Hooks and The Huckleberries: Pennies On The Rail reshapes hardened outlooks on life
A delightful and inspiring tale of the most formidable opponent of human existence, complete with their signature soundscapes and outlaw cosmic consciousness.
I didn’t have a dance partner when I tapped on “Pennies On The Rail” for the first time, so I danced by myself in the wide open space that was the spartan living room and my healed mental capacity to receive a new song by Hooks and The Huckleberries. Windows and heart wide open, sunlight on my face, noise-cancelling headphones, and the salted, coral-dusted sea air set the scene for my house slippas to glide across the cheap ass luxury vinyl plank flooring better than any of my well-worn shit-kickers in a beer-stained, west-Texas honky tonk. Whether it was Adam Hooks’ vocal cadence or my bizarre fascination with beautiful waltz songs, within eight seconds, I received the sonic confirmation my soul required to move the body.
The initial, soft-as-a-sledgehammer drum beat was the tell-tale signal I was indeed, gliding across the newly finished coating of boyish playfulness and abandoning wonderment, to the beautiful heart and soul of a signature waltz (maybe not technically accurate, but I can damn sure dance to it). Not all country bands do waltzes, and those who have in the past, left nothing to the story-telling imagination and the sound would become notoriously dated with the relentless passing of time. Hooks and The Huckleberries have entered the chat with an elite waltz that is not only relatable and rhythmically commanding, it will prove to be fortuitously relevant, twenty years from now as it kindles imagination within the forgotten kid in all of us. And unlike other notable waltzes ever composed and produced, The Huckleberries have released a song that is powerfully introspective and yet mysteriously levitating; open to any manner of interpretation or application it has on anyone’s troubled journey.
What is it with young boys and their fascination with putting copper pennies on train rails? Knowing from common sense what will happen, but living solely off curiosity to sustain their excitement of the one truth in their blossoming world on the road to manhood: the train will definitely flatten the damn thing.
But it will not break it.
The penny remains a penny. It’s just a little misshapen after the torrent of applied force, but the laws of physics are fixed. We can define those laws through rigorous and repeated testing, both in the laboratory and in the field of existence, battle-tested to the nth degree. Boys are born into this world and quickly adopt the law of absolutes, known to most psychologists as logic. Boys grow into men thinking the world operates in surety and become logical creatures along the way. They aren’t born into logic, they develop it as a subconscious guide and oddly become overwhelmingly rigid about it, as they conduct their own child-like experiments along the rails of life, which, to some men, looks a lot like banging heads on a brick wall. Repeatedly.
Boys become men when they get their hearts broken, not by an external entity, adolescent crush, or sordid love affair, but by an internal and devastating blow when they first discover the world operates in complex uncertainty. A subliminal foreshadowing of the flat penny experiment: not knowing what impression will be left on the face of the metal after the train smashed it into submission.
The hallmark of any human art piece done well, is simply its existence; it stands alone. Art is created and therefore now, exists on its own accord. The receiver of human art is ultimately free, and encouraged, not to translate or compare the art, but to receive and interpret the vulnerability of others to associate any damn bit of worldly sense to their own existential journey of suffering…or acceptance. The Huckleberries have created not only a brilliant waltz, but a song that can be received and interpreted by all the peoples; any human, regardless of gender, cultural association, creed, or ethnicity, can apply this song to their own struggles of existence. Simply replace my descriptor of “boy” and “man” with any descriptor or pronoun that relates or is preferred. Go ahead, try it!
Pennies On The Rail is a commanding and definitive human art piece that deals in the uncertainties of limiting, and often crushing, self-imposed identities.
Good songwriters write good songs. Great songwriters write songs with a convincing overlay of human emotion and do so often by not directly stating the literal human message. The listener is left to their own emotional convictions and cognitive capacity to dream. Pennies On The Rail is a commanding and definitive human art piece that deals in the uncertainties of limiting, and often crushing, self-imposed identities. The song further validates itself as one of the greatest when the author speaks of darkness and light, going into the darkness as often as necessary to discover truth of the emerging self; the suppressed versions of authenticity we tirelessly strive to rescue. Each journey into the shadows to do self work leaves a new impression on the soul.
We can tell ourselves we are defined by our mistakes, our shame and guilt, or our shortcomings, but as the characters in this song clearly display, not even death will define a person. Perhaps the most enlightening and mystical element of Pennies On The Rail is that a character appears from the afterlife to give us not the answer we selfishly seek or hope to find, but the answer we most needed to hear in that moment; a critical mile marker and indicator of spiritual growth. Each character of the song seemingly appears to be a tiered evolution of the author, but can easily be applied to anyone, as every human will undoubtedly endure some sort of crushing conflict, or mind-numbing and confusing misshaping of the heart. The ones who didn’t make it to live their full potential on this earth sadly journeyed with too much rigidity in their identity, but left us with a powerful message to not follow suit and that kindness trumps all. The unspoken message, and often most elusive for every man I know, urges men of all definitions to be kind to themselves lest they be damned a painful, permanent, blood-stained forehead of senseless suffering here on earth.
For this studio single, and from the album on which it radiates, Adam Hooks, Dustin Hoag, Joshua Lee, Ryan Martino, and special guest Parker Twomey, produced by Matt Pence at The Echo Lab in Denton, TX, apply the same magical metric to Pennies On The Rail with their instrumentals in much the same way the narrator does in the song. The musical composition and production of Pennies convey the magic of not what is being said, but often in great music, what is not being obviously stated. The rhythm is strong, convincing, and commanding, yet not overly crowded or rushed with nonsensical elements to overpower or distract from the beat. The cadence and pace encourage the listener to look inward as they twirl around the corners of the dance floor, while having the affectionate sensation of not being forced to do so.
