Brad Heller desperately chases the American Dream as it permanently vanishes over the horizon in his gritty and gripping new single Industrial Lies — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
The latest preview of the North Carolina troubadour’s upcoming sixth album From What You’ve Built, Industrial Lies is a rough-hewn Rust Belt anthem cut from the same cloth as classics by Steve Earle, Jay Farrar, Greg MacPherson and Bruce Cockburn’s rockier moments. Over a solid foundation of guitars that chug and chime along with a nimble backbeat the hits the sweet spot between folk-rock and roots-punk, the plain-spoken Heller chronicles the plight of a working-man everyman lost in a world that’s passed him by:
“Nothing’s ever coming back
Been years since the Midwest broke
Old union guys are either convicts or guards
I can still taste the smokestacks in my throat
Graffiti blankets wooded windows of Aliquippa
Literature of a generation of pain
In tombs that line the Ohio
The ghostly pounding of steel remains
The eyes of the highway climb my walls
In the darkness no phantom pain resides
I’m laying with the industrial lies.”
“During the pandemic, I was writing a lot about people who were unable to transition from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age,” Heller says. “That’s what Industrial Lies is about; this guy who travels the country, and rides around town because he has no idea how to make the transition — he’s worked his whole life in factories and labor jobs, and he has no idea how to navigate the Digital Age. Which I think can be a very difficult task, especially for Gen Xers and older generations who didn’t grow up with technology and were sort of forced into it.
“With Industrial Lies, I drew from my college years in Ohio,” he coninues. “It was during this time that I became fascinated by the history of the steel mills, and the regional industry. I would often drive endlessly among the abandoned factories and vacant storefronts that seemed to litter the Rust Belt. I’ve carried that interest of the labor movement throughout my songwriting career, and have always written through the lens of the proletariat.
“I knew right away when I wrote the song that I wanted a bare-bones, pseudo-punk vibe when recording the track. I was shooting for a Tom Petty feel where space was its own instrument and the groove was pulsating. I wanted to infuse pop, punk and rock to complement the social commentary, and I wanted a driving drum beat to accentuate the anger of the character.”
The followup to the road song Incinerating Miles, Industrial Lies is the second glimpse at From What You’ve Built, due Sept. 26. The album was recorded with Heller’s longtime collaborator, co-producer and engineer Patrick Ogelvie at Wilmington’s Flux Audio & Video. Having worked together on five of Heller’s six albums, over the years the pair have developed a close friendship, as well as a deep synergy in the studio.
“We’ve got a really symbiotic relationship,” Heller says. “Patrick has this great internalized music library. If I have an idea like, ‘Hey, why don’t we work in some Dick Dale surf guitar or some Mike Mills basslines and harmonies,’ he immediately gets what I’m saying. He’s got a brilliant musical mind, and it’s always great to bounce stuff off him.”
From What You’ve Built was made at a relaxed pace over several years, constructed track by track, with Heller laying down a core foundation of acoustic guitar, harmonica, percussion and vocals. Aiding in the album’s journey were drummer Ronn Pifer and keyboardist Phil Bevilacqua, as well as Paul Edelman (guitars, backing vocals), and another longtime collaborator, Ted Crenshaw (guitars, bass, lap steel guitar, backing vocals).
“Ted was the first guy I met on the music scene when I moved to Wilmington, and we’ve been playing together for 20 years,” Heller says. “Ted has a blues / jazz background, he’s a super skilled player, and like Patrick he’s got a huge music library inside his head. I love how tasteful his playing is. We both believe in a lot of space — in letting the groove take over.”
Thematically, From What You’ve Built deals with the sudden collapse of lives due to an unforeseen crisis. As with many of Heller’s records, there are deep threads of self-alienation, loss and reflection, though this one is also shot through with a healthy amount of anger over feelings of powerlessness and frustration.
“There’s a lot of social commentary in my songs, but I try not to get overly political,” Heller continues. “I’d rather tell stories and have the listener decide for themselves what I’m trying to say. Springsteen does this so well — he can be pretty political, but him and Neil Young, they’re just so empathetic. Even though Bruce has never worked a job in his life, he’s able to talk about working-class people because he has so much empathy. I think that’s what makes a great songwriter — the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes.”
Heller grew up in Tucson, Arizona. His first love wasn’t music but baseball — he was a natural who spent years honing his abilities. After college, he was signed as a free agent and played for five years, putting in stints as a catcher, first baseman and outfielder with the Texas Rangers, Montreal Expos and Chicago White Sox organizations before playing independent ball in New York, Reno, Moose Jaw and Brandon. “I decided to pick the two of the most difficult professions to pursue — sports and music,” Heller says, brandishing a self-deprecating yet swagger-filled underdog grin.
The latter passion entered Heller’s life in college when he became enamored with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and acquired his first guitar. “I learned by playing along to the title track,” he says. “It’s just three chords, but it’s such a great song. The whole record is just so beautifully stripped down. It really influenced my songwriting and aesthetic, though my own sound is a little more fleshed out with rock ’n’ roll than Nebraska.”
After baseball, Heller moved to Wilmington, N.C., and started playing open mics and cafes. He released his self-recorded debut, It’s Only Your Life Anyway, in 2002. Three years later, he worked with Ogelvie for the first time on the raw indie-folk tapestry The Conscience of Sins. The piano-and-organ-anchored Beyond This Life followed in 2009, blending social commentary with a pop sensibility, before Heller hit his stride with American Burden. In 2019, Heller delivered an intimate, minimalist affair with The Sentence.
Now, Heller is gearing up to release From What You’ve Built. While influenced by his decades on the Carolina coastal plain, with its lush greenery, rivers and oceans, there’s still an undeniable space to the record — a wide-open, big-sky vastness that can only be attributed to Heller’s Southwestern roots.
“Arizona, as a place, has been a tremendous influence on my music. I think all that open space out west contributes to this cinematic openness in my songs. I was really going for a cinematic feel with this record — these big crescendos, and then you break everything down. And then you bring it up to a crescendo again. This is the first time I’ve ever used so many fadeouts on a record. Taking a page from Springsteen, we’ve got all these grandiose outros that just keep going and going. They grab you to listen longer once the lyrics are done. Eventually things fade out, but when they do it’s still very much the apex of the song. Subliminally, you feel it, even if you don’t have it cranked up.”
Crank up Industrial Lies above, hear more from Brad Heller below, and visit him on his website, Instagram and Twitter.
