Dave Hause takes a big step with new solo record

Dave Hause made his name with the Loved Ones, the Philadelphia punk-rock band that released two albums, Keep Your Heart and Build & Burn, in the '00s, and he put out an album, Resolutions, under his name (which rhymes with "Dawes") in 2011.

But the 35-year-old songwriter's solo career really begins in earnest with his bold new coming-of-age (and losing-of-innocence) album, Devour, to be released Tuesday. That same day, Hause, who will perform a WXPN Free at Noon show at World Cafe Live today, is slated to play two sold-out shows at the side chapel at the First Unitarian Church.

"These songs are tracing where I came from, what it was like for me and my friends to grow up," Hause said on the phone this week from Santa Barbara, Calif., where he settled after recording Devour at L.A.'s fabled Grandmaster studios. "Working-class, Philadelphian, religious - but with this crazy American ambition as well, this appetite that's hardwired into us as Americans."

Hause was raised in Roxborough with a strict religious upbringing. He graduated high school from Phil-Mont Christian Academy in Erdenheim, where he was not permitted to wear his Metallica T-shirt to school.

"It was a crazy way to grow up for somebody who was basically worshiping at the altar of rock and roll. I butted heads with the powers that be throughout my school career," he says with a laugh. "They steeled our resolve though negative reinforcement."

In 1986, Hause became a fan of the Hooters. "They looked cool to an 8-year-old," he recalls. "I liked the records my dad had around the house. Dire Straits, the Beatles, Springsteen. But they were my first band."

From there, Hause got into punk and hard rock and metal, and became a regular at his favorite record store, Main Street Music in Manayunk. Store owner Pat Feeney "had this big effect on me as a teenager. I'd roll in there with lawn-mowing money and ask him for an Exodus record, and he'd say, 'Why don't you try the Replacements?' " Hause will return the favor when he does an in-store performance at the shop Oct. 12.

Over time with the Loved Ones, Hause's frustration grew with the self-imposed limitations of the closed ecosystem of latter-day punk. "I was spending so much time on the lyrics and holding them up to my favorite songwriters, whether it's Patty Griffin or Conor Oberst," he says. "And I felt like it was getting lost in the sauce."

Before he tested the solo waters with Resolutions, he had already written the first four songs on Devour, originally intending them for a Loved Ones record. He tried out the ambitious, forthright material on a 2011 solo tour with Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Dan Andriano of Alkaline Trio, and Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem. His fellow musicians "all separately pulled me aside and said: 'You've really got something going here. You're running lean and mean. You need to see it through.' "

Songs like "The Great Depression" and "Autism Vaccine Blues" were written around 2009, as Hause's construction business fell apart, with his marriage soon to follow. Subsequent songs such as "Same Disease" and "Father's Son" had an even darker hue. So he was pleased when he came up with "The Shine," the album's hortatory two-part single that strikes an uplifting chord amid Leonard Cohen references.

"It was dark, and I felt really good about the material and that it was strong," Hause says of the album. "But the one thing I didn't want was to put out a Downward Spiral or an In Utero in terms of tone. There's a glimmer of hope there."