Hawley Grail
..."I'd be a shit rock band. On all my records the influences I draw on are well before 1969. I still listen to Marty Robbins, one of the best singers that ever lived.
"I don't hear that very much in a lot of modern music that I hear. People seem to be scared to expose themselves to what they're feeling."
For a man who's quite relaxed and not bolshy or argumentative, Hawley has fixed ideas on what makes interesting music. "If I'd been in a pub band playing blues or whatever I'd be happy," he says. "When you earn your living out of music there's a honesty to it that I like. I refuse to compromise. When I write songs the first person I have to please is myself," he says.
The songs on Lady's Bridge pass the test. It's the most compact treatment of loss and lonliness since Frank Sinatra recorded In The Wee Small Hours in 1954 or Roy Orbison, the Sultan of Sorrow, performed surgery on heartache in the 1960s. Echoes of that bruised baritone haunt Lady's Bridge...
Whole review at the link.
