Band Of Horses: 'Freedom Brings Something Spectacular Out Of Us'

The last time Band Of Horses were in Australia, it didn’t end well.

It was 2016, during the South Carolina outfit’s sixth Australian tour, which was supposed to end with a grand climax. Instead, recounts BOH leader Ben Bridwell, “it all ended poorly” with “a terrible meltdown of a performance” at the Sydney Opera House.

“I’ve had nightmares about that ever since,” the 46-year-old songwriter admits.

“We were overworked, over-travelled, probably over-partied, and I had voice issues that I could not get past. I had just overdone it. My voice blew out; I couldn’t sing. I was so crushed by it because this was the culmination of that tour. And it just broke me, man. It broke me.

“We had this little private event the next night for our album, to promote it. And I had to handwrite these apologies to all these contest-winners that’d won the opportunity to go to this event. I hand-wrote in the dark, sad hotel room that day, like a hundred and five letters to say that I was sorry. I don't know if I'll ever get over that moment.”

Reflection, reckoning, and redemption are recurring topics for Bridwell at this point. Having moved to a house in a forest in rural South Carolina—after years of living in Charleston, where he relocated from Seattle in the early days of Band Of Horses—he admits that he hasn’t “talked to anyone like this in a long time,” the interview serving as a kind of bloodletting.

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It’s been two years since the release of the sixth Band Of Horses album, 2022’s Things Are Great. That album’s title made ironic reference to the state of Bridwell’s life during its making. “The title was definitely a bit tongue-in-cheek because my personal life was crumbling, for sure,” he offers. “I was mostly just complaining about, or being sarcastic about, how bad my shit was, honestly. It was a lyric that was pulled from one of the songs, and at the time [I wrote the song Coalinga], we didn't know COVID was coming.”

The pandemic arrived at a time of great flux in Bridwell’s life. “I was going through a divorce, dealing with custody issues stuff, and trying to navigate the waters of [parenting],” he recounts. “When you're going through something like a breakup… and then everything in the world is so confusing everywhere, and it’s hard to feel like you’re keeping your children safe, that was just maddening, man.”

With his main financial and life outlet, touring, on hold, Bridwell admits they were “terrible” and “really scary” times. But they proved to be a spur; in the years since, he says he’s been “working on myself a lot.”

“I went through all the stuff with the divorce,” Bridwell offers. “I had to come to grips with substance abuse issues. I had to grow up. Wanting to become a better father, wanting to be more present for the people I worked with. And with life in general, just wanting to have better harmony with my place in the world.

“There's a lot of tall tasks in there,” he continues. “But I think I've put a lot of good work into just becoming a more comfortable person on earth. I know that I'm different now.

“The chemistry in my body has changed. It's been a night and day change. It wasn't just like an overnight kind of thing; it’s been chipping away. But I just felt like I would probably not survive much longer if I [kept] living the way I was.”

Where, with Things Are Great, Bridwell wrote his way through a life in tumult, having come out the other side, songwriting has waned. Though he has a new studio built in the former barn of his new home and has had a break in the touring cycle to devote to new material, Bridwell admits that he’s been putting music-making off.

“I’m writing out of excuses for writing an album,” he confesses. “I've been a bit afraid to write. Some of that is, I think, because I'm not used to writing sober. I'm not used to dealing with a lot of those emotions without, in a way, pushing a lot of it down… I'm kind of scared of what I'll find. Because so much upheaval in my life has happened since the last record. I'm afraid to dig in.”

Is that a feeling he’s felt before? “Absolutely,” Bridwell says. “Absolutely. But only the good records.”

BOH have released a lot of good records. Their first two LPs, 2006’s Everything All The Time and Cease To Begin, were issued on the legendary indie label Sub Pop and received huge acclaim. Their next three albums —2010’s Infinite Arms, 2012’s Mirage Rock and 2016’s Why Are You OK— all cracked the Top 20 of the US Albums chart (and, locally, the top 25 of the ARIA chart).

Having that history is reassuring in part —“having a catalogue that’s deep, you are afforded some luxury”— but it also means that Bridwell has a lot to live up to. “I do think there's enough Band Of Horses material [that] the world isn’t really begging for a seventh Band Of Horses album.”

“Maybe that kind of freedom actually brings something spectacular out of us,” he continues, “[but] I wrestle with that currently. We're six or seven albums in. And you'd like to think you got enough depth there that you can sustain at least keep the lights on with touring and streaming and things.

“So I would hope that that would free up some of that burden that is… wrestling with the past. I've got to live up to the catalogue that's come before me, but at some point, you got to say: ‘God, I just want to start a fucking noise band or just get back into making punk music again and just having fun it’. But at the same time, with the Horses thing, I don't want to smear the legacy that we that we have made for these 20 years.”

Band Of Horses were formed in Seattle in 2004. At the time, Bridwell was playing drums in local outfit Carissa’s Wierd (or, as he puts it, “I was the worst drummer in a slowcore band) and releasing music on a tiny run-from-home label named Brown Records. He started learning to play guitar and write songs, grateful, as always, to be even tangentially involved in music.

“I don't have anything else I can really contribute to society,” he offers. “I dropped out of school when I was 16. I don't really have a whole lot of experience besides working in kitchens and caring for the disabled… I wouldn't be able to have kids if it wasn't for this job because I'd just be flipping somebody's eggs or working in a dish pit. I can't believe the life I've been afforded with music.

“I was surprised when anyone cared back in 2005 when Sub Pop wanted to sign us. And since then, it's been just nothing but shattered expectations still to this day.”

Bridwell feels a sense of gratitude for all the old songs that helped Band Of Horses along their way, especially those that have remained live show staples. “I get closer to them with every passing year,” he says. “I find I'm still just as vulnerable with them, still feel that as I've been playing guitar.

“They're still challenging enough for me [to play that] I can't just rest in a set when those old songs come up. Because if anything, I got to put more into them to feel, to make sure that people who have those connections to those songs, they feel that we're not sleepwalking through them. I couldn't [do that] if I wanted to. Sometimes… [when] a lyric will pop out, I'm like: ‘I remember why I wrote that, damn!’ And you get a déjà vu moment when you're playing them. They still have some secrets to tell me, I guess.”

Of course, sometimes he can feel critical, wishing he’d gone deeper into his feelings and “come closer to expressing the emotions better” in his songs. “Some of [my lyrics seem] a bit like high school poetry with reflection,” he blushes.

It gives Bridwell a goal for when he finally takes the plunge and begins writing the next Band Of Horses album. “With the new stuff that I want to write, I would like to be as true to the idea and to the feelings as possible,” he offers.

But before then, there’s a Band Of Horses return to Australia, where they’ll be opening a run of shows for The Teskey Brothers, as well as headlining their own gig in Sydney. For Bridwell, the tour follows on from his recent years of soul-searching and sobriety – presenting him with the chance to make amends.

“I would like to atone for some sins. I would at least like to give those folks that might trust us to come see us again another chance to give them a great show,” Bridwell says.

“We’re so glad to get back [to Australia]. It’s been way too long. We were on such a steady pattern of visiting, and now it’s been years. We’ve missed you terribly. I hope that we can earn your trust back and come and kick some ass with you.”

Band Of Horses will play a one-off headline show in Sydney in January 2025 as well as open for The Teskey Brothers for their a day on the green dates. Check out the tour dates below.