by Grant Catton
Cowboy 100, the debut EP from Pittsburgh-based alt-country outfit Horace Whisper and the Empty Hand, is an album that, from the opening lines of the opening track “The Cowboy,” is very clear what it wants to talk about. And no, it’s not cowboys; at least, not the kind you’re probably thinking of. This is an album in which cowboys no longer wear spurs, once itinerant musicians content themselves with desk jobs, and troubled couples stay together despite every reason to bail. Cowboy 100 is an album that looks out across the horizon at dawn, with eyes bleary from the smoke of a dive bar, drunk but not ready to go home quite yet, carrying the past with it, but ready to face the future, whatever it holds. The real world may be crumbling around us, but – at least in the world of Cowboy 100 – everything is gonna be okay.
The first sound we hear on Cowboy 100 is a clip from the 1956 film The Ten Commandments in which Charlton Heston as Moses parts the Red Sea. I don’t have enough space (not to mention academic training) to unpack this particular reference and how it operates within the broader context of the album, but it has a peculiar way of making you as the listener stop and pay attention a bit closer. Let’s call it an invocation from the Music Gods.
The opening song, “The Cowboy,” then moves into a foreboding, almost Spaghetti Western style intro led by Jarrett Krause’s haunting saxophone and Al Ebeling’s cymbal work. In gallops the pedal steel and bass, played by Tosh Chambers, with the progression that will serve as the song’s backbone, over a shuffling beat, and Cowboy 100, like a search party setting out over the high plains at dawn, has begun.
When we first hear lead vocalist and songwriter Kirby Jayes’s crooning voice moments later, it is riddled with a bittersweet, almost cheeky type of nostalgia:
I don’t care to be the bearer of bad news
But the cowboy don’t wear boots he’s rockin’ orthopedic shoes
But…is it really nostalgia? As with all the lyrics on this album, there is a deeper meaning. We find out, in the very next lines, that the cowboy in question is quite happy in the modern, less rough and tumble world:
He is mighty comfortable sittin’ pretty
As he drives his Navigator between Lincoln and Sioux City
What might appear to be a longing for the open plains and the freewheeling life gone by – something shared by a lot of country and Americana bands – is actually, under closer inspection, a frank acceptance of the way things are and, in some ways, a sense of letting go of our former conceptions of ourselves.
Horace Whisper is Jayes, Krause, Chambers, and Ebeling – with musicians Derrick Beattie and Chris Beaulieu stepping in on pedal steel and banjo, respectively, for this EP. In this present iteration, the band has been together for a little over a year, but the members share a network of relationships that goes back nearly a decade and – a few twists and turns aside – involves Jayes forming a band called Birthrates and eventually Horace Whisper as a trio, until Ebeling joined up in early 2023. From there, it took only six months before the band were ready to get into the recording studio.
The fact that Cowboy 100 was recorded in a barn 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest in the middle of summer, somehow makes perfect sense. Given the album’s mellow, airy sound, filled with references to the road, and to dive bars, and with Jayes’s voice sounding like someone who wandered into a roadside bar after a long, dusty ride on a horse, it is difficult to imagine this album being recorded anywhere else.
Ask any artist or musician whom their “influences” are, and you’ll get a variety of answers ranging from a complete refusal to answer the question, to a litany of names spanning the entire history of their artform. However, in a recent interview, conducted as they pulled espresso shots during their shift as a barista, Ebeling rattled off a few names including John Prine, Townes Van Zant, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Jason Isbell, Cat Power, and Drive-by Truckers, summarizing the whole rogues gallery of sonic inspirations as “Y’all-ternative” and owning up to a predilection for 90s Slow Core. “Oh, and of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Neil Young,” said Ebeling with a smile.
Cowboy 100 is a compact, 22-minute, five song EP filled with poignant moments I keep coming back to. But, in my opinion, the album’s best track is “Play the Dead.” It is with this track that the band really seems to be getting at the core of what the album is trying to say. It is the fullest and most catchy representation of their sound; it is the song you’re most likely to put on repeat.
This wistful, up-tempo ramble features Krause’s saxophone work at its emotionally evocative best, so expressive on this track that it almost speaks. Lyrically, the song operates on a few levels. On one hand, it is about a musician aging and learning to love the Grateful Dead, a band which he used to disdain. But, in a larger sense, it’s about maturing as an adult and moving on from the touring life to one more sedentary and responsible; something which most of us grapple with in some way or another during our lives.
So I do my tippy-tappy little job every day
Say small prayers to a machine that sleeps 1,000 miles away
I find myself smiling when the bar band kicks into Touch of Grey
Comin’ around, on that shit I used to hate
Guess that’s life
Guess that’s the life
Horace Whisper:
Kirby Jayes – vocals, guitar
Jarett Krause – saxophone, vocals
Tosh Chambers – upright bass
Al Ebeling – drums
Chris Beaulieu – banjo
Derrick Beattie – pedal steel on “The Cowboy” and “Giant Eagle Jackie”
Cowboy 100 was recorded in July 2023 at the Bob Beck Barn in Marienville, Pa. and at the Maple Leaf in Millvale, Pa. with production by David Beck and Noah Carlson, and mastering by Mike H. Johnson
Listen to Cowboy 100 on Apple Music, Bandcamp, Spotify, and YouTube. Find them on instagram at: @horace_whisper
Grant Catton is a Pittsburgh-based visual artist working in acrylics, mixed-media collage, and sculpture.
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