For the past thirteen years, Drew Holcomb and his three-piece band, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, have cultivated a holistic fan base with their uplifting Americana music and familial life force—Holcomb’s wife, Ellie, is both a frequent guest vocalist of the quartet and inspiration to its frontman’s music.
Fittingly, “Family” was the first single released off Dragons on August 16, but it was a significant sonic shift from the band’s previous six LPs. Holcomb linked with producer Cason Cooley (American Authors, Ingrid Michaelson) to bedeck his new songs with synthesizers, sampled strings, and, on one occasion, a drum machine. These new, stylized elements give Dragons a cosmic sound, setting it apart from the singer’s all-acoustic discography.
Heather Hauser
Age: 37
Putting Down Roots: After attending the University of Tennessee, where he met Ellie Bannister, Holcomb and Ellie married in 2006 and moved to East Nashville, where they still reside. At the time, the songwriter had been pursuing music for two years, but it wasn’t until Ellie helped him form Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors with guitarist/pianist Nathan Dugger, drummer Jonathan Womble, and bassist Rich Brinsfield that his sound truly began to take shape.
“Ellie and I put a lot of our family into our music,” Holcomb says. “In order for it to mean something to me, it’s got to be an actual reflection of my real life.”
Holcomb and Ellie have two kids: Emmylou (7) and Hampton (4).
Switching It Up:
“For me, the last few records were about identifying myself and my band as this organic musical entity that could make a record the old way,” Holcomb says. “Where you could record it until you got it right. We did that, I think pretty well…I just think it was time to find a new inspiration.”
The songwriter began by looking beyond the age-old directives of the Americana genre. Rather than remaining in its typical sonic boundaries, he allowed room for experimentation, such as the sampled strings in “End of the World” and exotic percussion in the Lori McKenna-assisted “You Want What You Can’t Have.” Holcomb also, for the first time, co-wrote his songs.
Honing In: Holcomb was struck with severe meningitis just before his 2017 LP Souvenir was released, putting him in the hospital for eight days and in a period of personal and creative convalescence for even longer. During that time, he began to doubt his artist lifestyle for the first time.
“I thought, ‘man, I’m not sure I want to keep doing this,” he says. “With multiple kids and touring being such a grind, it was just so hard.”
Rather than calling it quits, he got healthy and took an ulterior, more focused approach to songwriting.
“Usually, with a record, I would write all the songs in three months, and then not write again for two years,” he says. “For this record, I wrote two to three days a week for eighteen months.”
He co-wrote with his songwriter friends, such as Sean McConnell, Natalie Hemby, and McKenna.
Family Man: Hampton Holcomb’s favorite song off the album is its title track. Emmylou’s is “End of the World.” An underlying theme of the entire album, particularly these two songs, is making the most out of a bad situation. For a man who lets his “family inform his music, more than the other way around,” writing elevating music comes naturally, thanks to the inspiration Holcomb finds in his experiences with his wife and kids.
“The theme of the album is, ‘go slay all the dragons that stand in your way,’” Holcomb says. “When everything feels like it’s crashing down all around you, you have the opportunity to rise up and build community.”
Community and family have always been leitmotifs in Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors’ music, but certainly with Dragons, they are being portrayed in a new, endlessly creative, light.