Tag: Dominick Leslie

Hawktail’s “Antilopen” Is Playful and Awe-Inspiring at the Same Time

Posted on by Editor

One of the most fearsome foursomes in modern instrumental bluegrass is at it again. A year on from the release of their sophomore record Formations, Hawktail spent their time off the road and in the lab over the last year, writing and arranging music that offers their characteristic finesse and virtuosity while never sacrificing melodic excellence. In the simple setting of a garage, the group performs “Antilopen,” which features a harsh, angular melody that gets traded around between bass and fiddle, while the guitar and mandolin provide rhythmic support and melodic responses.

As the song develops, all four musicians have a chance to really stretch out over the tune, passing the spotlight between them in a way that is playful and awe-inspiring at the same time. That’s no surprise when you consider the creativity of its members: Hawktail is composed of fiddler Brittany Haas, bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Jordan Tice, and mandolinist Dominick Leslie. And if you haven’t treated yourself to this Nashville-based band’s music yet, we implore you to check out this live rendition of Lena Jonsson’s “Antilopen,” which was released this spring. You won’t regret it.

Photo credit: Dylan Ladds

LISTEN: Bluegrass 2020, “Vanleer” (Feat. Scott Vestal, Patrick McAvinue, Cody Kilby, Dominick Leslie & Curtis Vestal)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Bluegrass 2020, featuring Scott Vestal, Patrick McAvinue, Cody Kilby, Dominick Leslie, and Curtis Vestal
Hometown: Greenbrier, Tennessee
Song: “Vanleer”
Album: Bluegrass 2020
Release Date: June 26, 2020
Label: Pinecastle Records

In Their Words: “I wrote this tune around 2004 and had totally forgotten about it until a few weeks before the Bluegrass 2020 session. The name is from the beautiful countryside of Vanleer, TN about an hour and a half west of Nashville where my wife, Alice, grew up. We were married there in the middle of Bear Creek on a gigantic rock. There are caves, creeks, plains, hills, and valleys. The tune has 5 parts with the various instruments weaving in and out of the melodies, much like the landscape of Vanleer.” — Scott Vestal, Bluegrass 2020

The String – Hawktail

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Four virtuoso string band musicians well known for their work with other bands are taking instrumental acoustic music to new heights in the band Hawktail.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS

They are fiddler Brittany Haas, bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Jordan Tice and mandolinist Dominick Leslie. And they recently landed on the Grand Ole Opry on release weekend of their second album Formations. Also, the delightful and clever throwback country duo of Noel McKay and Brennan Leigh. They’ve moved from Austin to Nashville and put out a masterful album of timeless songwriting.

Sam Reider, “Trio Sonata”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

All disbelief suspended, composer and accordionist Sam Reider’s work is essentially string band music. Yes, he’s an accordionist (which shouldn’t really be remarkable, because… Sally Ann Forrester), and yes, Eddie Barbash plays saxophone on the most recent album, The Human Hands EP, but we’ve suspended disbelief here for a reason. Whether the rest of the band were rounded out by Dominick Leslie, Duncan Wickel, Alex Hargreaves, Dave Speranza, and Roy Williams or not, these tunes would feel fiddle-y. They’re folky and down-to-earth and approachable and danceable and they cheekily, defiantly traipse across the borders of bluegrass. 

The truly remarkable thing about this music is not this feat in the face of (gasp) an accordion and a saxophone!? It’s that these folky-feeling tunes are… composed. These melodies and ideas are directly tied to a musical history and tradition often regarded as devoid of any idea rootsy or vernacular. “Trio Sonata,” a two-part composition on the new The Human Hands video EP, draws from the Baroque trio sonata, a 400-year-old musical form that derived from popular dances of the day. The three parts of Reider’s “Trio Sonata” are I. Reel, II. Jig, and III. Breakdown, amounting to an unlikely, four-century-old parallel to modern fiddle contest song selections. 

