HIRIE Pushes Boundaries with New Album Dreamer
Dreamer was released on September 13, 2019 via Megaforce Records.
The album can be pre-ordered here. HIRIE is currently on tour, dates listed below.
Eclectic tropical-pop band HIRIE, plans to take listeners on their most collaborative and emotionally vigorous journey yet with the release of their third album Dreamer (Megaforce Records; release date September 13, 2019). "This album is about raw honesty. I feel like I was braver with exploring my emotional state and how that swings back and forth—allowing myself to be brutally honest,” explains frontwoman/vocalist Trish Jetton. Dreamer is a sonic journey baselined by island beats, that celebrates the bold, joyful, and even messy impulses that drive the female experience.
Dreamer was the first true songwriting collaboration for Trish; she penned the majority of the tracks with The Drive—a.k.a. songwriters Mark Merthe and Nate Evans. “This was my first time writing with professional top liners and it was truly an incredible feat. I was trying to attract different genres even though the basis of this album is reggae.” The writing took about two years, but the recording – which was done at a live-in-studio called Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas with producer Danny Kalb (Ben Harper, Beck) – took less than two weeks. “Danny Kalb is a genius of a producer. We’ve worked on two albums together. He’s always open to hearing my ideas and is also a great decision-maker when there are too many great ideas on the table.”
When creating the album, Trish was gifted a copy of Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the book explores feminine instinct and power while celebrating “that wild woman archetype.” The book had a remarkable impact on Trish and led her to write the breezy free-spirited anthem “Stay Wild,” which in contrast was one of the more difficult tracks to write as she wanted this song to encompass the others: a song about allowing your emotions to dictate your next move. “If you need to wallow, wallow. If you’re in the mood to be a firecracker, then explode.”
In contradiction, the supercool groovy “Put It Down” (featuring Chali 2na of Jurassic 5) was a track that fell together very seamlessly if coincidentally. “I met Chali 2na very randomly in Mexico, and he laid down a verse.” For all of Dreamer’s straight-talking tales, there is an effortlessness that underlies the album. The lilting ballad “Frida Kahlo,” for instance, came together like an act of fate. “I was singing, ‘Free to fly, free to fall, free to nothing at all.’ And Chris said, ‘Free to fly, free to fall, Frida Kahlo!’ It was instant: That’s it!“ Meanwhile, for “G’wan Boy,” a flirty ska dance track, “We practically puked that out,” she says, laughing. “We didn’t redo anything. Even when we did the production, we didn’t even touch it. It was that easy.”
track listing
1. She Go
2. I Like the Way You Roll (feat. Slightly Stoopid)
3. Put it Down (feat. Chali 2na)
4. I’m Messed Up
5. Message In A Bottle
6. Better As It
7. G’wan Boy
8. Stay With My Tonight (feat. Iration)
9. Frida Kahlo
10. Reason To Fly
11. Stay Wild
The chilled-out Mexi-Cali reggae “I’m Messed Up,” is about how enabling social media can be in making people pretend to be something they’re not, while the ruminating mid-tempo “Better As Is” and the soulful “Stay With Me” ride the ups and downs—the acceptable imperfections— of her relationships. For her, life has never been easy, but it’s always remained an adventure.
Trish, who mostly resides in San Diego, has lived an itinerant existence. With her English father working for the U.N., she was raised the Philippines, Italy, then Hawaii. “We never stayed rooted to one place for long,” she explains. “Hirie” is a nod to that multiculturalism, a mix of “Hawaii” and “irie,” the Jamaican term for one’s state of mind. Furthermore, all of her band members all come from different styles of music, including metal/rock, jazz, jam bands, gospel/R&B, and a variety of musical instruments including accordion and didgeridoo. Hirie is a truly a melting pot of culture-influence, “I can’t strain enough how many influences we fly through in one set on stage,” she says.
TOUR DATES:
October 11 – Ventura, CA @ Discovery Ventura
October 17 – Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill
October 18 – Corpus Christi, TX @ House of Rock
October 19 – Austin, TX @ Stubbs BBQ
October 20 – Houston, TX @ Bronze Peacock Room, House of Blues
October 23 – Orlando, FL @ The Abbey
October 24 – Stuart, FL @ Terra Fermata
October 25 – Melbourne, FL @ Florida Institute of Tech
October 26 – Jacksonville Beach FL @ Surfer the Bar
October 27 – Greensboro, NC @ Blind Tiger
October 29 – Virginia Beach, CA @ Elevation 27
October 30 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage
November 1 – Brooklyn, NY @ Knitting Factory
November 2 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Wonder Bar
November 3 – Somerville, MA @ ONCE Ballroom
November 5 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
November 6 – Detroit, MI @ El Club
November 8 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen
November 9 – St. Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill
November 10 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown (Front Room)
November 12 – Denver, CO @ Cervantes Other Side
November 14 – Garden City, ID @ Visual Arts Collective
November 15 – Spokane, WA @ The Big Dipper
November 16 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile
November 17 – Portland, OR @ Holocene
November 20 – Sacramento, CA @ Holy Diver
November 21 – Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst
November 22 – San Luis Obispo, CA @ SLO Brew Rock
November 23 – San Diego CA @ The Observatory