The album Ethan Hawke called “the country music equivalent” of ‘Sgt Pepper’
Ethan Hawke has been picking up some rave reviews for his work on the new FX show The Lowdown, the stylish neo-noir drama that sees him play a down-at-heel journalist getting dragged into the murky underworld of Oklahoma, but you’d imagine he’d be happier getting plaudits for all the effort he’s put in to showcasing his love of music.
A jazz and country obsessive, Hawke has shown his love for song throughout a long career, appearing in Taylor Swift videos, making documentaries and playing the likes of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker in a biopic called Born to be Blue back in 2016. In fact, all the way back in 1994, in one of his breakout roles on Reality Bites, directed by Ben Stiller, he played the frontman of a grunge band, while the same year, he directed the music video for the Lisa Loeb hit ‘Stay (I Missed You)’.
Hawke even wrote a debut novel two years later that focused on a love affair between an actor and a singer, and if that weren’t enough, he even appeared, making a spoken word contribution to a Fall Out Boy album. But he probably immersed himself in music most in 2018 when he directed Blaze, the biopic based on the life of country musician Blaze Foley, and also starred in Juliet, Naked, the adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel about a woman falling for a singer-songwriter.
And he further illustrated his love affair with country music this year when he directed Highway 99: A Double Album, a sprawling documentary about the life of Merle Haggard, which saw Hawke traverse America talking to luminaries including Bob Dylan and Norah Jones about the influence Haggard had on their work.
He also roped them in to record an entire album of cover songs to prove this, in addition to doing live performances for the film. Hawke had been a fan of Haggard since he was a young boy, thanks to his Dad repeatedly playing his albums on old tapes in the car. And it’s that car Hawke crosses the States in during the doc, paying tribute to Haggard, who died back in 2016.
As for his own musical loves, when asked by NME to pick his most vital songs, Hawke led off with Willie Nelson’s ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain’, saying: “It’s from Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. That whole album is like a country opera – it’s the country music equivalent to The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s a concept album. It’s incredibly simple and pared-down, but it feels like one story told from multiple points of view. That song is just so lonely and tragic and heartbreaking and beautiful. I never stopped loving it.”
Nelson’s 1975 album was a big hit for the country star, with ‘Blue Eyes Crying…’ becoming his first-ever number-one hit in the US, and the title of the album even becoming a nickname for Nelson himself. It has since gone down as one of the finest LPs in history, despite record execs initially feeling it was far too under-produced and musically sparse.
Hawke, meanwhile, aside from doing promo for The Lowdown, is about to be seen next month in The Black Phone 2, a sequel to the superb 2021 horror mystery that was a huge word-of-mouth success. He’ll also appear alongside his daughter Maya Hawke in another music tie-in: Revolver tells the tale of an obsessive Beatles fan trying to break into their hotel in order to meet the band.
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