Decades before 'mansplaining' became a buzzword, Richards got sent packing for it. As a sort of thank you and break-up gift to Glitterhouse, the label had gotten Orphans, a DIY compilation of cover songs, but finally the label that decided to take a chance on them welcomed them back  with open arms: Their third and, unfortunately, final studio album Double Back came out on Glitterhouse in 2001, exquisitely produced by the dB's Chris Stamey. Yet a couple of months later, the band was done. 

Hazeldine could've and should've been bigger than they were. Unknown by a wider audience in the U.S. while conquering heroes on the old continent, their story is a little reminiscent of Neal Casal, whose inability to break through in his home country often was a source of frustration and lack of understanding from his European fans. As a reminder of the fabulous alt country act that was Hazeldine, I have compiled this compilation of what I think are their best moments. The selections are nothing if not democratic: four songs apiece from How Bees Fly and Orphans (including covers of Gram & Emmylou, of course, but also The Mekons, Hank Cochran via X and Peter Gabriel), and five apiece from Digging You Up and Double Back. Of the four songs that were on both How Bees Fly and Digging You Up, I split the difference, choosing two apiece, prefering How Bees Fly's more fragile take on "Allergic To Love" and their punkier version of Grant Lee Buffalo cover "Fuzzy", whereas flagship song "Apothecary" and the sad country ode to "Daddy" are here in the fuller versions from Digging You Up. 

Let the fabulous harmonies of Shawn Barton and Tonya Lamm wash over you, and if you don't know them, let Diggin' It Up: The Music Of Hazeldine introduce you to a half-forgotten treasure from the boom time of the alt country movement...