Hooves

Call it unfair, but former Phoenicians-turned-Washingtonians Hooves have always garnered more attention for their hotel trashing and indie-rock bowling debacles than for their music. Sure, this publication is probably the most to blame for the reputation, but when it comes down to it, we've always been fans of the music first and foremost. Fetch, Little Doggie, the band's brand-new album, demonstrates why the band's bad behavior has always been an interesting side note to the music. Featuring expansive space rock like the Led Zep-via-David Bowie "Animal Mother," charming roots pop like "Love Letter Lisp" (with a kind of ramshackle melody that could appeal to fans of Dr. Dog), and a spooky Dr. John-on-weirder-drugs swamp-soul number, "Old Fashioned Way." If you're worried that the band has forgotten the classic rock sounds of Greater Aspirations, Lower Expectations, don't fret — "No Use for Dying" and "Shit Kickers" have that sound down, but with a smart emphasis on melody and soul. The keyboards are turned up, the vocals are howling, and the grooves are plainly chooglin'. The sounds of Fetch prove that while Hooves may be serious about having a good time, they're serious about backing it up with tunes, too. - Phoenix New Times

The hookers were a bad idea. But, like so many stories about Hooves, a night of Vegas debauchery gone awry had a few silver tassels lining it.
“We ended up in the presidential suite at the Golden Nugget and our manager at the time bought some hookers and they ended up—I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened—but they ended up robbing us,” says Andrew Krissberg, the band’s frontman. “But the point of the story is we met another rock ’n’ roll band that night who was up all night partying with us, too. So there’s other groups out there doing what we do.”

Making friends—in this instance, Oakland’s Bare Wires—isn’t easy for a young rock band lyrically self-described as “shit-kickin’, motherfuckin’ good ol’ boys that everybody knows.” Hooves occupy an odd niche: too arty to be bros, too old-fashioned and surly to hang with lo-fi punk types on DayGlo skateboards, and too drunk and disorderly for most introspective indie bands.

Krissberg and Hooves drummer Chris Lamb met and started playing in Phoenix, Ariz. They were schooled in the methy western suburbs before moving to Roosevelt Row, a few blocks of Krylon-coated gringofication akin to Alberta Street. The band relocated to Bellingham, Wash., in June, a move timed to avoid a summer of haboobs and chemical temptation while finishing the album it had been working on for three years. Fetch, Little Doggie, which many (read: me, who covered Hooves in Phoenix) doubted the band would ever actually knuckle down and finish, came together quickly in the sleepy border town north of Seattle.

“It’s not a huge city or anything, which is kind of what we were looking for,” Lamb says. “When you’re likely to just go out and blow all your money on booze, it’s easier to do that in a big city.”

Fetch, Little Doggie—named for an insult hurled between female fans fighting over a tambourine at a show—suggests it was a smart move. It’s a hairy-chested rock album with burly licks, pianola frills and what sounds like three heavily made-up women bumping puffy hairdos together while sharing a microphone on the choruses. It’s a ’70s sound, but there are few Zeppelinesque cock-rock pretensions—it’s more like a gritty version of the Doors or a smaller reboot of the Band.

The nine-track album’s rollicking closer, “All Friends,” best captures the loose layers of the band’s shows, opening with a pitter-patter of keys and evolving through blaring brass and hoot-alongs before devolving into house-party chatter. It sounds like the band’s shows—minus the slurring, which could make the four-week tour that brings the band through Portland for the first time on the way to its South By Southwest debut a challenging proposition.

Drunken antics have long been endearing and afflicting for Hooves. The band was once tossed out of an Arizona charity bowling tournament and banned from the alley. Krissberg, Lamb and bandmates Christian Reeb and Brad Bielesch just aren’t big on pacing themselves.

“At our first show [in Bellingham], Christian puked all over the place and Andy fell asleep in the girls bathroom after the show,” Lamb says.

