Eric Hisaw
Babe’s, September 29
Babe’s tends to be a little dead on Wednesday nights. Nothing like holding down a barstool and nursing a club soda before switching to beer, being bored stiff, and listening to a gaggle of middle-agers whoop it up over a pool game and some Coors Lights. In time, local Eric Hisaw (HIGH-saw) showed up, lugging along a Telecaster and a Fender amp. Bill-splitter John Evans was a no-show, so it was up to the Hisaw crew to go the distance by themselves. Ably abetted by a drummer on a skeletal drum kit and a bassist thumping a stand-up doghouse bass, Hisaw plowed through some nitrous-injected covers of “Route 66,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Six Days on the Road,” a couple of Hank Williams chestnuts, and a few originals. His treatment of cover tunes and his own songs point towards a misspent youth taken up with equal parts of Steve Earle, Waylon Jennings, and the Rolling Stones; half honky-tonk lament and half blue-collar roots-rock raunch. Though not a flashy guitar player, Hisaw has a way of melding rhythm and lead guitar lines that keeps the bottom from dropping out of the band’s sound during solos (absent was their fiddle player). With a solid, if slightly stiff rhythm section, a fat Tele tone, and some punchy originals, the band manages to sound pretty beefy for a three-piece. The bass player, in particular, stayed dead-solid, not slapping and beating the strings, but unobtrusively locking in with the drummer (Hisaw has had a problem with Revolving Bass Player Syndrome). Hisaw’s originals — well-observed snapshots of love gone bad, the lure of the open road, and the realities of punching a time clock — were probably what you’d call “singer-songwriter” material, but with more of a roots-rock edge than a lot of the introspective navel-gazing stuff that moniker denotes. Hisaw has a strong voice, but would be well-complemented by a good harmony singer. Meanwhile, the pool balls kept clacking and the bartender kept straying from behind the bar; “paying dues” means toiling away onstage for an audience of 10 people. Well, they can’t all be gigs played to a packed house, and some shows will be played to four walls, a soundman, and a bartender, with $10 in the tip jar by night’s end. Hey, that sounds like a song…This article appears in October 8 • 1999.