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Midwest transplants Bad Bad Hats are proof that good people will do good shit

Feature and polaroids by Grace Eire. Black and white portraits by Jessica Gurewitz


While Bad Bad Hats were getting ready for an early soundcheck, I loitered around an empty Music Hall of Williamsburg waiting to snap some polaroids. I noticed a postcard taped onto the side of Kerry’s amp, and since I refuse to wear my glasses it just looked like a blonde blob. After asking Kerry and finding out it’s Stevie Nicks, she came over to the edge of the stage to sit and chat. She’s super friendly and bubbly, but not in a way that could ever get old. Later in the night, she proved it with genuinely funny stage banter during which she compared her body to a Combo, “small and filled with pizza.”

While sitting on the edge of the stage she tells me she’s named the SG I’d been admiring the whole time Dolly Parton. In a voice that seems to always be almost singing a melody, she half-explained/half-joked that if you turn it upside down it kinda looks like her hair. She mimed the unmistakable resemblance with her hands. I told her that the I was going to a screening of 9 to 5 the next day at 10:45 in the morning with a Dolly Parton cover band and brunch – it seemed just ridiculous enough to say yes to. I’d used to write off Dolly as just another country singer, but in relatively recent years I’d realized what a badass she was.

 

Having Dolly and Stevie watching over every Bad Bad Hats set is entirely appropriate. While the band’s lineup has changed over the years, Kerry has always been at the heart of it. She and her husband, Chris, are the only two who’ve been there playing one thing or another for the entire run.

Having dressed up in formalwear and driven around rural Connecticut to sing Christmas carols to rich people with Chris in our high school select choir, I’ve seen BBH grow in the background of my social media feeds since its start. He’s always been a multitalented musician, though it apparently took some coaxing to get him to sing, as his mother tells me at the merch booth after they’ve played. I don’t think most people knew he could sing or play drums or guitar before senior year. Having played both drums and bass at different points in the BBH timeline, it makes more sense for him to stand up front as a core member on lead guitar and vocals.

This isn’t the type of music I’d typically go out to see live. Not because I don’t recognize it’s good or that the band is talented. I’m just more likely to end up at Cobra Club to see one of my drummer’s 5-or-more-but-whos-counting-anymore other bands, semi-stalking Thick at Baby’s, or begrudgingly journeying to the hellhole that is Terminal 5 to see FIDLAR. I like to go to shows where the band is screaming and where I’ll likely lose at least one of my belongings and getting covered in other people’s sweat in a crowd where elbows are being thrown.

I sometimes get so caught up in my own scene that I forget there are other ways to enjoy different types of music in a live setting.

I got to the venue right as they were beginning to play because I was sleepily sipping on a strong beer on my couch for a little too long. The only place left to stand at the venue was behind the sound booth. The place was packed with people who knew the words to their songs.

No matter what kind of music it is, if a band can play a great live show, it’s worth my while. A band that can breathe a new life into their set right in front of you and fills a room with sound that makes you feel good and even different from how the recorded album does is the kind of band I love to watch live. Bad Bad Hats put on a super sincere show, and that’s probably because they’re all Midwest (transplants or not) sweethearts. They’ve got that energy to them. There’s also something to be said about music that can make a wider range of people tick. Something pretty fucking obvious – there’s a reason more people like it, and that’s because it’s well-written, carefully but honestly performed, and upbeat.

Taking portraits was easy. Con (drums) and Cooper (bass) were both happy to indulge a probably too-long photo session at the venue’s green room, and to take Jessica’s extensive but effective direction when they had a pizza dinner swiftly approaching. You can really get a feel for the type of band one is by the way they approach their portraits. Some are 90% show, some are goofy and aloof, some will have a staring contest with the camera to prove who’s toughest. These guys and gal didn’t overdo it but still turned on the star power when given the opportunity.

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