Setting the Vegas hookers aside, one of Hooves’ better-known exploits involved trashing a hotel room in a small Arizona town, an incident that angered another local rocker who publicly shamed them as “some of the worst people I’ve ever met.” Destroying the room is not something Krissberg, surprisingly soft-spoken and thoughtful on the phone when he’s sober, feels badly about.

“The thing was, the hotel room was literally infested with cockroaches, there were cum stains on the sheets,” he says. “My mindset at the time was, ‘This place is already fucked up.’”

At least the boys from Hooves have a place to crash in Oakland. Hopefully their new pals in Bare Wires are keeping the place clean.

“I don’t think anyone should be afraid to rent us a hotel room,” Krissberg says. “They should be afraid not to.” - Willamette Weekly

?Back in May, Hooves frontman Andrew Krissberg explained to me before the band took the floor at Bikini Lounge that the band's decision to move to Washington was one step in a grand plan.
The band's plan sounded idyllic --hanging out in the Pac Northwest, touring, and recording a new record. Things seem to be going well for the group.

"Moving to Bellingham has hardly been a vacation, so to speak," the band wrote July 28 on its Facebook. "We've got new music, a new website that's almost completed, and we've got some other pretty big news coming up."

That big news may be "Gallows," the new tune the band debuted on its SoundCloud on Saturday.

GALLOWS by hoovesmusic

The song was actually recorded here in Phoenix, at 513 Studios with Mike Hissong producing. The band has often joked about playing "dad rock," and on no song have they got closer than "Gallows," with its bluesy licks, cocksure drums, and twinkling barroom piano.

Krissberg says it's going to be featured on the group's new record, Fetch, Little Doggie.

"We hand out tambourines when we have them at shows and two girls started fighting over one," Krissberg says. "One of the girls threw the tambourine over a fence and said
'Fetch, little doggie' to the other girl. The other girl tackled her to the ground and started beating the shit out of her."

Krissberg says the group already has a follow-up to the forthcoming album planned.

"Yeah, after we release this full length, we already have all the songs written for a new EP," Krissberg says. "We're recording it somewhere really expensive. Looking at producers right now. Hopefully Levon Helm will still be alive to help produce.

You can download "Gallows" for free on Hooves' new website. - Phoenix Newtimes (Village Voice Media)

There is a passage in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book “Outliers: The Story of Success” that has already become somewhat infamous, a passage in which Gladwell brings up the well-known fact that before the Beatles had hit it big in America in early 1964, they had already appeared on stage an estimated 1200 times in Hamburg, Germany, often playing live for more than five hours at a time.

The point that Gladwell is trying to make by citing this is that success often has less to do with talent and more to do with hard work. If the Beatles hadn’t played those shows and put in the time honing their craft, both as musicians as well as public figures, it is doubtful that they would have enjoyed the same type of success as quickly as they did. They were a great band, of course, but their seeming innate knack for appearing on camera and for playing flawless, effortless sets in front of hundreds of screaming fans stems directly from their time spent in Hamburg. John and
music
George cracking jokes with the press? Try spending several hours on stage a day as an entertainer and see just how funny you get to be, see how good you get at being a personality. Paul’s seemingly unending knack for churning out perfect pop melodies? Try spending days and days playing in between vaudeville acts and see how good you get at it, at knowing what entertains an audience most.

It’s a baptism by fire really, it is success by elimination, and it is about finding what you’re really good at and then practicing it over and over again until you get it just right. The reason I bring this up now in relation to downtown Phoenix’s beloved Hooves is that I feel their career path could well be following a similar trajectory.

They are an immensely talented band, both live and on record, but have perhaps gotten that way in part by playing live just as much as they do. I have seen Hooves play in a house and I have seen them play in someone’s living room. I have seen them play in a backyard, and in an art gallery, and in a dive bar, and in a condemned building for over two hundred ecstatic people. The common denominator to all these performances is not so much the quality of the music, though their songs are admittedly really good, it is rather in the fact that the sheer joy and exuberance that Hooves bring to their live shows is something that is truly infectious. They don’t play these songs as much as they attack them, savagely, extracting what is best about the music, and then letting you in on the thrill ride for free.

