hardworker
electronic press kit
Bio
Hardworker is a rock band from Durham, North Carolina. The band took its present shape in 2015 when Sus Long and Mike Conner traded in their acoustic folk duo for something a bit louder with guitarist Danny Nowell.
Songwriter Sus Long grew up in a Bay Area home steeped in the American songbook, but found herself converted to rock during her formative years by a well-timed trip to see the Hives. Her songs start from a folk foundation and build their way to melodic fury — Patty Griffin meets the Pixies, or Alabama Shakes if they’d started in the Haight — while her lyrics retain the writer’s sensibility she sharpened in the fiction workshops where she and Danny first met.
On their 2017 release, Go Alone, Hardworker's sound comes together somewhere between Sus and Mike's songwriting, Danny’s love of overdrive, and former-member Alex Treyz's harmonic daredevilry. Go Alone was produced by Alex Bingham and engineered by Mitch Easter at the Fidelitorium in Kernersville, NC. At its most intimate moments, the album achieves the immediacy of Sus and Mike’s back-porch partnership, but at its biggest moments the record is nothing less than friends making the biggest ruckus they know how. Their Summer Months EP will be released in July 2018.
Press
"Hardworker delivers blistering rock that delivers equal parts Muscle Shoals and Laurel Canyon. Take the Wild Reeds and turn the aggression up a wee little bit and you'll arrive at Hardworker. This is a band that pulls absolutely no punches musically, lyrically, or emotionally." - Rachel Cholst - No Depression
“The album, engineered at the Fidelitorium in Kernersville by Mitch Easter and produced by Look Homeward's Alex Bingham, is an upbeat mix of folk, rock, and Americana, bolstered by an unrelenting feminist edge....The radical indie folk band has progressed immensely from its earlier work, filling out its songs and getting much, much louder.” - Kat Harding - INDYWeek
"Hardworker is a relatively new Durham five-piece that makes gentle, sometimes jangling folk-rock with occasional traces of gospel oomph. The undeniable core, though, is the sterling voice of Sus Long, whose brassy tone and vibrato sweep suggest Jolie Holland stepping forward in song, not back. On last year's The Awful Rowing, she was often spectacular." - Grayson Currin - IndyWeek
"These days, when stately pop meets bustling folk, it often resembles the canned effort of another Mumford wannabe. Kudos to Durham's Hardworker for spinning thoughtful, spacious arrangements around the rich warble of Sus Long, allowing the songwriter's evocative verses to blossom." - Jordan Lawrence - IndyWeek
"The Awful Rowing is joining a long tradition of meditating on the beyond through song, but not in a dusty way. In a way that invites both toe-tapping and contemplation, without irony, without hesitation, and without feeling alone." - Zoe Balaconis - Misadventures Magazine
Contact & Links
e. hardworker@hardworkerband.com
f. www.facebook.com/hardworkerband
t. @hardworkerband
i. @hardworkerband
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