Exebelle finally releases its new album After All This Time.
It makes a statement to put out a double album these days,” says Phil Heesen III, lead guitarist and founding member of Exebelle, a melodic country-rock band winning raves, and nurturing a cult of fans in and around Richmond.
Exebelle (formerly Exebelle and the Rusted Cavalcade) has just released an ambitious, sprawling 2-CD set, After All This Time, which features a cascade of catchy refrains, sing-along choruses, stacked harmonies and ear-grabbing instrumental hooks.
The self-issued album, produced by Heesen with Travis Tucker and JL Hodges, took six years to complete, and contains songs from a team of Exebelle members.
This is some of the best Americana music to come down the pike in a long time. After All This Time is an embarrassment of riches, representing a dam-burst of creative energy from hungry songwriters out to impress.
“We had recorded nothing but EPs in the beginning,” says Heesen, a Berklee College of Music grad. “Doing a double album made a sort of logical sense to us. And we had a backlog of material too, considering the songwriters on board.”
“The hairs out of place were put there intentionally,” jokes guitarist and pedal steel player Kerry Hutcherson, one of the songwriters contributing to the rustic sound. The band itself weathered many changes during the new album’s creation, he says. “We went through three drummers, three bassists and a pianist … Phil and I are the only ones who have been in the band the entire time, the common thread.”
After All This Time is dedicated to the band’s namesake, Heesen’s beloved great grandmother Belle, whose abandoned house adorns the album cover. This Kodachrome nostalgia for the comforts of home and family perfectly fits the lived-in, fleshed-out tunes on the disc. “When we started the album, Belle was alive,” Heesen says. “I wasn’t married yet. Kerry had one kid instead of two. And I’m sober now, but I was drinking back then. The album title came to me after we did the photo shoot … it’s called After All This Time because when it takes six years to do something, you can use it to look back at everybody’s lives and see how things have changed.”
Exebelle began in 2007 when Heesen joined up with singer Chris Wright, formerly of the Dakota Ring. “The big influence was Ryan Adams and his band, Whiskeytown,” Heesen recalls. “So I kind of wanted my own Whiskeytown, with the alt-country thing … I think everybody who has been in this band came in because they had an interest in—and an appreciation for—Americana music.”
Hutcherson and original bassist Ryan Ownby (since replaced by Mikey Bryant) joined soon after Wright dropped out, and pianist Ben Willson became a member in 2010, just before the band recorded its fifth EP, called V, a ragged and rousing 5-song set that showcased a rugged sound, which merged Gram Parsons-style country with edgier indie rock (Willson, a standout songwriter, has since departed).
Exebelle also goes deeper lyrically than your average bar band, with one song inspired by author Tom Wolfe (“The Long Pour”) and others like Hutcherson’s startling “You Have It Good,” which was based on two conversations he had, one with a homeless man and one with a close buddy.
“I started thinking about how privileged my friend and I were to be able to sit in our armchairs discussing the world’s woes over drinks,” Hutcherson says, “and that led me to thinking about how the conversation would go if I was talking to that old man who I had seen on the sidewalk. Verses developed from there, and by the time I got to the chorus I knew what the old man would say to me, ‘You don’t know how good you have it.’”
So, after all this time, what’s next for Exebelle?
“The nice thing about having this done is that I can sit down now and start writing again,” says Heesen, who also performs in the indie pop rock band Long Arms. (Hutcherson hints at a future concept album based on J.R.R. Tolkien.) “I wasn’t writing for awhile because I felt like I would be adding to the load.
“The record has been like a homework assignment that’s been hanging over me for six years. But it never crossed my mind even once that we wouldn’t finish—it was always when and not if. And I’m so proud of how it sounds.”
This article originally appeared in our April 2018 issue.
