David Sickmen and The Hackensaw Boys have been a lot of things to a lot of people over their two-decade run. But they’ve never forgotten where they’re from.
“When we go out in the world, I still say the band is from Charlottesville,” Sickmen says. “Charlottesville was a magical place in the mid-’90s and into the early 2000s. I can’t imagine the band could have formed in any other place.”
Sickmen and his updated lineup of roots rockers—Caleb Powers on fiddle and vocals, Chris Stevens on bass, Jonah Sickmen on percussion, and Park Chisholm on backing guitar and vocals—released their new self-titled album on June 24. It had been six years since an LP bore the Hackensaw name.
Upon their recent return from Europe, Sickmen and his stringmen announced a stateside tour for the new record, along with a slight personnel change. Playing bass for the shows, which include local dates at The Southern Café and Music Hall on August 11 and Devils Backbone Basecamp Brewpub on October 7, is Chicago import Aaron Smith.
“We still play some of the old songs, and we play new songs,” Sickmen says. “The band and the shows still have the same energy—high energy. It’s still a Hackensaw Boys show. It’s the same vibe it has always been.”
Indeed, change is no new riff for the Boys from central Virginia. The band boasts nearly two dozen past members. Some of those, like John R. Miller and Pokey LaFarge, have gone on to successful solo careers. Others have moved on to even bigger bands; founding member and multi-instrumentalist Tom Peloso joined Modest Mouse in 2003.
Sickmen, the only founding Hackensaw remaining, has dealt with his own ups and downs over the years. Six years in with the band, he left in 2005 for mental health reasons. He came back six years later, and has played and sung with the Hackensaw Boys continuously over the last decade. In the meantime, he’s been challenged with vocal polyps, an ongoing issue he’s had surgery to correct.
With a lack of consistent members, Sickmen has struggled with what the band is exactly. About four years ago, he was working on an EP, A Fireproof House of Sunshine, and he asked himself whether he was using The Hackensaw Boys name in good faith. The songs were taking on a more personal, songwriter’s touch, and he didn’t know if it was Hackensaw material.
Sickmen did some soul searching. “I thought to myself, ‘What am I going to do, man?’” Sickmen says. “I have done enough solo shows to know how hard it is to be the solo guy with the guitar. But I also thought, ‘Am I a poser if I continue to carry the name Hackensaw Boys?’”
Sickmen eventually plunged ahead, using the band name with no reservations. He’d been there since the beginning. He’d put 13 years of his life into The Hackensaw Boys. He’d put his family through all the touring and difficult times. Damn right he was going to use the name.
A Fireproof House of Sunshine became something of a turning point. Hackensaw records will always feature some foot-stomping fiddle-racers and raunchy, punked-up alt-country tracks complete with the infamous charismo, a percussion instrument a former band member invented by piecing together cans and scrap metal. But the band has matured along with Sickmen. The lyrics on the new record often find him struggling with the ravages of time specifically. ”No one wants to live in the past,” he sings on “Things We’re Doing.” Then, in “Cages We’re Grown In”: “The clock in your head will not let you go.” The pacing and melodies in songs like “My Turn” and “All I Really Want to Do’’ find a slow cadence that Sickmen reluctantly admits.
“I am 53 years old at this point. Hopefully I am maturing at least a little bit,” he says. “It is very much a songwriter’s album.”
A songwriter. It’s something Sickmen says he’s only recently gotten comfortable calling himself. He says he tries hard to stay humble, but he’s finally decided he’s earned the right to the title.
So, what does a songwriter do, even after more than 20 years in a band that has changed seemingly with the seasons?
“I have been trying to write songs for most of my adult life. I don’t seem to ever get tired of it,” Sickmen says. “I hate to sound pretentious, but I can’t help myself. It is what I do. And when I say I am a songwriter, it’s because I am writing songs. I’m not relying on my past.”