Hire Sister Hazel For Your Event

For more than 20 years, these five friends, Sister Hazel, have built the kind of musical communication that comes only with time, talent and commitment. From bars and clubs back home in Gainesville, Florida, to theaters, arenas, college campuses and open-air festivals, they’ve seen audiences light up the night like seas of stars.

His bandmates agreed — and thus their new album harks back to the roots of their story through its title, Lighter In The Dark. Recorded in Nashville’s Tin Ear Studio and produced by their longtime engineer and Nashville studio fixture Chip Matthews, the album affirms the band’s longstanding ties to Music City, which date back to 2005 and include collaborations with all-star songwriters Lee Brice, Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey, sessions with production heavyweights Garth Fundis and Scott Parker, guest appearances by Pat Buchanan, Tom Bukovac, Steve Hinson, and other local session aces.

They draw from the talents of guest artists too. You can’t miss Darius Rucker’s voice on “Karaoke Song.” Sister Hazel has been playing the song live for a while, ever since Rucker, Copeland, and Nashville songwriter Barry Dean put it together. And on the stark heartbreak ballad “Almost Broken,” fast-rising artist Jillian Jacqueline adds a haunting complement to Copeland’s lead vocal.

Most members of the band also contributed a solo composition to Lighter In The Dark. “Sister Hazel has a reputation for writing fun and sometimes uplifting songs,” says lead singer/guitarist Ken Block. “Usually it’s a little easier for me to write when I’m a little more introspective. But one day, while I was just messing around on my guitar, a line kind of fell out: ‘Kiss Me Without Whiskey.’ So I built a story around it, where someone might be a little more affectionate when they’ve had a couple of cocktails or they’ve got money in their pocket. When I took it to the band, we just had fun with it and at the end went off into this rockin’ jam. It’s so much fun to play live.”

Ryan Newell came up with “Thoroughbred Heart.” “We usually have an acoustic moment on our albums and I thought this could fill that space,” says Sister Hazel’s lead guitarist. “As far as lyrical content, it’s about the struggles of being in a relationship and opening yourself up, though maybe not as much as you should.”

In terms of Sister Hazel history, the most significant solo write on Lighter In The Dark is probably “Ten Candle Days.” From their very first album, Beres has almost always written the closing track. But never has he sung lead on it, or on any other song in their catalog, until now, in this story of a miner’s life deep underground.

Another first for Lighter In The Dark is Chip Matthews’ debut as the band’s producer after a long run as engineer on several of their recent albums. “We trusted Chip to lead this project,” Block explains. “He’s got a great ear and a great sensibility for songs and textures. That doesn’t mean we didn’t add our input, but at the end of the day we agreed that he should captain this ship.”

“He really helped us shape our arrangements and guitar parts,” adds drummer Mark Trojanowski. “On songs like ‘Karaoke,’ ‘Prettiest Girl,’ ‘Take It With Me’ and ‘Fall Off The Map,’ he reeled us in so we didn’t just rehash them the way we’d been playing them live. That was great because it kept us on our toes and made everything work better in the studio.”

But that’s not all that makes Lighter In The Dark a milestone in Sister Hazel’s history. Through decades of exhaustive touring as well as developing their Lyrics For Life Charity, the Rock Boat cruise, Hazelnut Hang and other annual fan gatherings, they’ve drawn from, processed and reflected back their synthesis of American music. As Trojanowski notes, “I come from a jazz background. Ryan comes from the blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Allman Brothers, Ken and Drew have a lot of Indigo Girls and James Taylor in their hearts. And we’re all huge Eagles fans.”