Like many musicians in 2020, Jordan Slone expected to spend some of this year on the road. His band Hounds, which is based in St. Louis, normally performs for fans near and far. Suffice to say, that travel didn’t happen amid the COVID-19 crisis, and for Slone the pandemic prompted an unusual kind of pause — and some self-reflection.
“I’m very much a worker-bee-type person,” the frontman explained to St. Louis on the Air. “I hate not working.”
But Slone said he and the other Hounds have actually stayed plenty busy even without touring. Since landing a label deal with BMG and a $50,000 prize in a band competition in May 2019, they’ve found continued momentum and been hard at work on new music.
That includes “Shake Me Up,” a single they dropped Nov. 13 — the same day the band announced its forthcoming sophomore record, titled “Cattle In The Sky.”
Described by Hounds bassist/vocalist Jack McCoy as “a juxtaposition of things,” the album is set for release in February 2021. It follows the band’s 2017 self-titled LP.
A lot has changed for the group in those three years — not to mention the decade since the band first took off as Clockwork, when the original members were young teenagers in St. Charles. The band now offers up a more aggressive style of rock than its earlier sound.
On Friday’s St. Louis on the Air, Slone described the new album as featuring “energetic rock ‘n’ roll that’s honest.”
“We are a very diverse group when it comes to how we decide to express ourselves with music, I think,” he said, “but we with this record did lean a lot into some of the more organic rock ‘n’ roll-styled stuff that we love so much.”
McCoy added that the Hounds “have no interest in being anything other than ourselves.” That comes through in their latest music, he said.
“I think it’s very representative of who we are, in general and now,” he explained. “I mean, it changes all the time, but the music changes right along with it.”
The connections between the four members of Hounds date back long before high school, Slone noted. Keyboardist Logan Slone is his brother, and he became fast friends with the other Logan in the band, drummer Logan Mohler, in 2nd grade.
“Their 2nd-grade teacher noticed that neither of them had friends in class,” Jordan Slone recalls. “They were the new kid[s], and she just sat them next to each other, like, ‘You got the same name — that’s something in common. Roll with it.’ And from then on they were just really close.”
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is hosted by Sarah Fenske and produced by Alex Heuer, Emily Woodbury, Evie Hemphill and Lara Hamdan. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
