Song Premiere: Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, “Rowdy Heart, Broken Wing”
If ever there were a “Hardest Working Band” award, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors might well be nominated to take it home: in 2015, after more than a decade of making music together, this hard working, East Nashville based band released Medicine, an album that made several “best of the year” lists and an album that was, according to front man Drew Holcomb, their “arrival record.”
And now that they’ve “arrived,” Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors don’t plan on leaving anytime soon, as they prove with their brand new release, out March 24, Souvenir. Produced by Joe Pisapia and Ian Fitchuk, the same team that helped bring Medicine to life, Souvenir is, Holcomb says, “probably my favorite album I’ve ever made.”
And with a song like “Rowdy Heart, Broken Wing” it’s not hard to understand why he feels that way.
It’s a deceptively simple song, only about two and a half minutes long, with a single voice and a few nicely reverbed instruments (banjo, guitar, pedal steel) that gradually build up to a lush swell of sound.
There are no complicated harmonies here, no virtuosic guitar riffs. Instead, interspersed with short sentences about loss and desire, Holcomb’s rough and rumbly voice repeats a single plaintive phrase over and over again: “Got a rowdy heart and a broken wing.”
A catchy phrase, for sure. But think about it more closely: a rowdy heart and a broken wing. You want to do so much, to feel so much, to experience so much – that’s your nature. And yet…you can’t. You are unable to fulfill your own heart’s desires and there’s not a thing you can do about it.
It’s heartbreaker.
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Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, ‘Souvenir’ is out on March 24 on Magnolia Music and is available for pre-order at iTunes and Amazon.com
