Quaker City Night Hawks

The Texan rockers on mixing genres, brushes with the law and bringing people together.

“We used to play in acoustic bands, but we got sick of being talked over. So we decided to play loud rock’n’roll instead!” laughs Quaker City Night Hawks’ guitarist Sam Anderson in his rich southern drawl.

QCNH formed in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2012, and their influences range from ZZ Top to Joe Cocker, The Band and even Pantera. On their fourth album, QCNH, all these and more bubble together in one diverse melting pot – from the sprawling, southern opener Better In The Morning to the heavy, almost sludge-style Hunter’s Moon and the honky-tonk slink of Fox In The Henhouse.

“I think we’ve done a good job of bouncing around each genre,” Anderson says. “You worry about that being distracting on a record, but I think it sounds like us playing.”

QCNH have spent the last four years touring almost nonstop, playing hundreds of shows and picking up fans. “When we toured with Blackberry Smoke last year in Manchester in front of thousands of people, who were cheering for an encore for us when we’re the opening band… that was one of those moments. ‘Wow, there are so many people here, and they like what we did!’”

They might have been going for a few years, but it wasn’t until the third album, 2016’s El Astronauta, that QCNH really began to find their sound. “El Astronauta was like the beginning of a new band for us,” Anderson explains of the record, a concept album that examined topics like border restrictions and illegal immigrants – but set in space, in the future.

QCNH isn’t a concept album but it does examine social topics, and is “one of the more personal records we’ve made”, according to Anderson. The piano-led ballad Elijah Ramsey tells the story of a young man who signs up to the war after September 11, while the funky Suit In The Back looks back to when QCNH found themselves in trouble with the law. At the time they were on tour in Texas with Chris Stapleton, and they were pulled over and arrested for possessing marijuana concentrate. “In Texas it’s considered a felony… they charge it higher than cocaine!” he says in disbelief. “The state trooper who pulled us over spoke to us like he was our dad, though he was the same age as us.”

Though they don’t necessarily see themselves as a political band, QCNH like to stay informed. And as their band name suggests, they want to bring people together. “It comes from a Mark Twain travel book, The Innocents Abroad. He was on a cruise ship to the Holy Land, and couldn’t find anyone to play cards with him or to smoke and drink. Finally he did, but they had to wait until everyone went to bed. They called themselves the Night Hawks, and the ship was called Quaker City. It was people from different religious backgrounds, who put their differences aside, just for a little bit. It really stuck out to me.” HMK

“We had thousands of people cheering for an encore… and we were the opening band.”

QCN H is out now via Lightning Rod. Quaker City Night Hawks tour the U K in November.