Hoots & Hellmouth
find musical bliss

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

When you hear Hoots and Hellmouth, images of rolling blue Appalachia abound. Plucked six-strings tangle with shimmering mandolins, and stomping feet provide percussion that thunders behind a harmony of warm, easygoing vocals.
Blues, bluegrass and gospel meld to create a rollicking, hand-clapping, shout-out-loud sound that can almost fill the air with a thick hickory smoke.
It might surprise you, then, to learn that the roots-rich songs captured on their self-titled debut (due out on April 24) were recorded in a Fishtown studio by a group of musicians who call Philly their hometown.
Sean Hoots and Andrew "Hellmouth" Gray met about two years ago at West Chester University, and both were involved in separate bands at the time. After striking up a friendship, Hoots and Gray discovered that they were harboring their own personal sounds that didn’t mesh all that well with the more rock-oriented ensembles they were engaged with at the time.
The newfound friends began working out a fresh set of songs, presenting them at open mikes in their free time. It was during one such occasion that a stage facilitator called out for Hoots and "Hellmouth," a tenacious nickname that Gray’s mother had bestowed on him as a child — and the band was born.
Since that time, Hoots and Hellmouth have done more than a hundred gigs around the country, playing at places like the Philadelphia Folk Festival and, most recently, the gargantuan South By Southwest Festival in Texas, a show that topped off a tour of the Deep South.
In the two years they’ve played together, the duo, accompanied by a revolving set of area musicians, have garnered a kind of tent-revival following invigorated by their down-home folk-rock sound.
That growing fan base earned them a spot on the upcoming East Coast tour with Dr. Dog, a fantastic psychedelic-rock outfit, and arguably one of the best-received bands to come out of Philly in years.
Before embarking on that journey, Hoots and Hellmouth, now joined by mandolin player Robert Berliner, will be throwing a CD-release party/concert at Johnny Brenda’s tonight (April 19). Squeezing onto the stage with them will be a bevy of artists that helped them record their album, including the harmonious voices of the local Sisters Three and an organ.
Hoots, speaking while on the road last week, said the group will play their full album first with the guest musicians, and then finish the night by playing new songs with their current three-piece arrangement.
When asked about inspiration behind the bluegrass-tinged songs that he and Hellmouth pen, Hoots says that the sound has little to do with his Carolina roots.
"I moved up to the West Chester area around the time I was entering high school, and I think that, more than anything, I soaked up the kind of stuff that people around here were playing," Hoots said.
Later, playing in one of his previous bands, Hoots had a chance to return to the Southeast, where he was re-introduced to the sounds of the rural South.
"In bluegrass, and in any type of music, it is the harmonies . . . they just kill me," he explained.
Indeed, the burly red-bearded musician cites a broad swath of musicians he draws inspiration from, including everything from "screamcore" bands to Nina Simone and Tom Waits. What matters to him most, and what he strives for in his own music, is raw emotion.
"What hits me is when it comes out of someone like they really mean it . . . when it seems to be scraping right out of the bottom of their being," Hoots said.
That quality — whether he is drifting along like Jerry Garcia on American Beauty or belting out gospel like bluesman Josh White — is abundant in Hoots’ vocals and songwriting. ••
Brian Rademaekers can be reached at 215-354-3039 or brademaekers@phillynews.com

Check it out . . .
Who: Hoots and Hellmouth, joined by Philly songwriter Devin Greenwood.
What: Bluesgrass-tinged folk rock infused with blues, gospel and heaps of passion.
Where: Johnny Brenda’s, at Frankford and Girard avenues in Fishtown.
When: Tonight at 9. Tickets are $10 online and $12 at the door.