In this way, there’s a satisfying sense of symmetry to Reider’s idiosyncratic approach to fiddle-oriented instrumental music. It defies any so-called logic we might try to use to justify certain genre designations, it mocks the idea that we ought try to delineate between “classical” versus “folky” approaches to writing and creating music, and perhaps above all else, the music centers dance. Movement is certainly a unifier, and in this case, it unifies all of these musical eccentricities — from squeezebox to Bill Monroe to Baroque compositions to sax — in a perfectly digestible package.

WATCH: Hawktail’s Wintery Ride, “The Tobogganist”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bluegrass instrumental music is being reimagined by one of the buzziest bands in Nashville. Hawktail is an assemblage of four exquisite instrumentalists with a collective prowess for composition like no other. Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Jordan Tice, and Dominick Leslie just released their highly anticipated sophomore album, Formations on Padiddle Records. Co-produced by Chris Eldridge, the record is a gem whose songs transport the listener to another place, one filled with familiar sounds built in unique structures. The Current caught onto the dream that is Hawktail, bringing in the group to capture videos of their new music. Here’s Hawktail performing “The Tobogganist” from their new album Formations.

Photo credit: Dylan Ladds

Hawktail, “Padiddle”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Impossible combinations. Hawktail makes them seamlessly, time and again, with their effortless-while-labyrinthine brand of instrumental string band music. Their brand new album, Formations, is their first conceived and executed wholly as a four-piece. Mandolinist Dominick Leslie joined the lineup of Paul Kowert on bass, Brittany Haas on fiddle, and Jordan Tice on guitar after Hawktail developed most of Unless, their debut, as a trio. Confidence and ease permeate the new record, along with a palpable sense of intense listening and a feeling of space, openness, and synchronization. With virtuosos such as these it’s hard to imagine that they could possibly grow closer, become tighter, more enmeshed — but it would seem after little more than a year these four certainly have.

 Tice introduces “Padiddle,” Formations’ penultimate track, combining a bouncy, folk-rock inflected melodic hook with a smoldering, bluegrass-born conviction. An all too rare pairing in string band music, these modern, impetuous musical ideas don’t always emulsify with age-old, dyed-in-the-wool techniques. With each of the six originals on the record (and, of course, the Väsen cover, too) Hawktail are, as always, daringly inventive. But on Formations they’re distinctly proud to be catchy as well, flirting playfully with pop while still constantly reinforcing the deep roots of their collective pedigrees in fiddle music, old-time, bluegrass, and plain ol’ pickin’. An overarching impossible combination coloring the entire collection of tunes must be this: That something so timeless is also remarkably contemporary.

Hawktail, ‘El Camino Pt. 2’

Posted on by Editor

Not long ago, the bluegrass-meets-old-time-plus-chamber-music supertrio that consisted of fiddler Brittany Haas, bassist Paul Kowert, and guitarist Jordan Tice stopped simply billing themselves by their last names, added mandolinist Dominick Leslie to the fold, and renamed their outfit Hawktail. Their debut album, Unless, solidifies their status as a concrete ensemble — a grown, autonomous entity, more than just a collection of friends and string band experts who happen to enjoy playing tunes together here and there, when tour schedules allowed and stars aligned. Fortunately, that solidification was not predicated upon the elimination of the spontaneity, whimsy, and kineticism that shone through their picking as they grew from a pick-up band to an established trio to this, their current, matured form.

On “El Camino Pt. 2,” you can hear the live audience responding to this kineticism, watching in palpable awe while these four young paragons of acoustic music dialogue with each other. As they ebb and flow, rise and fall, they demonstrate to every listener that that feeling among the crowd, the exciting premonition that everything could, at any point, careen off the rails, is purposeful and under precise control. After all, this is one reason why old-time and bluegrass are so appealing: When you are in the presence of true virtuosos, players whose musicality transcend their instruments, quite literally anything can happen. The fact that Hawktail never forsake their exquisite taste, their sometimes quirky, funky, or nerdy personalities, their supremely traditional influences, or their penchant for everybody-hold-onto-your-hats fun while maintaining their deliberate, cohesive voice as an ensemble makes it even more adventuresome to follow wherever they may lead.