MANY LIVES,
ONE GUITAR.
Singer/songwriter, photographer, mountain man, jack-of-all-trades. For Rocky Mountain singer-songwriter RC Hall, music is in his bones.
A musical mongrel finds his way home.
“My first intro to music? My old man bellowing out Hank Snow tunes in the old Galaxie 500 on family road trips when I was a kid.”
Maybe he was born with it. Or maybe the self-described “musical mongrel” was destined to pick up a guitar and croon. “I grew up in backcountry Missouri listening to The Beatles, Skynyrd, Iron Maiden and Zeppelin, alongside ’80s and ’90s country. I may be a musical mongrel, but lately country and Americana styles have drawn me back in.”
RC has lived many lives. At 55, he’s been a wrangler, ski bum, mountain guide, National Geographic and Mountain Hardwear photographer, and a writer — work that regularly led him to the ends of the Earth: Antarctica, Patagonia, Mozambique. In 2003, he suffered what he calls “catastrophic burnout caused by homesickness, too much travel, too many freezing bivouacs and too little talent.” He put his camera away for the first time in years — and reacquainted himself with an old friend: the guitar.
“In 2010 I went down the theory and practice rabbit hole, and I popped out the other end with all of these songs to share. In the winter of 2011-12, I spent six months woodshedding by myself in a cabin in the Ozarks trying to become a competent chicken picker. With all that time to myself, songs just started popping out.”
Finding himself in Buena Vista, Colorado in 2012, he began playing out — for tips and drinks mostly — and those early gigs gave him the confidence to keep going. “I have been in some wild situations in my life, but I have never been so terrified as I was at that first gig at the VFW Hall in Buena Vista.”
After another winter in the Ozarks, Hall moved to Rico, Colorado in 2015 — a former Rocky Mountain mining town 9,000 feet above sea level, just outside Telluride — and started laying down demos at his home studio, The Dawghouse. In 2021 he sent his “crappy home-made demos” to Lloyd Maines. They were enough to get Lloyd’s attention, and a year and a half later came his first offering: Wood, Wire and Whiskey.
“I owe a huge debt to Lloyd. There is nothing in this world like finding the right man for the job, and Lloyd Maines was the right man. He’s a humble bad-ass. Thanks to him, I feel fulfilled as an artist, for the first time in my life.”
“For me, songwriting is a sort of call and response between my heart and the Universe. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m writing a song, so much as just writing a song down. In Hinduism they have a saying, ‘Nada brahma’ — the World is Sound. Sometimes I feel like that is a mistranslation, and it should be ‘the World is Music.’ It’s wild where you can end up, when you’re always wondering what’s just over the horizon.”
Wood, Wire and Whiskey doesn’t just wonder what’s over the horizon — it runs a reconnaissance mission beyond it and comes back with tales to tell. — Justin Criado & Larry Kay (2023)
From the road and the stage.
Listen to the album.
Wood, Wire and Whiskey — ten songs produced by Lloyd Maines. Sample it on the music page, or take the CD home.