Hear Dave Hause Cover Brandi Carlile’s ‘Hold Out Your Hand’
One of the many standouts of Brandi Carlile’s 2018 album By the Way, I Forgive You is the soaring “Hold Out Your Hand.” A rousing exhortation to find strength and soldier on during dark times, the track has become a dramatic encore to Carlile’s live shows.
Punk troubadour Dave Hause has also made it a frequent cover in his own cathartic sets. Now the Philadelphia native and former member of the band the Loved Ones has recorded a studio version for the new EP September Haze. Hause matches Carlile’s defiant delivery, ratcheting up the tension until the climactic chorus.
“I must have listened to that album every single day on the bus earlier this year,” Hause says of By the Way, I Forgive You. “And [‘Hold Out Your Hand’] is the anthem on her record. In a time when everything is so fractured, divided and crazy, [the song is] a somewhat angry take on what’s going on, but sung with forgiveness and empathy: ‘I’m a dying man,’ so let’s hold out your hand and do this together.”
Hause, whose last full-length LP was 2017’s Bury Me in Philly, unveiled September Haze last week, a collection of songs inspired by the singer’s newfound sobriety. Eschewing the traditional release template, Hause released the EP digitally and independently.
“I write a lot of songs, and I’ve been trying to imagine more of a regular output. The problem is I’m still working within a rock & roll paradigm where you make a record every couple years and tour on it. I’ve been trying to find a way to do it more like hip-hop or pop artists do it. Everyone seems to be moving in that direction,” says Hause, who already has the theme of his next full album in mind. “Our political system has steamrolled through our lives. That’s the next examination: how do we live under these times?”
September Haze is available now.