StoneHouse might be one of our favourite bands to catch live, but it’s been a minute since we were last able to confirm that. Like all of us, they’ve been hunkered down for the last year, and they’ve been using the time for a bit of reinvention. The New Glasgow four-piece has become a three-piece and they’ve scrapped their tour funds to build a studio. Now they’re exploring their new sound as “three guys locked in a basement in a small town” with their latest single, “Holy Water.”
For six or so years (depending on if can you count 2020 at all), StoneHouse has gone hard on the rock and roll with a side of funk and blues. The cliches about leaving behind a sweat-soaked stage are not to be underestimated here. We’re talking big energy and blistering guitar work. At least, usually…
“Holy Water” marks a solid shift for the band. It’s downright acoustic. It’s not campfire material, but it’s not far off either. It’s an earnest account of keeping accountable, told through the time-honoured tradition of fatherly maxims and the stuff friendships are made of.
“It’s all true storytelling stuff. It’s not a straight quote from my old man but it’s definitely in the line of how he would speak,” says StoneHouse frontman Mike Mcgrath. “If I would ask a question as a young boy about something, or why is something is this way, it would be something as simple as ‘because that’s who you are’, or ‘that’s what you do.’ It’s cool bringing me and my old man’s relationship into the music.”
Mcgrath explains that “Holy Water”—and the fact that you might beyond its restorative properties—is about recognizing our mistakes. Preferably, we spot them sooner than later and, if we might pull from the handbook of countless afterschool specials, turn those mistakes into lessons.
“The song is just one of those ‘look at yourself in the mirror’ things, ” says Mcgrath. “There’s no turning back time and you can’t change them but you can change now.”
While “Holy Water” might seem like a bit of a departure from StoneHouse’s usual brand of boisterous noise, the song actually provides a closer look at the band’s creative process. It’s also the product of the band’s evolution, and one we might not necessarily have heard during StoneHouse’s previous incarnation.
“It was one of those songs that I’d normally write with an acoustic and maybe never even take to the band if we were still a four-piece, but a three-piece just a different element,” I can take these kinds of acoustic songs to the band and the boys really brought it to life. They gave it this groove backbeat behind there that just made the verses have this real kind of swagger to them in its own weird way I found.”
“It’s cool that people are getting behind this song because we would just write rock and roll music just for the sake of making loud rock and roll music, and this song is kind of a different side of us.”
Mcgrath notes that “Holy Water” is the first song to come out of their new home studio, jumping the line ahead of a lot of other songs the band have tucked away to really showcase their new sound. It has the band both tapping their community—basically crowdsourcing from their immediate circle to pull together their studio—and, for the first time, looking outside that circle to work with Justin Meli on mixing and mastering.
“I feel like, for the first time, we actually captured a sound and emotion that’s a little bit deeper than the two-dimensional feel our recordings have had in the past. I think this is our first three-dimensional recording, if that makes any sense,” says Mcgrath. “We’re feeling this one more. We’re more excited to play it and perform it because it’s got this ‘from the heart’ kind of vibe.
“This whole song is just totally different, totally fresh, wipe the slate clean. Here is StoneHouse as it stands now: three guys locked in a basement in a small town.”