Headless Household (this time around):

Joe Woodard; guitar, default vocalist
Tom Lackner; drums, engineer/Tompound studio keeper
David Binney; alto saxes, mastering
Chris Symer, electric bass

Had things gone as planned, the Santa Barbara calif-based band Headless Household would have plunged into its next album project in 2020—its 10th album in a 30-plus year discography. In the pandemical interim, the hopelessly, haplessly eclectic band created its first dance single, “Holed & Hunkered,” being released on multiple digital platforms (and possibly a future album).
The “lean/not-so-mean mix” is being released on June 15, in time for California’s declaration of relative independence from pandemic restrictions; a larger “party mix,” with other Household singers and players joining in the funk fracas.
Consider it a funky anthem, basted in a hope for hope, regarding life in a time of COVID.
The project was made possible through the expanding, everyday miracle of remote tracking, the means through which musicians globally have found an active root of expression in these isolating times. The Household’s home base of Santa Barbara became the hub, with remote contributions from songwriter/guitarist/vocalist-by-default Joe Woodard, drummer/studio maestro Tom Lackner, and alto saxist extraordinaire David Binney (charter member Dick Dunlap wasn't able to join on this party).
Tracking tentacles then extended South to Los Angeles (Binney) and to Seattle (original Household bassist Chris Symer).
On the song, shades of Sly, Miles, EWF, Steely Dan and x factors are tossed into the musical mesh, around a simple, loopy lyric, echoing the flood of days in pandemic life. All roads and riffs lead to a common desire to keep music making and hope alive, to keep singing the collective song in a world gone viral for the moment.

www.householdink.headlesshousehold
 
lyrics
“Holed & Hunkered” (Joe Woodard)

“Chorus:”
Holed up, and hunkered down
How long we gotta’ lug this thing around?
Like worried souls in the lost and found
Holed up, and hunkered down
Holed up, and hunkered down,
How long we gotta’ fear this thing in town,
Like wary souls in the underground
Holed up and hunkered, holed up and hunkered, holed up and hunkered… down

Bridge:
Blind-sided by the blind in charge
Side-spiraled in a world gone viral
A world gone viral


copyright 2021, by Joe Woodard
credits
releases June 15, 2021

Holed & Hunkered

Headless Household, "The Numbers Game" (Joe Woodard)

Recorded live at Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara, Calif., December 4, 1995

Featuring Nate Birkey, vocal and trumpet

Headless Household:
Dick Dunlap, piano
Tom Lackner, drums
Chris Symer, bass
Joe Woodard, guitar, songsmithery

And Arlene Dunlap, sampled enumerating sample

Recorded and mixed by Bruce Winter

Due to pandemical and other disruptive factors, the new music outfit Headless Household (b. 1983) has gone semi-dormant in the past few years. And yet the intrepid archivist team at Household Ink Records have rolled up sleeves and gotten busy during this “downtime,” digging up gems--and gems in the roughage--from the in-house vaults, going back a few decades. Plans are now underway to release archival findings of interest and/or titillation, both in terms of singles and longer form collections of would-be treasures.
Unveiling number one: the previously-unreleased song “The Numbers Game,” recorded live at Santa Barbara's Center Stage Theater on December 4, 1995, and featuring the mighty, and mighty lyrical Nate Birkey on vocal and trumpet. Also on the track are Arlene Dunlap (in absentee sampled form, as real-time numerologist), and the usual Headless crew--pianist Dick Dunlap, bassist Chris Symer, drummer Tom lackner and guitarist/songwriter Joe Woodard.
Birkey, who has played many times on Household shows and recordings and has released 10 of his own albums on the Household Ink label, would be relocating to New York City soon after this concert.
As the song says, “that's life, that's math/that's how the numbers fall.”

Headless Household albumography: Headless Household (1987; vinyl), Inside/Outside USA (1993), ITEMS (1995), Free Associations (1999), mockhausen (2000), post-Polka (2003), Blur Joan (2005), and Basemento (2010), Balladismo (2015).

The Numbers Game (Headless Household, with Nate Birkey)

Welcome to the cleansing, hopefully dance-inducing sound of “Holed & Hunkered Re(al)mix.”
The long story, shortened... The veteran new music beast Headless Household, Santa Barbara's strangest and almost longest-running band, was busy making plans for its 10th album in 36-ish years. The concept would have mated the twin themes of blues and the movies, altered to suit the band’s genre-twisting ways.
It was 2020. The world had other plans.
It was time to dance, in our various bunkers. enter the Headless pandemic dance tune “Holed & Hunkered,” created following the new musical plan of having each player/singer fly in tracks from their separate dance bunkers, in Seattle, Los Angeles, Ventura, Portland, and the San Roque area of Santa Barbara. (Charter Householder Dick Dunlap was unable to participate). 
In the process of putting together the pieces, our fearless studio wizard/drummer Tom Lackner ran into serious health issues beyond the virus of the moment and could only muster a basic mix--drums and bass (Chris Symer), guitar (Joe Woodard), alto sax (the eminent and fiery David Binney) and Woodard's humble scratch vocal. That initial “lean, mean” was released in 2021.
Cut to now, and a fuller new mix represents the generous ensemble contributions of three actual singers—Shelly Rudolph, Liz Barnitz and Nicole Lvoff—and long-suffering Household member Tom Buckner on tenor sax.
Voila, the long-awaited “Holed & Hunkered Re(al)mix 1.” Consider it a not-so-fond send-off and kiss off to the COVID demon. Please listen up and dance at will.

Holed & Hunkered Re(al)mix

Before and After (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

Before And After

Lucidity (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

Lucidity

How the Mighty Folly (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

How The Mighty Folly

Humor (is the Language of the Desparate) (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

Humor (is The Language Of The Desperate)

My Beautiful Boy (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

My Beautiful Boy

Searching (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

Searching

I Love You, Too (Joe Woodard), from Headless Household, Balladismo, 2015
www.householdink.com/headless.htm

Headless Household

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