There’s a kind of satisfying glee in watching this band play live, it’s a cathartic and jubilant experience, as all rock music should be, but it’s also a decidedly pointed political act as well, whether the band freely admits to it or not. By making the personal public, by letting you in on the audition process, as it were, what this band is really giving you is a taste of unmediated rock and roll magic. By coming through and delivering the goods, time and time again, by their obvious sacrifice and their almost heroic level of commitment to playing monster sets, anytime and at any place, what Hooves are bringing to the Valley is an almost unspeakably refreshing burst of courage, artistic pride, and palpable creative energy. They don’t have to do this is the point. They are and were a good enough band to simply hole up and play a show once every couple months or something or else just shop their demo around incessantly to the powers that be. The fact that they chose not to is smart, commendable, gracious, and a really tender act of love and endearment to a town and to a scene that gave to them and that they have given back to.

Hooves are recording a new record now, but if you get the chance, go see them live, in their primacy and wherever they happen to be playing, not so much so that you can say “wow, I was there way back when” but rather so that you might get an object lesson, a reminder of what it means to truly believe in what it is that you do, in what it is that you create. So that you might thankfully remember what it is that you love so much about music in the first place, not just the devout passion on the faces of those that are performing it, but also the joy and equal fire residing in the hands and the feet of the guy that is dancing his ass off next to you as well. Go ahead. Go see Hooves. John Lennon would have wanted you to. This is rock and roll.
- YabYummusic.com

Naming Phoenix's best records is always a tough task. As far as year-end lists go, it's exponentially more difficult than naming the best albums overall. Why? Well, for a national list, I have no problem just going with what I enjoy. But when it comes to the local list, I make an (arguably vain) attempt to spotlight the best local offerings from a wide variety of genres. You may or may not have noticed that other media outlets don't attempt such a thing, and I don't blame them.


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Still, there's a reason New Times is the definitive source for local music news and reviews, and I consider this unenviable task to be a job requirement during any year when the Valley births enough impressive records to make it worthwhile. So here goes.

1. Hooves — Greater Aspirations, Lowered Expectations: Hooves' four-song EP is as good a local release as you'll hear. The title perfectly encapsulates the vibe of this classic rock-informed indie record — wizened and a little world-weary, yet playfully ambitious. From the chug-a-lug swagger of the opener "Roughness," through the opening piano licks of "Giggles," which sound like a Pianola blaring through the swinging doors of some old-timey cathouse for cowboys, it's clear they weren't interested in capturing any fluff on Greater Aspirations. That's a good thing, since so many local bands make the mistake of releasing decent albums instead of great EPs.

Then again, maybe the Hooves guys just got lazy. The band has an established reputation for being hard-boozing troublemakers who show up late and get sauced early — not that those antics make them any less fun to watch on stage. So know that by putting Hooves at number one, I'm not trying to anoint them anything — most evidence, including the title of their EP, suggests they're fuck-ups who lack the drive to "make it" — I'm just recognizing that they made a helluva record.

Listen if you loved: The Dead Weather's Sea of Cowards - Phoenix New Times (Village Voice Media)

For all the focus on the band's antics on stage and off, it's easy to miss how understated Hooves can be. The band announced recently that they are packing up and moving to Bellingham, Washington, and while plenty of bands would take the opportunity to milk a "farewell show" for all it's worth, Hooves aren't that kind of band.

Rather than put together some glitzy, multi-band celebration, the band choose to play its final Arizona gig -- at least until the band heads out on tour, something the group plans do a lot in the next year-- in a typically tossed off manner: cramming a bunch of gear and a bunch of bodies into the Bikini Lounge, a venue not known for live bands, with precious little promotion, for an informal going away bash.


?Of course, it's a shame that Hooves are leaving Phoenix.

