The Loved Ones:
Balancing Life and Band
By Dane Erbach

It’s 5 p.m. on a Friday, the end of the work week for many Americans, but Dave Hause is still hard at work. The Loved One’s frontman is winded, speaking quickly between his labored breaths, and sweating. Behind him, a saw whines. The constant clink of ceramic seems to punctuate everything he says.

“I own a construction company with a partner,” Hause explains. “It’s a small company where we do mostly the remodeling of homes; we’ll do new kitchens, new bathrooms, things like that.”

Today, Hause is tiling the floor of someone’s home. His career pays the bills and keeps him and his family afloat in this hurricane of an economy.

“Our family is in a typical working class situation,” he says. “My wife and I both work. She has a teenage daughter that we both support. I have a mortgage and own my house; I actually have an investment property too. We’re not swimming in money, but we can afford to go out and eat every now and again.”

If one were to causally ask Hause what he did for a living, though, he may have a hard time answering in one sentence. As guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for Philadelphia- punk band, The Loved Ones, he considers himself both a contractor and a musician; somehow, he can balance both.

“I’m totally overwhelmed 90 percent of the time,” Hause admits, laughing at himself, “but I have this ‘time is running out’ attitude and approach to life. I’m not going to be here that long; I want to meet as many people, have as many adventures, write as many songs, and play as many shows as possible.”

His band released Distractions on Fat Wreck Chords in early February. The six-song EP consists of three previously unreleased originals recorded for the band’s previous albums Build and Burn and Keep Your Heart.

The title track that opens the EP is musically and emotionally explosive. As guitars grunt and agile drums gallop through the song, Hause sings about a woman who realizes that she is in an abusive relationship and is compelled to take back control of her life. Hause’s voice, confident and crisp, serves as both the narrator of this story and the conscience of the song’s empowered protagonist.

“’Distractions’ is a song that has a little bit of a silver lining to it,” Hause says. “It shows that, despite your situation, you can be the change you want to see in the world and you can get yourself into better circumstances if you can apply some self-awareness and fight through the pain.”

Original songs like “Distractions” only make up the first half of The Loved Ones’ latest; the last three tracks are songs by musicians that Hause and his band mates admire. These tracks include Billy Bragg’s “Lovers Town Revisited”, “Coma Girl” by Joe Strummer (from his years with the Mescaleros), and Hause’s own stripped-down, singer-with-whiskey-and-Telecaster interpretation of Bruce Springsteen’s “Johnny 99.”

Like “Distractions,” Springsteen’s song deals with digging out of a tough situation, though this song takes a different turn than Hause’s. Its main character Ralph is renamed “Johnny 99” when he is sentenced to 99 years in prison after he loses his job at the auto plant, gets drunk, and shoots an innocent man.

“Unfortunately,” Hause elaborates, “even though it was written in the ‘80s, this Springsteen song is still really relevant. You’re dealing with a guy who’s going through a decision-making process based on economic strife. We’re every bit as likely to find an individual like that in 2009.”

As both a contractor and a musician, the weakened economy has wormed its way into Hause’s head more and more.

“It’s easier for me to write about this economic downturn because it is palpable,” he says. “I come across people who are struggling every day.”

“We were taught as a generation that, if you work hard, everything is going to be okay,” Hause continues. “I’m seeing more and more people my age that are talented in trades or in music and really have to stretch their paychecks in order to get their basic needs met. We’ve set up a large group of people to fail.”

Hause is thankful, though, that he has only experienced the sour economy second-hand. “I’m not in a crappy situation, per se,” he says. “My contracting company is doing okay, as long as we’re working. And the band has been able to tour all over the world and put out records for fans that appreciate what we do. There’s a certain level of success that both things have seen, but it’s only because we’ve worked hard.”

Perhaps another reason why Hause has found success is because he has been able to balance his business and his band effectively.

This balance isn’t always easy to maintain. Whenever Hause is on the road, his hands wrapped around a steering wheel by day and a guitar’s neck by night, he has to make sure that his partner and employees have their hands wrapped around hammers at home.

“I’m on my computer and on the phone a lot while I’m on tour so that everything is humming at home while I’m away,” Hause says. “We keep job sites going all year round despite the fact that I’m on tour.”

And then, suddenly, he turns to his tiling partner and, interrupting the interview, says, “It’s five and three-quarters. One, two, three, four—there’s five or six of them, so why don’t you cut me five and then cut me five and eleven-sixteenths, two of them.”

Here, as he simultaneously sputters commands to his friend and thinks aloud to himself, one can’t help but wonder if his obligations to his band (including tours and interviews with the press) get in the way of his obligations as a contractor.

“I definitely would be a better business owner and a better partner if I was home all the time,” he admits. But one also must wonder if his construction career hinders his musical ambitions.

Regardless of which interferes with which, though, it’s clear that Hause needs music and his career as a contractor to be happy.

For Hause, the key to a comfortable life is a reliable career. And, of course, he wants this comfortable life not only for himself, but also for his family.

“My wife wants to live in a decent house and doesn’t want to rent,” he says. “She wants to send Maura, her daughter, to a decent school. I’d be fine living out of a tent so long as I could play guitar and someone gave me a couple of bucks to eat. But I love my wife and I want her to be fulfilled.”

But even within this desire to live a “traditional” life, it’s clear that Hause could not live comfortably if he could not play music.

In fact, Hause seems to favor his musical half more.

“I make a lot more money as a contractor,” he clarifies, “but I certainly love playing music 100 times more. If we sold a ton of records the next time we went out and had enough people at the shows that I could not focus on doing construction, I would certainly sell my half of the business.”

Still, Hause seems to recognize that the overtime he works this afternoon is affording him time to tour with The Loved Ones later this month, that work is work, play is play, and one must always come before the other.

“We were all raised in environments where our dads went to work at jobs they didn’t necessary love to provide for their families and give us the opportunity to do something better,” Hause concludes. “To some degree, this band allows the four of us to fulfill that wish of our parents, who busted their asses so we could get a little more playtime in life.”

As Friday afternoon slips slowly into Friday night, Hause finishes up his work by collecting stray tiles and tools and vacuuming the debris that he and his crew created.

Tonight, he’s okay with working a little late and he sees rock ‘n’ roll as his reward for a hard day’s work. “Rock ‘n’ roll is what people want on a Friday or Saturday night when they’re not worried about work,” he laughs. “It makes people want to grab others by the hand, take them to a concert, maybe have too many whiskies, and have a dance.”