Brothers Lee and Will Haraway started performing together as children in Millington, Tenn., having learned to sing and play from their parents’ Beatles, Stones and Creedence records. They formed The Sundogs in Atlanta, GA in the early 2000s and quickly earned attention for the melodic Americana Rock and Roll sound of their records and especially for their high-energy live shows.
The Haraways’ pristine brotherly harmony, along with the passionate delivery of third songwriter and lead guitarist Jon Harris, keyboardist Kevin Thomas and drummer Jeff Mills provide the backbone of their sound: achingly beautiful melodies and lyrics featuring stories that alternate between tragic, hilarious and throw-your-fist-in-the-air badassery. This is America’s band.
In our interview, Will Haraway dove deep into the classic rock influences behind the band’s new tune “I Don’t Know If She’s Home,” the importance of buying vinyl, and why every band should play for a NASCAR crowd.
Explain the title of your album.
Our album Embroidered Rose comes from the title track, which is the story of the last fight (of two) I ever got into, where the other guy ripped my embroidered rose-emblazoned shirt off, leaving me half-naked at a dance club in Atlanta. But beyond that humorous and embarrassing anecdote, it’s a bit of a statement of purpose for our sound, blending our singer-songwriter and pedal steel style with the more old-school rock n roll elements that we’ve established in our other three albums. “Embroidered Rose” is a country song that grooves like Steve Miller, and the whole album is designed to have that kind of feel: Bob Seger with tie-dyed overalls, cosmopolitan Conway Twitty (apologies to Aaron Lee Tasjan), Foreigner on acid. You know, that old chestnut.
Does your album have an overarching theme?
The album does have a theme though I didn’t recognize it until we were almost finished—it’s a post-pandemic album, really. ‘Love Will Lead Us Through’ and ‘Song of Resurrection’ lean into my natural hippie optimism that love, empathy and compassion can be a guiding light through adversity, but Jon’s “Hanging On” is literally the other side of that coin: the stress and pressure he was feeling, literally barely HANGING ON: ‘In the morning you wake wrapped up in dread/You’re like a temple in ruins all around the bed/Nobody seems to know how thin you’re spread/Honey let me lift up your head.’ And then you have my brother Lee’s song “All of This” is about taking comfort and solace in his young family (he has a 2 year old), which is how so many people coped in 2020. After I realized these themes, I quite intentionally lobbied to make “Full Speed Ahead” the closing track. While it has nothing to do with anything beyond eating mushrooms and carousing through the streets of Memphis and cow fields of North Mississippi, the FULL SPEED AHEAD vibe is what we wanted to leave you with. As in, that sucked, but let’s move on and get back to living (mushrooms optional.)
Who are some of your musical influences?
My brothers and I learned to sing harmony from listening to Beatles, Stones, Creedence and Simon & Garfunkel records, sitting around the record player and picking out the harmony (Lee was the youngest so he always had to be George.) My Dad and his brothers all played together and they were into John Denver, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard so we soaked that up too. When we started finding our own stuff as teenagers our North Star became Tom Petty and in many ways still is to this day. We starting doing a Tom Petty show a while back just for fun and it became an event that we still do every year. People just love those songs and we definitely love playing them. What we didn’t factor in while learning his catalogue was that we’d start to pick up a few tricks—like the power of a kick-ass bridge. That man could write a bridge, and you can hear a lot of that particular influence on “Embroidered Rose.” What Would Tom Petty Do (WWTPD)? is real.
Tell us about your favorite show you’ve ever played?
We had a couple years there where we did a lot of NASCAR shows, and they were always great—those folks love some loud rock’n’roll. In most cases we would play before the races in Daytona, Charlotte and Atlanta, usually at noon or two at the latest. Finally it worked out that we could play AFTER a night race in Atlanta and it was incredible. Two thousand juiced up, drunk as hell, fired up race fans made up one of the best crowds we’ve ever had. They ate up everything we threw at them, including an offhand joke that our own Jon Harris used to be the punter for Alabama. They roared for “Modern Day Miracle” and “Bitter Tears” like they were played on classic rock 25x a day. Every band should strive for a post-race NASCAR crowd. Amazing.
What’s the best way a fan can support you?
Honestly? Stream the music, follow us on the platforms and then…. Go buy the vinyl. Stream the hell out of it and spread the word because those stats matter. Our kind of music needs ears and word-of-mouth more than anything because we’ll get you if you listen, but we have to find you first. And most importantly, when the record is a part of your life, buy the vinyl. Most bands like ours record their record for a vinyl listening experience and build the album art and liner notes to be the best possible advertisement and promotion for the band. You’ll get involved in the story of the album, the history of the band, the players, the songwriters, the producers, everything. Vinyl is the only way to go for a physical purchase and it supports the artist in every possible way.