An honest to God rock 'n' roll band, Andy Krissberg, Chris Lamb, Christian Reeb, Brad Bielesch, and Parker Morden are prone to the kind of things many of their peers would shrug off an anachronistic: drum solos, call and response guitar/trumpet duets, in-the-pocket bass grooves, and a distaste for "modern" influence.

The band lists its genre as "rock and roll" on Facebook, and under bio it simply says "Party Time."

"Party Time" is an apt description for what went down last night. Despite of, or perhaps because of, the band's thoroughly old-school rock ethics, the band is popular with the downtown set, and packed 100-or-so fans into the Bikini.

Tambourines were distributed, and the moment the band tore into "Roughness," from 2010's Greater Aspirations, Lowered Expectations, the crowd started dancing, and didn't stop for the 45-minutes the band got down.

Some shows feel like perfunctory exercises, and some shows feel like something is actually happening. Hooves giddily treated the audience to an example of the latter.

Trumpeter/vocalist Morden climbed the walls, half horn-man and half hype-man, shouting into the crowd and singing along, even when he was standing on a cocktail table far from a microphone.

The band played a considerable amount of new material; all very funky, indicating the next record may find them refining The Band influence that is nearly always referenced when talking about Hooves (clearly, I'm guilty).

Like The Band, Hooves trade off on vocals. Krissberg's throaty rasp dominates, but Reeb took a turn at the mic, as did Lamb, keeping up his pace at the drum kit while he sang.

Krissberg didn't mention the impending move while playing, barely saying anything but a few muttered "Thanks" between songs. There was no speech dedicated to how much they were going to miss Phoenix, no overly sentimental talk about how much they've appreciated the time spent here, and no shout-outs.

The band simply played music. Finishing with an epic take on "Warm Clothes," the guys seemed to say it all with the music. It's always been easy to focus on the outrageous quality of the band, but antics aren't enough to go on -- fun, but ultimately just a periphery to why people care about this band.

The songs have always been the real story, at once nasty and melodic, heavy but always something you can dance to. The best rock 'n' roll is the kind that doesn't need to be explained, the kind that you just get.

It's not that common anywhere, and while Phoenix is definitely going to miss Hooves, we can take comfort in knowing they'll be back to visit. It'll be "Party Time" then, but it's hard to imagine it all feeling and sounding this good again.

Critics Notebook

Last Night: Hooves and DJ Shane Kennedy at The Bikini Lounge

The Crowd: Downtown Phoenix folk, all good looking, all there to rage.

Overheard in the Crowd: "You're going to love Washington."

Personal Bias: Hooves are one of my favorite local bands. I am bummed to see them go, but know this won't be the last we hear of them.

By the way: Kennedy followed up the band's set with Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Genius. - Phoenix New Times (Village Voice Media)

We were also featured in the Phoenix New Times best of issue as one of thirty individuals (or in our case a group) that add to the community. - Phoenix New Times (Village Voice Media)

Hooves describe themselves as “dad rock” – presumably referring to music that your dad likes, and not to a new genre spawned by Father’s Day. The description works for me – their Higher Aspirations, Lower Expectations would be right home next my dad’s Creedence records and his well-loved copy of Greetings from Asbury Park. From the sounds of it, Hooves’ dads were apparently into The Stones, The Band and Highway 61.

That isn’t to say the free download (album? EP? digi-single?) is a bland rip-off or a mediocre homage – not by a long shot. Like the classics they obviously enjoy, the music on this EP has the timeless, intoxicating appeal that radiates from a record that sounds like it was fun to make.

