PORT ANGELES — Mark Fredson, the 6-foot-7 lead singer of the Lonely H, is furiously cleaning rooms at the Red Lion Hotel this summer, while his bandmates are baking, weeding and cooking, all with Nashville on their minds.
This Friday, the Port Angeles-born and -bred band will perform two farewell shows, the last in Port Angeles before the members move to Music City in September.
Fredson’s work at the hotel on the Port Angeles waterfront is a long way from last year, when he and the rest of the band were touring the country, sparking critics’ praise.
“Memories of an unbelievable show put on by The Lonely H linger in my mind and make my heart soar,” wrote one in Creative Loafing, a weekly newspaper in Tampa Bay, Fla.
The twangy songs on “Concrete Class,” The Lonely H’s third album, “make for excellent summertime barstool listening,” wrote another in the Seattle Weekly.
Fredson and bandmates Ben Eyestone and Eric Whitman hit their 21st birthdays this year, while the fourth man, Johnny Whitman, is a relatively ancient 23 — but that doesn’t mean the Lonely H boys are putting in much barstool time. Eyestone’s on Clallam County’s noxious-weed-spraying crew, Johnny’s a cook at Lake Crescent Lodge, and “Eric has the hardest one,” Fredson said. “He’s a baker at Bell Street [Bakery] in Sequim. He has to get up at 4 a.m.,” and be at the oven by 5 a.m.
Fredson, for his part, “can make the hell out of a bed now,” in his job on the housekeeping team at the Red Lion.
Farewell shows
The band will play twice more in Port Angeles this Friday night, before returning to their day jobs for the rest of summer. They plan to head for Nashville right after Labor Day weekend in early September.
The Lonely H is moving to where making music “is a way of life,” Fredson said.
“The place has the best music scene in the country, not just for country music,” he added, “but for indie music,” as in rock, alt rock, alt country rock – aka the hearty blend the Lonely H dishes up.
“We’ve been thinking about [moving] ever since last summer . . . we were down there for three weeks and immersed ourselves in the scene,” where people go out just about every night to hear a band, a singer-songwriter or both.
“People say, ‘Where we going tonight?’ That’s how everybody thinks,” Fredson said.
People in and around Port Angeles can start thinking about Friday night, when the Lonely H will do show No. 1 at Coog’s Budget CDs, 111 W. Front St., at 7 p.m., and farewell show No. 2 at Bar N9ne, 229 W First St., starting at 10 p.m.
For each venue, the cover charge is $5.
Nashville good choice
Joe Reineke, the Lonely H’s longtime manager, calls the band’s sound rootsy Americana; he considers Nashville a good choice.
“There’s kind of a good buzz on them in that town right now,” he said.
And though the Lonely H has enjoyed plenty of love in the Pacific Northwest – at Neumo’s and the Experience Music Project in Seattle, where their performance led to a record deal with The Control Group label — “they might be at their zenith, as far as what they can do,” in the Seattle metro area.
“I just think Seattle isn’t the best for every band,” Reineke added.
The story of the Lonely H ought to make good fodder for Nashville’s music writers and observers.
Fredson met Eric Whitman when they were students at Franklin Elementary School in Port Angeles; they met Eyestone at the now-closed Roosevelt Middle School.
With Eric’s older brother Johnny in the mix, they entered a battle-of-the-bands contest while freshmen at Port Angeles High School.
That’s when they had to come up with a name for the application form.
Lonely H name
They chose the Lonely H after noticing that the “how” in the “what, where, who, when, why and how” of newspaper articles was the odd word out.
But that’s old news now that the band’s been together for seven years.
So far the Lonely H has been labeled “denim rock,” “blue collar rock,” and “Allman Brothers-style roadhouse blues.”
The Tucson Weekly didn’t like what it called the band’s watered down Eagles sound, but then turned around and praised the way “the band kicks out the jams in a charmingly unsophisticated manner,” with “chooglin’ snarl and ramshackle approach to Americana.”
Fredson offers a laid-back explanation: “In our songwriting, we never had a set idea,” about genre. “We just have our own style . . . our music is going in all sorts of different directions.”
These days the Lonely H sound is “a little bit groovy . . . dance-y,” as “we lock in to some grooves.”
Priority No. 1 in Nashville is to secure a home, Fredson said, and then find a studio where a new album can take shape.
There’s a lot of day-job work between now and Nashville, though. Money must be made and, Fredson said, “we’re putting it all away,” for the next chapter.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.