Hadnot Creek - I'm Gone (2023)

What started as a one off recording session in May 2021 between a record store regular at Sidetracks Music in Charlottesville, VA and a touring guitarist who worked part-time at the shop, quickly evolved into a Monday night ritual. Each week Hadnot Creek’s Robert Sawrey and Kendall Street Company guitarist, Ben Laderberg threw musical ideas at each other in the former’s backyard studio. Robert supplied lyrics, vocals and skeletal song structure and Ben would shape these structures recording the guitar, bass, mandolin and lap steel tracks. Zach Samel added drums and percussion as well as mixing the tracks. Other guests included guitarist Scott Martin, harmonica player Dave Forcheilli , pianist Price Gillock, background vocalist Beth Russell and drummer Dillon Napier (Margo Price). Their loose collaborative approach changed folk songs into rave up rockers and transformed rock songs into midnight lullabies. By the following May, they had recorded an album’s worth of songs from these Monday night sessions which became I’m Gone. They are currently recording a follow-up.

Their sound, an ever changing amalgam of foreboding Americana, fractured pop and Pixies-styled squawk was inspired by songwriters as diverse as John Prine, Lucinda Williams, Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkhous and Nick Cave and the rock fervor of bands like Wilco, Guided By Voices and The Mountain Goats.