THE LOST WEEKEND BAND IS ABOUT TO SHOW YOU ONE HELL OF A TIME (JUNE 14, 2024)
Their Bluesy Hard Core Honky Tonk Is Here to Inspire You
Los Angeles, CA March 2024—What is The Lost Weekend Band and One Hell of a Time? It’s a guy named Hardcore Dave fronting a country band. It’s Paul Fig who has worked with Slipknot and Alice in Chains producing a country record. It’s a country rock n’ roll blues band with a frontman who likes to jump off things during shows—“The higher, the better” and writing “love songs, nothing but love songs—well, and one song about lifetime financial struggles”. But mostly it’s about really solid musicians getting together and creating both the 5-song EP and experience of, One Hell of a Time.
This is the tale of a New York City punk kid gone country. David Fisher aka “Hardcore Dave” was working at CBGBs and touring with punk band, Agnostic Front when when he heard the outlaw sounds of Merle Haggard. With a fever, he absorbed all as much as he could. HCD moved across the country to Los Angeles, where he began to DJ country music and began writing original music on an old acoustic guitar. Very soon The Lost Weekend Band was born.
The band collaborated with the aforementioned Paul Fig and in a single day recorded The First E.P. After touring Europe and the US, including an unexpected collaboration with Alec Empire of Atari Teenage Riot in Berlin, Nashville became a temporary home for Hardcore Dave, where he honed his craft in the thick of all things country music.
HCD returned to LA in 2010 to rebuild the band and recruited Parker Richey on guitar, Joey Ponchetti on drums, Eliot Lorango on bass (Corey Taylor, Dorothy), and Carl Byron on piano (Hot Club of Los Angeles, Sin City All Stars, Jim Lauderdale). A Place to Rest My Head, the band’s first full-length album, was recorded, engineered and produced by Paul Fig at Plyerz Studios (Wilco, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash) as well as Fig’s own Dave’s Room and was mastered by Michael Hately at Lotus Studios (REM, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Linda Rondstadt).
The Lost Weekend Band’s forthcoming EP, One Hell of a Time was produced, mixed and mastered by the same dream team as their previous release and speaks to the progress the band has made in terms of a more filled out, rich and dynamic sound. “The last record had some really sad and dark songs,” states HCD. The one is more lighthearted and positive. It has more of a glass-half-full feeling and it’s meant more for inspiration and comfort.”
This is a band that plays fast and loose. They are about showmanship and plays every show as if it’s Madison Square Garden. “We want the crowd to be involved and having fun,” explains HCD. “We aren’t there to just play the record. These are high energy shows.” Fig and the band manage to produce that dynamic energy and sound on One Hell of a Time.
The EP kicks off with the classic blues country of “Pay the Rent”, which deals with living paycheck to paycheck. “One hand it pay the rent | Don’t another hand it pays my debts” “And hopefully, somewhere in there you find the money to have a little fun,” adds HCD. “This actually began as a song to my Mom. I feel like my parents were always trying to keep their heads above water. The bridge is about staying in the game. You need to know that people love you and you live to fight another day.”
“Sunlight” the first single off of the album is a rollicking roadhouse, with wailing harmonicas. “I wrote this after a break up. I was soothing my broken heart like every other country singer—by drinking. After enough of these nights, I would wake up to the sun screaming through the window and think, ‘pull the shades, hide my throbbing head and aching heart.”’
“Sing with Me” is a broken-hearted love song touching on the concept of not valuing what you had in front of you, and “Madison County” is a love song about a kindred soul that understands what you’ve been through. Both are imbued with even greater poignancy, enriched by HCD’s Baritone vocals.
The EP ends with the introspective, “In the Morning”, which gracefully builds from a bittersweet ballad to a soaring mesmerizing climax. “This was written as a lullaby to an ex-girlfriend. I got home after a show and my lady was asleep. I really wanted to tell her how I had rallied the crowd over that night from a distracted audience to participants in the show, but I knew she had class in the morning. So I took out my guitar and wrote about it.”
I jumped and I cried/The guitar player wailed/The drummer he pounded/While the bass player nailed
Every song we had/in perfect time/But we came up short despite my every retort/But I’ll tell you all about it, In the morning
As an integral component of Los Angeles' country music renaissance, The Lost Weekend Band is about working hard and getting out into the scene and building a community of like-minded musicians. They are regulars and favorites of Hollywood’s The Desert 5 spot (owned by Nikki Lane’s boyfriend, Wade Crescent), and The Hotel Cafe where Dwight Yoakam once heard HCD sing. “He rode up on his Indian Motorcycle with a friend and saw me play a solo show and said, ‘Sounds like Waylon Jennings meets Leonard Cohen…keep it up.”’
“The record was written with a hopeful message,” HCD explains. “After Covid, I wanted people to feel like there was hope. There were brighter days ahead.” The Lost Weekend's music is a celebration of life's highs and lows, painted with guitars, harmonica, piano, drums, bass, and hues of punk and Hank, as only a custom cowboy hat wearing honky-tonker named Hardcore Dave can.
One Hell of a Time Releases on Friday, June 14th, 2024
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For more information: https://thelostweekendband.bandzoogle.com/home
Press Contact: Kim Grant | KG Music Press | kim@kgmusicpress.com | 626-755-9022