On opener “roughness,” when the singer sings about “[living] with a crazy bunch in town” and proclaims that “[he'd] trade’em for nothin’ coz [he] loves’em around,” it’s easy to believe, and “lake in the sky” has the stomp-along good vibes and quasi-religious undertones of the best of the faux-gospel jam rock hymns of the bell-bottom era. Like all good rockers, Hooves flirt with mortality and daddy issues on “giggles;” the greatest testament to the finale of “warm clothes” is probably the fact that it breaks the five minute mark without overstaying it’s welcome. - intentionalpress.com

I love me some good old fashion Rock and Roll. This ep is definitely that, an album to drink and sing along to. Fantastic drumming and guitar licks, along with a motherfucking trumpet player. All the bases are covered with this one. They are touring in June to promote this EP, so be sure to check and see if they are playing a city near you. Anyways, I have fond memories of hangin out with Andrew Krissberg and Chris Lamb from Hooves, drinking way too much whiskey and watching Happiness. Andy would be playing his acoustic guitar and singing, while Chris and I would be reading up on Abby Hoffman while smoking joints. Good times. - thizzfacedisco.com

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. They practiced, they planned, they were ambitious and optimistic. Then, like so many rock musicians before them, excessive use of alcohol took it all away.

Before they knew it, Hooves had embarrassed themselves at probably the biggest annual event in the Phoenix rock scene, the Phoenix Independents Bowl. A legend was born: Hooves bowled a 100-point game (collectively), tossing multiple balls at once, treating Sunset Bowl's manger like a human bowling pin, and getting banned from ever entering the establishment again after trying to steal the event's trophies.

"Well, this is what I remember . . ." laughs Andrew Krissberg, frontman and songwriter, launching into the now-infamous tale. "We didn't mean for it to get out of hand."

Krissberg swears the band's drunken breakdown on the lanes wasn't some punk rock bullshit designed to burnish the band's reputation at a bowling tournament pitting against each other teams made up of notable Phoenix tastemakers, movers, shakers, and scenesters. Still, there was drummer Chris, "blackout drunk" before the guys even arrived to bowl as part of the 513 Analog Studios team.

"None of that was supposed to happen," Krissberg sighs. "I actually practiced; I spent three or four nights before [the event] going to the bowling alley after work. I was getting good."

Krissberg's low-slung demeanor and quiet, thoughtful phrasing make it hard to believe him capable of such classically styled rock 'n' roll debauchery, but Hooves' new EP, Greater Aspirations, Lower Expectations, further illustrates the fine line that Krissberg and the band toe between witty, literate songwriting and barely contained chaos. Informed by the rootsy swagger of The Band, the anthemic strut of early Springsteen albums, and the wry pop of Harry Nilsson, the band recorded at the 513 Studios, where they cut the album to analog tape with producer Mike Hissong, joined by Valley mainstays Robin Vining, who plays the blistering organ solo on opener "Roughness" and Sunorus' horn section on "Giggles."

The results are four loud, loose songs, far removed from the local indie scene where the band is often uncomfortably positioned. "We don't fit in at a place like Trunk Space; we're not part of that scene," Krissberg states. "They are good people, but musically, we don't fit in with what they're doing. Like it or not, we fit in better [next door] at the Bikini [Lounge], where Shane [Kennedy, who DJs at the bar and offered song suggestions to the band in the studio] is spinning rock 'n' roll stuff and the 'hip' kids have to listen to that."

Which raises the question, in 2010, as rock writers and bloggers seem dead set on describing every possible subgenre with impossibly shallow modifiers like "chillwave," "shitgaze" and "blisscore," what can a "rock 'n' roll band" possibly offer? Furthermore, after over 60 years of mutation and abuse, what does rock 'n' roll even mean?

"I figure that it's having a good time," Krissberg posits. "I'm not trying to sound like a bro, and that probably sounded really bro-ish, but that's what it's about. There's all this bad shit going on, and no one wants to work or argue about shit. When we play, people dance, not like Scottsdale club dancing, but these downtown kids just cutting loose and having a good time. It's really cool to play music for them and tell they're enjoying themselves. That's why I like doing this and that's why I like playing. That's rock 'n' roll."

To that end, the band aims to make each show a reflection of that "good time" spirit. "We have drum solos," Krissberg, says, nodding to Lamb. "We pour pitchers of beer down his throat when he plays drums solos, because it's fun."

"He fucking stunned me with a stun gun," Lamb says, one-upping Krissberg. Sheepishly Krissberg divulges the story: In an effort to bring people out to a gig at the now-defunct Ruby Room, Krissberg mass-texted his friends, saying he was going to Tase Lamb during a song. "I was totally joking, I never intended to do it," Krissberg states.

