ERIC HISAW

"Eric Hisaw's songwriting is uncorrupted and bulletproof. He's a check you can cash at the bank of cool." -Ray Wylie Hubbard **********
..Eric Hisaw was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico in the early 1970s and left before the ink dried on his high school diploma. In a professional sense he has never looked back, his down at the heels upbringing and desire to experience life outside of the small desert city provided ample impetus to leave. That not withstanding, the town supplies the majority of characters, stories and allegory for the songs from his four releases Thing About Trains (2000), Never Could Walk The Line (2002), Another Great Dream of You (2004) and most recently The Crosses (2006). Eric first landed in Louisiana, then Nashville, and ultimately in Austin where he resides today. Eric always knew that he wanted to be a musician, but found earning a living at his chosen avocation a matter easier said than done. Over the dozen or so years since arriving in Texas Hisaw has slowly assembled the pieces of the livelihood mosaic, and now finds himself an in-demand producer, session musician and sideman in addition to the 150 + solo and Eric Hisaw Band shows hell play this year. In addition to being a top-flight singer/songwriter he slings a mean Telecaster and performs regularly with the likes of Blue Diamond Shine, Ron Flynt , Penny Jo Pullus, Mark Ambrose, and Walter Traggert and has produced recordings by Chrissy Flatt, True Stories and Bonny Holmes. In even a brief conversation one is struck by the extraordinary passion and knowledge Hisaw has for/of music of all genres, be it country, blues, Cajun, folk, conjunto or rock. You get the idea that hes always on the hunt to further incorporate the nuance of these styles into his own work, having successfully done so without sounding kitschy. Austin has provided him with the idyllic location to absorb this wide variety of influences, as well as offering him the opportunity to meet, befriend and play with artists he has long admired. So 2006 finds Hisaw with a great new album The Crosses, widely hailed as his best yet.(And which,incidentally debuted at ..2 in the Freeform American Roots chart and ..25 on the Euro-Americana chart.) Often dogged by Steve Earle comparisons early in his solo career, these observations no longer seem apt. Its exciting to watch an artist continually improve, search for and find his lyrical and sonic voice, and ultimately arrive. Hisaws lyrics are imbued with a Nelson Algren-esque quality that empathizes with the victim, but gives the villain his due. His confident yet melancholy voice is cognizant that the more things change the more they stay the same, while his first-class fretwork elevates both the singer and the song.