Springfield, Mo. – Regardless of the boot-worn stereotypes, the essence of country music is uncomplicated storytelling and humble roots.
And once Jaime Hanna and Jonathan McEuen get their career rolling, they will have a whopper of a tale to tell about humility: Last week Hanna-McEuen performed inside a Hardee’s fast-food hamburger joint in this small southwestern Missouri town to a lethargic lunch crowd.
“It was the kind of thing that can dismantle a band in a minute,” McEuen says later that day, eliciting a few looks and sighs from his bandmates who are over the “in-store” but still feel the sting of french-fry grease. “It was tough. But it’s all groundswell marketing. That’s what all of this is.”
McEuen knew what he was getting into when he and Hanna decided to cut a country record. Having grown up in musical households, the sons of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band pickers Jeff Hanna and John McEuen, they knew about the sacrifice and the saying, “There’s no substitute for hard work.” It’s why they’re in Colorado today, playing a KYGO-sponsored concert at Coors Amphitheatre.
“Hardee’s wasn’t so bad,” McEuen says. “We did get free hamburgers.”
McEuen speaks assuredly from behind his fashionable thick-framed glasses. Wearing painted jeans and a home-altered Western shirt screen-printed and re-hemmed by his wife, he looks more like a well-traveled indie rocker – a hipster-moderne makeover on Old 97’s frontman, Rhett Miller – than he does a budding country star.
Yet Hanna-McEuen is in Missouri as one of the few name performers at the recent Firefall 2005, a country-radio-sponsored show in a field near the Springfield-Branson Regional Airport, where 60,000 Missourians were expected before the night’s big fireworks closer. And while McEuen broke into an air-conditioned RV behind the stage to escape the brutal humidity of the Ozarks, the disquieting heat isn’t anything new to him and Hanna, who live in Ventura, Calif., near their bandmates and friends Teddy Jack and Jesse Siebenberg.
California is their home, but when McEuen is approached by a station employee asking him where he’s from, the answer comes naturally.
“I’m from Colorado,” he says.
Cousins in Colorado
Hanna and McEuen spent their formative years in Colorado, living with their families on Floyd Hill west of Denver. As the sons of Jeff Hanna, a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and John McEuen, who joined the Dirt Band after Jackson Browne departed to pursue a solo career, they were constantly around each other. At home. Backstage. At friends’ barbecues.
And Jaime and Jonathan were more than just close friends. They were first cousins. Their mothers, identical twins Rae and Kae, had followed the Dirt Band’s van to a Salt Lake City radio station when they were 16 years old. They met the band, sparks flew, and, well, the rest is history.
The Hannas and the McEuens always lived close to each other, and even though the twins’ Dirt Band marriages didn’t last and the boys went their separate ways during high school, they kept in touch personally and musically. Hanna was writing music in Nashville with Raul Malo of The Mavericks, and McEuen was always calling to see if he had any new songs.
“When we were teenagers, Jaime gave me my first Stratocaster,” McEuen says. “He introduced me to heavy metal, and I had studied Stevie Ray’s style, so we swapped influences.”
In 2001, the call came from their dads: They wanted their sons to be a part of the 30th-anniversary celebration of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” the milestone album that brought Nashville icons like Maybelle Carter and Roy Acuff into the studio with the Dirt Band. The cousins gathered in Hanna’s crowded Nashville apartment to work out a take on Gary Scruggs’ “Lowlands” for the Dirt Band’s “Circle III” record.
“At first it was weird because we had our own things, we were related, and we had our own egos,” Hanna says a few minutes before his Missouri set last week. “But then it just made sense.” He is trying to keep his train of thought amid a blaringly off-key a cappella version of Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” courtesy of the Ozarks Idol singing competition behind him.
“He’s been right there in front of me for years,” adds McEuen. “And after you’ve worked with hundreds of people over the years, it’s better to work with people who you know – people who you know their mom and dad and brothers and sisters. There’s no mystery that way.”
The aha moment came when the cousins were alone in the studio recording “Lowlands,” their fathers and peers in the sound booth. The two dads looked at each other upon hearing the mix of their sons’ voices and dueling guitars. It wasn’t long before Hanna-McEuen junior were leaving individual development deals and writing contracts in favor of working together.
CD is “going to fit in”
The band’s eponymous CD, due in mid-August on DreamWorks Nashville, is a skillfully crafted record that refuses to be pigeonholed. It’s almost alt-country, with its smart harmonies and unstoppable melodies. But it’s obvious too that McEuen and Hanna, the latter of whom wrote the bulk of the album, have bigger, more mainstream plans for this record.
