When Houndmouth plays the Anthem this weekend, the crowd will probably shout along to the hook of “Tiger Blood,” the liveliest song on the Americana quartet’s new album, “Lordy.” The part is simple enough: All the fans need to do is holler “Bucky!”
“I’d had that line for a long time,” says singer-guitarist Matt Myers. “I was playing roulette in a casino in Indiana. And this guy at the table, I guess he was from Lexington, was trying to make enough money to get back there. The dealer was named Bucky, and this guy was shouting, ‘Take me back to Lex, Bucky!’ That stuck with me forever.”
Myers, 38, says that when he was writing “Tiger Blood,” a friend told him the song needed a call-and-response chorus. “And I was like, ‘Perfect. I got the line.’”
Released last month, “Lordy” is Houndmouth’s fifth album and its first in five years. The band has toured in the interim, but for a time Myers wasn’t writing new material.
“My personal life got kind of extreme there for a sec,” he says.
Then Myers got married and had to learn to compose songs in the daylight. “I’ve always been a night person,” he says. “And also being in bands, you can drink at night and hang out. Everybody’s showing each other songs and stuff. The ‘Lordy’ material was more on my own. Just walking around the kitchen and seeing what comes out. I think I got in the groove eventually.”
Myers is the only band member from Houndmouth’s original lineup, formed in 2011 in New Albany, Indiana, just north of Louisville. But keyboardist Caleb Hickman and bassist Zac Anderson are full members of the group. (Drummer Noah Denney is a recent addition.)
“It’s just fun to build a unit,” Myers says. “No matter what the unit looks like. It can be anybody who’s willing to put time in. And serve the song.”
Hickman plays on “Lordy,” but, Myers says, “at the end it was pretty much of a solo record.” Producer Brad Cook played bass on some songs, and Cook’s friend MJ Lenderman visited for a day and contributed what Myers calls “really effortless, slinky, fun guitar. … It kind of tied all the songs together.”
Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam also dropped in and ended up collaborating on the album’s closing song, “Holy Moses.” Beam “was helping me figure out what I was trying to say, and how to say it,” says Myers.
“Lordy” has a stark sound, although Myers is accompanied by multiple instruments, including synthesizer and pedal steel guitar. “When it came time to record, it was like, ‘Let’s strip everything back,’” he says.
But Myers doesn’t think the new tunes will prove too fragile when Houndmouth plays the Anthem, one of the biggest venues the band has headlined.
“We’re used to playing them live, and juiced up,” he says. “I’m pretty surprised how seamlessly all these new songs fit into the set.”
Friday at 8 p.m. at the Anthem, 901 Wharf St. SW. theanthemdc.com. $47-$70.
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