Dave Hause Mermaid Album Release Tour

On a base level, the term ‘blood harmony’ is simple—it describes the specific sound two siblings make when they sing together. Given that Dave Hause has been writing and recording songs with his younger brother Tim for a while now, it made sense to use that phrase as the title for his fifth solo record. But this being a Dave Hause album
 also means there’s much more to it than that. Beneath the surface of Blood Harmony, in fact, are multiple layers of meaning relating to Hause’s role as a musician, a brother, a husband, a son and—having become a father to twins a few months before the release of 2019’s Kick—a dad. As such, Blood Harmony is also a reassertion of what family means to him. Even more so because it’s coming out on the label owned by he and his brother. “I thought Blood Harmony was a great title” says Hause, “and really specific to how Tim and I have decided to work over the years. It also pertains to my children because they’ll have their own Blood Harmony. So the germ of the album, the beating heart, is that I’m in a true family. I have a grounded reason to work and a bunch of people that I want to make proud with the work that we do. It’s a family business.”

The importance of that was made all the more apparent after the coronavirus outbreak. Hause, with his brother, used that unexpected downtime to make the Patty/Paddy tribute EPs to Patty Griffin and Dillinger Four’s Patrick ‘Paddy’ Costello. After a while, though, like all touring musicians, he found himself without an income. So when his friend and former manager offered him some work nearby as a Covid safety supervisor for the company she set up after contracting Covid herself, he said yes. It was for one of the biggest celebrities in the world, so to prepare, Hause went to LA and worked on two shoots with two of music’s biggest stars. He was shocked at the scant disregard their teams had for their well-being. “These artists are so successful they never need to work again,” says Hause, “but the label and management were pushing to get away with stuff and it was totally unsafe. I was pretty disgusted seeing the industry at that level, and how much of it was simply greed and not caring about the safety of others. We were just starting to roll out the EPs on our own label, and the whole experience just ironed my resolve—I’m a family artist, and I never want to be in a position where people are urging me to do things that are bad for my or my family’s mental or physical health. That’s not what it’s about for me. It’s about connection. So that experience really reinforced this idea of blood harmony. I’m connected to my people, and this is a small little thing that we’re going to keep pure.”

You can hear Hause’s passion and dedication to his craft—as well as his determined approach to it—flowing through the veins of Blood Harmony’s ten stunning, sumptuous songs. Written with his brother over a series of weekly FaceTime sessions, they began crafting songs together in January 2021. They’d been writing remotely together since 2017’s Bury Me In Philly so it wasn’t an entirely new process for them, but they modified their approach slightly by giving themselves rigid deadlines.

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