There’s a spirited and formidable bass line that keeps the vessel moving along the planetary beacons and a resolute drum punch calibrating the rhythm as it commands and propels movement. The human energy theory will be proven by those keen waltz aficionados, usually older and wiser, waiting patiently on the edges of the dance floor, cocked ears and deceptive fluidity, ready to one-two-glide as the piano appears, parting the storm clouds to assure all of our sins have been wurshed away in the river of sorrows while the organ confirms our place on the manifest bound for glory when all is said and done and we are called up yonder. The keys on this track provide the unparalleled levitating effect to make even the clumsiest of dancers, and dreamers, float on air-pillowed feet around the dance floors of child-like abandonment. The purist of existence is music.
Old-skool knuckleheads get their fair share of classic and proven honky tonk guitar tone, but not too much honky tonk that it renders the song incorrectly old-fashioned or dated. A cheeky, yet obligatory nod to the genre and continues the pioneering and experimental efforts that are both The Huckleberries music approach and their magnanimous foray into global self-healing.
And while we’re on the subject, live music adrenaline junkies can get trauma therapy, included with price of admission, with the guitar magic that is both Adam and Joshua playing together live. Formidable string benders the both of ‘em, Adam’s thundering and hallucinogenic acoustic guitar compliments the astral traveling and soundscape blankets of Joshua’s electric guitar (and his scientific madness on pedals). It’s not uncommon to watch them perform something magical, then look at each other, shrug and say “did you just do that?” and laugh it out before the next song. The illuminated crowd senses they are inside the youthful dreams of the punk rockers-turned-country musicians on stage in their very own cosmic theater production.
Dreamers, like the one currently writing this opinion piece, get a very light, yet uplifting engineered sound effects (swore I heard an aboriginal bull roarer in there) to initiate a whimsical and mystical frequency I hoped would not be lost by recording the song at or near sea-level in a geographical region prone to stifling humidity. Sound travels through the ether a bit different over in north Texas, where this single and album were recorded, and I am overjoyed the enchanted Huckleberries retained their celestial arrangements and high-desert soundscapes in a glorious blend of introspective lyricism, wrapped in a buttery sopapilla of dripping rhythm.
The most incendiary aspect of the song, and I even hesitate to mention it in this opinion piece because I don’t want to spoil it for the masses, but I’ve experienced this song live and it has the power to move people. I’ve been the erratic cosmonaut rounding the dance floor corners, trusty dance partner in hand-and-step, steady and sure to the beat and atomic energy of it all, and near the ending of the song, the earlier subtle vocal harmonies of the band explode into fiery passion, igniting both the stage and audience, sending everyone into the stratosphere of unconditional unity. We’re all singing at the tops of our lungs, right there with the band and then we look down and not a single boot is stuck in the muck. We’re all gliding on a magic carpet of celebration that is the stasis of human life: harmony among men.
Pennies On The Rail is a gala victory for Americana music and warrants a congratulatory nod from all of us who seek relatable [country-ish] music but have had enough of the booze-guzzling-bro-code narcissism, racism, sexism, single-minded heart break stories, and mainstream-pop engineering that nearly destroyed the genre. Adam Hooks and all The Huckleberries are working tirelessly around the nation to produce and perform music that deconstructs what society deems appropriate country, which is to say the genre is hell-bent on being stuck in the past, and are living testimony, real-life shark-riders, that country music can be innovative and modern; the message can uplift spirits and even heal trauma wounds. The song and its clever nod to Burque’s war zone implications can be applied to any living human, in any field of battle, who has either willfully, or perhaps unknowingly, held on to the rigidity of toxic conditioning that is their defeatist identity.
Each journey into the shadows to do self work leaves a new impression on the soul.
A boy grows up believing the world exists in absolutes and carries that weight well into the arena of adult life. After enough grief, the heart becomes malleable and shaped by its environment, but remains intact. Damn thing just keeps beating, huh? Heartache doesn’t come from others; it comes from the revelation, the copper imprint on a metaphorical penny of humanity, that life doesn’t abide in absolutes. We can be whoever we choose to be, regardless and in direct opposition to the mutable elements of our biological and metaphysical environments.
Hooks and The Huckleberries’ Pennies On the Rail is acceptance of the inexplicable. A roadmap to mitigating the conditioned rigidity we have on existence.
Stringer
Stringer’s note: For non-industry readers, The Huckleberries, working from a plane of consistent sound exploration and creative ascension, invited Matt Pence to produce and engineer this album in 2023, which took place at The Echo Lab in Denton, TX. The song credits listed below do not reflect the current and traveling iteration of the band. Rest assured, for anyone not familiar with the mystical savants of New Mexico, Jesse Mortensen (bass) and Ken Easton (keys and backup vocals) add more than their required minimum of 37 pieces of flair to The Huckleberries innovative and cardinal high-desert Americana and Country sound.
Pennies On The Rail recorded song credits:
Adam Hooks - vocals and acoustic guitar
Joshua Lee - lead guitar
Dustin Hoag - drums
Ryan Martino - bass, backup vocals
Parker Twomey - piano, organ, backup vocals Parker Twomey
Matt Pence - owner, producer, engineer at The Echo Lab in Denton, TX The Echo Lab
Hooks and The Huckleberries Hooks and The Huckleberries