“I don’t really know where it’s all going to fit in,” McEuen says. “It’s so many things – between rock and rockabilly, country and ballads. But I know it’s going to fit in there somewhere.”
Hanna’s tracks range from the hard-core Western swing of “Fool Around” to the Elvis swagger of “Rock & a Heartache,” from the coy playfulness of the countrified “Tell Me” to the dark, Chris Isaak-meets-the Eagles rock of “Blue Sunrise.” His songs, including the band’s first single, “Something Like a Broken Heart,” smartly manipulate country music truisms: sassy women, sad songs and ruinous heartbreaks. They also highlight the duo’s best asset: their spot-on, sailing harmonies.
McEuen’s songs, including the beautiful ballad “Ocean” and the straightforward country waltz “Say a Prayer for You,” are less twangy.
“Things are more progressive in L.A.,” McEuen says, chilling behind the stage before his performance. “Some of my (stuff) was too cool for school, not country enough, when I got to Nashville.”
The only song the two wrote together, “Read Between the Lies,” is a soulful meditation on ambiguity and infidelity. It’s the youngest song on the record, having been written with Hanna’s frequent collaborator Alan Miller in 2004 specifically for the record. The song is only a yearling, according to McEuen, who says, “It usually takes a song seven to 10 years to fully develop.
“Isn’t that what they say,” McEuen adds, waiting in an RV to do a remote for the radio station, “that it takes you 10 years to make your first record and six months to make your second?” The radio rep tells him he has 60 seconds until they conduct the remote via his cellphone. “Damn,” McEuen says, almost to himself, “we’re gonna have to make sure that second one is a good one.”
Rock ‘n’ roll blue bloods
Rock royalty is somewhat of a through line in the band’s shared heritage. Bassist Teddy Jack is the son of noted session legend Leon Russell, who did seminal work with Phil Spector and the Rolling Stones in addition to carrying his own decades-long solo career. Siebenberg, who plays drums for the boys, is the son of Supertramp founder Bob Siebenberg.
“That’s more of a side note, though,” McEuen says later. “It’s the same thing with Shooter Jennings and Holly Williams – this isn’t about who our dads were. It’s about the fact that we were there and we saw what they were doing, experiencing everything along the way.”
“We’re proud of where we came from,” Hanna adds later. “But once you get past the name thing – that this is the Dirt Band’s kids – then you have to show them something and give them some music to keep them interested.”
This self-promotion – flying into Tulsa, Okla., and driving to Springfield for a 20-minute set in front of a field full of tents, blanket Uno games and funnel-cake stands – is Hanna-McEuen reaching out to the people. It is not all that dissimilar to their gig today, KYGO’s 25 Years of Country Concert, which also features Lonestar, Keith Anderson and Chris Cagle.
Hanna-McEuen is pounding the pavement, shouting out and telling the world they’re here, one city at a time. And people are noticing. Country Music Television has latched onto the “Something Like a Broken Heart” video. Radio too is taking notice of that track. Other tracks are sure to follow, including radio-worthy songs such as “Rock & a Heartache,” “Fool Around,” “Tell Me” and “Say a Prayer for You.”
The band’s playful, swinging country is easy on the ears, but it also makes you wonder if it’s too alt, too smart for the booming market it’s targeting. Mainstream country seems to thrive on the inane. Their sound is unlikely to hit in huge Big & Rich-style, but still it would behoove country music and its millions of fans to recognize that the genre needs a makeover. Hanna-McEuen could be those agents of musical change.
“My uncle has always told me: Somebody’s gonna get the first No.1, and if you can be friends after that, then great,” McEuen says. “I think we’re gonna be just fine.”
When it’s time for the band to rock out to the preoccupied, less-than-enthusiastic Springfield crowd, McEuen is playing the same guitar from the “Something Like a Broken Heart” video, and Hanna is looking stoic as ever, fronting each song with calculated vocal control.
They kick the set off with the lively “Fool Around,” after which McEuen rhymes in an affected drawl, “We’re Hanna-McEuen. How y’all doin’?”
The Jack-Siebenberg rhythm section is solid, and aside from a few monitor issues, the band is surprisingly together, considering they haven’t played more than two dozen gigs. Their stage presence and confidence comes from countless pre-Hanna-McEuen performances. Hanna played extensively with The Mavericks, and McEuen estimates he played more than 1,000 gigs as a duo with his father. They exude an intelligent, sexy country vibe that is as fun as it is serious.
Most impressive about Hanna-McEuen’s live show is watching their easy rapport. There’s chemistry, sure, but more important, there’s comfort. It is obvious these guys are lifelong friends in the truest sense. And that authentic, close-knit history counts for something – especially in the world of country.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
