New Music Monday: Hawk & Steel release first album after 9-year hiatus

Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.

Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up and coming, well established or hidden gems!

For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.

To date, there have been 83 New Music Monday features published through this collaboration.

This week, Hawk & Steel is the New Music Monday highlight!

Hawk & Steel is a Victoria-based Americana band that started playing together back in 2011.

Though the band has seen several iterations with band members coming and going, it was started by Peter Gardner who sings lead vocals and plays guitar, as well as Ian Johnson on lead guitar. The modern iteration also includes Rob Phillips on drums and Rob “Bobby” Walsh on bass.

The band just released their first album in nearly a decade, following a nine-year hiatus. It’s called Ain’t Never Movin’ On.

According to Gardner, Hawk & Steel stepped away from playing in 2017 after pushing themselves hard as a touring band.

“We played a lot of shows and had a good time but were starting to lose a little steam, I think just because we had been playing so much for so long that we just, for no other reason that it was just time, we stopped,” he explained.

“We stopped for seven or eight years.”

He said that in 2024, he and the rest of the band decided to get back in the jam space to play together once again, this time just for fun.

“Sure enough it was really fun, and then very quickly, we were like, ‘We have those few old songs that we never really did anything with before we went on hiatus, let’s try playing those songs again,’” Gardner continued.

“That was fun and then we started making new songs and before we knew it we had a whole new record.”

According to Gardner, the hiatus allowed the band some time to replenish their energy and to get better and more confident with their instruments.

When they came back together, Hawk & Steel set out to make the album they wanted to make for themselves, rather than creating for what others may enjoy.

“Now I think we are able to make decisions that are just for us, that maybe we would have been too cautious to do before,” he said.

“Like, we have a couple new songs on this record that have saxophone on them and it rules, but I feel like maybe 10, 15 years ago, we would have been like, ‘Would that be too Bruce Springsteen or whatever,’ but who cares, Bruce Springsteen’s awesome.”

Gardner noted that the band went into Ain’t Never Movin’ On trying not to take themselves too seriously and letting go of preconceived notions on what they should be doing.

Throughout the new record, despite some songs being new and others being older, Gardner says that there is a loose overarching theme of “getting in your own way and not really letting yourself do good things.”

Highlight track – “I Want You (To Break My Heart)”

The last song on the album, “I Want You (To Break My Heart),” plays into that overarching theme because it’s all about taking risks.

“Yeah, maybe if we fall in love it will end horribly and we will not like each other at the end, but when we’re in love it’s so good and those good times are worth the bad times,” explained Gardner.

“It’s just kind of about saying, ‘Let’s take the chance cause why not.’”

This was one of the newer tracks on the album and Gardner said it came about after he got the song’s title stuck in his head and wrote around that central idea.

“I don’t really know where it came from,” he laughed. “I’ve been with my wife for like 15 years so it’s not like I’m drawing on experience.”

“But I think it’s kind of indicative about everything, not necessarily love—just letting yourself take that risk when maybe you move to a different city or maybe your new career move, or even getting a cat. There’s risks in everything.”

“I Want You (To Break My Heart)” also included friends and fellow musicians Charlotte McGee on vocals, Marc Jenkins on pedal steel and Hugh Mackie on organ.

For this track, Hawk & Steel made a DIY music video that features the band members playing through the song on each other’s instruments.

Gardner says the video makes him laugh because he feels like people will be able to tell who in the band is the worst at drumming.

“Last time we put out a record we didn’t even have an Instagram account, because that’s how old I am,” he said.

“So we wanted to put a music video out for some quote, unquote ‘content,’ and we were trying to think about something funny, silly, something we could completely do ourselves… You can tell that drums are the hardest to play for three out of four of us,” he laughed.

Check out the music video for “I Want You (To Break My Heart)” by Steel and Hawk below:

Listen to “I Want You (To Break My Heart),” Ain’t Never Movin’ On and the rest of Hawk & Steel’s catalogue on Bandcamp, Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music.

The band just played their album release show for Ain’t Never Movin’ On at The Duke in late June, which was also their first performance in around 10 years.

Gardner says they currently don’t have any upcoming shows in Victoria, but hopes to put something together for the fall.

“It’s something we definitely want to keep going with,” he said.

“Last time we were doing this thing, we were playing shows every couple of weeks and I think we also got kind of burnt out on that so we’re going to dip our toes back into it as we go.”

He also noted that the band is already working on some brand new material and he hopes to be able to keep writing, recording and playing in the years to come.

Keep an eye on Hawk & Steel’s Instagram to stay up to date on future shows and releases.

Related:

CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.