But as the Lamb started into a drum solo, Krissberg decided it might be fun to give the crowd what he had jokingly promised. "He shocked me, like, 12 times," Lamb says. "Finally, I shouted that if he did it again, I was going to hit him with a drumstick."

"If we're up there, super-tight and nervous, that's what will stick with [a crowd]," Lamb suggests. "Rock 'n' roll does require a little confidence," Krissberg adds. "Like dancing — if you're self-conscious, you're not gonna want to do it. We have fun, we knock each other's shit over, we slam into each other. It's not total bonehead, but it's on the cusp of that."

The band's "bonehead" live shows have always been their focus. Their early career found them playing out two to three times a week, often at art gallery Holgas. "We played the shit out of that place," Krissberg says. It was there that trumpet player Parker Morden connected with the band.

"He lived there," Krissberg says. "So he heard us a lot."

One night at the Modified, he unexpectedly showed up onstage and played along with the band's set."

With the core of the band comprising Krissberg on guitar and vocals, Lamb on drums, and bassist Stephen Chevalier (who played a borrowed left-handed bass upside down for many of the band's early shows), the trio is often joined by Morden, keyboardist Jason Mollenbrock, and guitarist Christian Reeb. "Christian plays the solos, mostly," Krissberg clarifies, "And Jason co-wrote a song that will be on the upcoming album. It sounds like Supertramp — you'll be able to tell which song it is."

"Christian's first show was the first time he'd ever played with us," Lamb states. "Andy told him, just solo like 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' over this whole song, and he did. That's when I knew he was awesome."

The band's ragged stage show has earned them support slots on some big-name shows, recently opening for the much-hyped Japandroids and Titus Andronicus. The band plan on spending June touring the West Coast, where they have 12 dates lined up.

August should see the release of their debut full-length "exclusively on vinyl," another area where the band are analog purists. "I don't really see the point in them [CDs] with [computers] and vinyl. Vinyl is just so much cooler. You can listen to a record from 40 years ago; you don't listen to a CD from [even] 20 years ago."

Perhaps afraid of sounding too stuck in an era that was over before he was born, Krissberg says that the album will come with a download card. And he's been listening to newer music, too. Well, sort of.

"The only band I've really got into is The Walkmen. The Walkmen are just tops. And The Black Keys, but then again, they're just doing the blues. I think The Soft Pack are pretty good, and all the stuff on In the Red records." In short, bands that don't necessarily sound like "new" bands. Bands with a firm grasp on rock history.

"[Hooves has] been called 'dad rock' before," he grins, sheepishly. "Which is kind of embarrassing, but that's what I listen to — I really like Bruce Springsteen, The Band, and Harry Nilsson. Sure, it's stuff that your parents love, but it's just honest music." - Phoenix New Times (Village Voice Media)

Ok So before we get started… Go here and put on “Fetch Little Doggie”.

Its alt country, its raw 70’s garage Rock ‘N Roll and its definitely indie. These guys have found a way to turn alcohol & life into raw green energy (see live show). What’s even better? they live on a farm together. When they came into Radio Phoenix for an interview, they showed up with bottles of alcohol and a water mellon filled with vodka.

If fun had a sound track this would be it. The keys, the trumpet, the unison singing, the vibrato in the sing-it-like-you-mean it vocals push you way past go. The drums crave to be danced to. The songs are catchy with lots of fun surprises like trumpets, changing up the guitar or keyboard half way through the song. Its drinking music for those who like to yell and dance at the same time. (I bet you are bobbing your head or tapping your finger right now… and thinking about belting out the words next time you hear the song).

So let’s see. Man Man and Tapes ‘N Tapes are line dancing at a college hoe down chaperoned by The Rolling Stones; when all of a sudden Neutral Milk Hotel jumps in with the fruits (PBR) of a much anticipated beer run. - radiophoenix.org