Bourbon House: ‘We try to make each song its own star, no song is very similar to the next’

Wisconsin blues-rock husband and wife duo Bourbon House have released ‘Freight Train’, an invigorating rollercoaster of a song that gives us a good idea what to expect from their fifth album, which will likely be released this autumn.

Comprising Lacey Crowe (vocals) and Jason Clark (guitar), the pair have been releasing music together since 2017. Their name is a reference to the whisky of the same name and a desire to have ‘a big, smoky-sounding name’, according to Clark. They have been described as making ‘the kind of music that doesn’t know whether to flirt with you or kick you in the teeth and we mean that in a good way’, which is entirely accurate. Bearing the smoky heat and buzz of their namesake, their trademark groove is raw but fierce, while the guitars pull forward with plenty of bluesey reverb.

‘Freight Train’ kicks off with Crowe’s sultry “We’re going down, down, down”, before the drums and harmonica send it hurtling along much like a runaway train. Crowe’s incredibly distinctive vocals – she can seamlessly belt it out like a rocker or modulate it to blues – give the track real depth and fiery spirit: ‘This is a weird one, it started with the lyrics and no music, then he wrote a riff to that,’ she said. ‘We recorded it and then threw it away (laughs).’ Clark interjects: ‘We thought it wasn’t good enough, we changed it and made it more upbeat.’ The incredible harmonica playing comes courtesy of “Big” Al Dorn. ‘He played on two tracks on our last album, ’20 to Life’ and ‘Hotel Bar Blues’, he’s amazing,’ she said enthusiastically. ”Freight Train’ is about impending doom (laughs), it’s that kind of song, we all get that sometimes.’ The ‘impending doom’ is left deliberately opaque and could, therefore, be a reference to any kind of looming disaster, according to Crowe.

As the track goes: “Don’t you hear that freight train, baby? Don’t you see that storm cloud? I’ve seen it coming for miles and miles. It’s gonna take us, take us down.”

‘I have a very musically-inclined family but I was a painfully shy kid’

Listening to the power in Crowe’s voice and the confidence she exudes when she sings, it’s incredible that she didn’t always feel this way about singing: ‘I have a very musically-inclined family but I was a painfully shy kid,’ she said. ‘My dad plays guitar and sings, my sister sings, I have several cousins and aunts and uncles who play guitar and sing. Music was and is always around but I didn’t sing in front of a crowd until I was about 13. I evolved by listening to more singers and growing with them. People like Etta James, I sang a lot of her. Patsy Cline, I’ve been binge listening to her recently. A lot of CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival), Nazareth and Chris Cornell.’ I ask her if they have covered any Chris Cornell songs because her voice would be a great fit: ‘We have, we’ve done ‘Rusty Cage’ and ‘Black Hole Sun’.’ Clark’s musical tastes are similar, he also cites CCR, along with Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. ‘I’d love to work with Paul Rogers because as far as male vocals go, he’s the best in my opinion. It would be cool to do a blues-rock song with him,’ Clark said.

Next up will be their single ‘Born No Good’, which Crowe describes as ‘a southern rock/blues rock style ballad’: ‘It’s very vocal-focused, so I guess you can call it a power ballad,’ she said. ‘It’s a sad song about feeling lost and unworthy, which I think everyone feels from time to time, so it’s a relatable belter of a song.’

Other tracks such as ‘High Road Gypsy’ on last year’s The Fourth Album reveal another side to Crowe’s voice, it’s full of soul, with her voice mixing it up throughout the track, it sounds as if it is incredibly hard to sing, yet the song itself has a timeless quality and when I tell her this, she’s delighted: ‘We were like “Let’s write a song that Janis Joplin would sing”, I’m so happy you see that,’ she said. ‘We recorded an acoustic version of it, it’s on YouTube. We didn’t have a lot of shows at the time, I hadn’t been singing much, so I sang it over and over for three days before going into it.’ Clark describes it as ‘a late-60’s hippy song’: ‘It’s a travelling song about going on a road trip in the summer,’ he said.

It’s a track that has an interesting and unusual provenance: ‘It was an easy one to write, sometimes it’s the atmosphere I’m in,’ Crowe said. ‘We intentionally went out of town and stayed in a supposedly haunted hotel, we took an acoustic guitar with us, we often do that (laughs). We’d heard stories of running children’s footsteps in the night – we sort of heard that. And stories about a strange creature in the hotel bar, which is where ‘Hotel Bar Blues’ came from, and an old lady. It’s fun to be scared sometimes!’

‘It’s an eb and flow kind of song, when it rocks, it really rocks!’

Of their upcoming fifth album, Clark says: ‘It’s not a concept album, we kinda took the same approach, there are a few rockers, ballads, and some that are different, some weird. There’s a space rock song we haven’t done before with a cello on it.’ The album, which is yet untitled, will comprise 10 tracks: ‘I have a couple of faves,’ Crowe said. ‘It’s hard, we try to make each song its own star, no song is very similar to the next. One of the ones in my Top 3 is one of the weirder ones (laughs), another one with the cello, but not the space rock song. It’s very Zeppelin, deep track Zeppelin, it’s an eb and flow kind of song, when it rocks, it really rocks! It’s called ‘Looks Like Rain’. Clark cites ‘Talking to Demons’ as being one of his favourites: ‘It’s kind of Zeppelin, mid-tempo, a bit Black Crowes, there’s a cool organ in there,’ he said.

If she could go for a drink with anyone, Crowe is quick to say Chris Cornell: ‘I’d ask him to marry me!’ Clark plumps for Paul McCartney: ‘You’d ask him to marry you!,’ Crowe quipped. If they could put together a dream line up for a night, Clark goes with Bad Company and Creedence Clearwater Revival: ‘They’re fantastic bands with a lot of energy.’ Crowe is mulling who to pick: ‘That’s sooooo hard! Maybe you could do a female-fronted something with Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company (an American rock band from San Francisco in the 60’s) – and Heart!’ I ask her who she’d have headlining: ‘It’s not us!’

They’re had some funny, albeit macabre moments along the way, according to Crowe: ‘The first one that comes to mind is that time we called the police because we were convinced we’d found a bag of human bones in a mini fridge,’ she said. ‘We filmed the ‘Too High to Care’ music video in a ghost town and there was a random mini fridge outside of an abandoned building we filmed in front of. Of course we had to look inside! I don’t know, the cops said they were chicken bones but we think that was a cover up because they were huge bones for a chicken! Is it wrong that we were a little disappointed it wasn’t human remains?!’

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