Darrin Hacquard has only co-written a song once. And “October Moon” is the result. “My friend Jay Jennings Vincent started riffing on a stunning fall picture of Hocking Hills, Ohio, where I’m from: ‘The hills are alive with autumnal demise, and I guess I’ll be seeing you soon.’”
Hacquard thought the line was fantastic. “We kept going back and forth, trading lines until we had a complete piece,” he says. “Fall being a time of reflection for me, I took the poem in the direction of lamenting lost love—a doomed montage of tumultuous romantic encounters.”
This is the casual way Hacquard operates for the most part. His 2015 debut, Signs And Wonders, began as a lark with friends, a ruggedly psychedelic, modestly cinematic take on bluegrass and rock funded by a $5,000 Kickstarter campaign. As fate would have it, several of its songs found their way onto the soundtrack for The Evening Hour, with Hacquard performing at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival premiere. He chose not to capitalize on that momentum, moving around for various construction and flooring jobs before finding his way to Lexington, Ky. There he found the musicians who’d help nurture his new LP, Weights And Measures—guys like Hayden Miles, drummer for acclaimed indie-twang outfit Wayne Graham.
“Darrin is one of my favorite songwriters working today,” says Miles, the animator behind the “October Moon” video. “His songs immediately bring images to mind, playing out to the rhythm of the music. Bringing those images to an animated video was a fun and interesting challenge.”
Hacquard describes “October Moon” as “somewhat fictional,” though it does reflect the life of its author. “The eerie chord progression and melody came to me, so I recorded the song solo acoustic in our basement studio in Lexington,” says Hacquard. “I left town for a week, and when I came back, my roommate and producer, Severn Edmondson, had turned it into a sprawling cinematic masterpiece equal parts spaghetti Western and haunted Chinese restaurant. The cherry on top is Hayden’s animated master work, bringing the story to life in a brilliant, psychedelic Hanna-Barbera fashion.”
We’re proud to premiere Darrin Hacquard’s “October Moon.” Weights And Measures is out October 17 via Like You Mean It.
—Hobart Rowland
