Dave Hause | photo by Kyle London | courtesy of the artist
Dave Hause wants you to hold on to the things you love in “Fireflies”
Tonight, Philly son Dave Hause kicks off a sold-out two-night stand at South Philly rock club Boot and Saddle, but if you missed out on tickets, your next chance to see him is right around the corner. Hause plays the 2019 edition of the XPoNential Music Festival in July, his fifth appearance at the fest, and by then, his fourth solo album Kick will be released on Rise Records — so fans will have ample time to absorb the lyrics for maximum shouting-back-at-Dave potential.
Ahead of the album’s April 12th release, Hause shared one final teaser single from Kick with us today. Where “The Ditch” was a driving punk anthem, and “Saboteurs” is a simmering midtempo burner, the new “Fireflies” finds Hause in introspective balladeer mode, thinking about his life and his hometown. He’s a person who’s been constantly uprooted — whether it be on tour with punk bands like Kid Dynamite (as a roadie) or The Loved Ones (as a front man), or criss-crossing the country and globe as a solo artist. Over the past five years, he moved to Los Angeles, sobered up, got married, welcomed twins into the world with his wife Natasha, and just last month celebrated his 41st birthday.
All of that has moved the already-ruminative Hause into exceptionally inward-directed territory, and “Fireflies” — with its lyrics about faded photographs and sneaking into a golf course to down boxed wine — finds Hause returning to the point of his life, and all of ours, when there were fewer stressors in our day-to-day and time moved much, much slower. Hause tells us “It’s a look back at a simpler time, summers of my youth in Philly,” and with minimal arrangements and moving delivery, it’s both a celebration of time gone by and a call to hold on to the things you love.
Listen below, and get tickets and more information on his summer homecoming at the XPNFest website.