Hamilton Leithauser

Hamilton Leithauser released his third studio album The Loves of Your Life in April 2020.

I wrote these songs about individual people. They are all real people.  I know some of them, and some are strangers I’ve come across in the last few years.  All of the stories are based on some kind of truth, some more heavily than others.  I wrote about a stranger I met on the Cross-Sound Ferry from Orient Point NY, to New London, CT (from the way he was sitting, I figured there was no way this was his first trip across the water that day, and I didn’t get the sense it would be his last…I guess he was just there for the ride); I wrote about a friend in Isabella (name changed) who’s parents pay her Manhattan rent, and that’s precisely why she won’t grow up; in Here They Come I wrote about a friend who used to hide from his roommates…and all his other problems, by buying one ticket to a movie at the Union Square theater, then sneaking into show after show…each time the lights came on, it was time to either try for another movie, or finally face the music and leave.  I could relate.  Stars & Rats is about a rock n roll singer (and friend) who never could even come close to hitting the notes, but always hit me hard.  The Stars of Tomorrow is about a Polish woman who introduced herself as she sat down next to me on a bench by the ocean.  She anxiously zipped through her life’s story—emigrating from Poland to marry a very wealthy man. In heavily-accented English, said she had just come from a terrible fight, and was leaving him that night.  She was very hazy on any and all details; and kept laughing and then nearly crying, and her pupils were the size of pin holes.  Her hair was crudely dyed pink and blue so that it had run all over her scalp and neck.  Finally she stood up, handed me a large jar of pickled beats, hugged and kissed both of my wide-eyed daughters, and drove off in her shiny new red Chevy Silverado truck (supposedly to Baltimore).  She called it her “Ford”.

I wrote and recorded these songs in a studio I built for myself in New York.  It’s a tight New York kind of space, and I’m jammed in with all sorts of instruments and equipment.  I did try a professional studio, but found the process and product very sterile and I scrapped all of it.  I’ve found that the liveliest moments come when I am not on the clock. I played every instrument I was capable of playing, and I got the incredible Jon Batiste for the heavy lifting on the piano, Stuart Bogie for the saxophone, NY jazz musician Mike Irwin for trumpet, and NYC country ace Jonathan Gregg for the pedal steel. My wife and daughters sing on The Garbage Men and The Old King, and my daughters’ preschool teacher, Lacrisha Brown, sings harmonies on at least half the tracks.  5 of the tracks’ music started with recordings written and made by my good friend Paul Maroon when he lived in Montreal and Baltimore.  Paul is a strong creative force and I am very thankful to work with him.  I produced and mixed the entire thing in my studio, The Struggle Hut.  Thanks for listening.

Hamilton Leithauser