Hallelujah The Hills
You could say, if not The E Street Band of Boston, Hallelujah The Hills is possibly The Center Street Band since it’s so central to the city. With nine albums, three EPs and an early revolving door of musicians (now consolidated), they have, seemingly from the get-go, put down a foothold on the local scene by being as indie as Boston gets. Their love and respect for the lesser known, the less national, the less world famous, slots them right into what makes this town a petri dish for so many new ideas, new music and new bands.
HTH has put less focus on “success” than on output, struggle, even failure – no matter that the band’s profile rises year after year. Their sound evolved over two decades, and in particular on their latest release DECK, a 52-song art/music/video ambition where these six guys have exceeded themselves. Twenty years ago, they kicked out of the starting blocks with punk-esque ferocity, more Clash than Pistols, but with a desire to grow, elaborate and transform themselves – an unspoken motto. Always, however, with each record and iteration, there’s a nod to the art itself.
RYAN H. WALSH, EARLY “SUCCESS”
It must be said that to write any overview of HTH, you need to focus on guitarist-vocalist Ryan H. Walsh, the guy who instigated the concept and writes the songs. The rock ‘n’ roll road they travel puts him in the driver’s seat while simultaneously being just another guy in the band. (He’d be the first to say so which is why he is often quoted here.) In terms of any national/international “arrival’” promised in one review after another – “This next album from Hallelujah The Hills is bound to blow up!” – a European tour was in the works before Covid hit, but even then Walsh would laugh about the scope of HTH’s reach, of their draw, at least in the beginning.
As other well-known, hard-working bands from Boston have proven, “success” can be redefined. “I have way different metrics for success than most, and I even try to see all the value in failure, but most ordinary folks don’t understand all the tiers of success in the fields of art,” Walsh says. “Like, you may have never heard of us, but would it surprise you to learn that we’ve made it farther than 75% of bands that have ever existed?”
As a teenager, Walsh was a right-away art kid. Writing words, sketching pictures, making up stories. He played football in high school but quit to join the drama club – “One of the happiest days of my life!” he says – and he was significantly mentored. “Two teachers who changed my life: Mr. Morneau and Mr. Macek,” he says. “They saw something in me and continually encouraged me to go head-on into art. When I graduated, they bought me my first steel string acoustic guitar!” He began hitting shows in town. Morphine was his favorite and his love of that band was part of the reason he was asked to write the liner notes for a re-issue. He deep dived into all aspects of that group and conducted, sadly, one of drummer Billy Conway’s last interviews. His other influences include Guided by Voices (Robert Pollard) and the filmmaker, David Lynch (both of whom he met). He also includes David Berman of The Silver Jews, whose lyrics he admires and with whom he became pen pals and ultimately true friends. An everywhere-all-at-once, seemingly tireless art brain like Walsh’s inevitably would start a band as soon as he began collecting songs, or at least ideas for songs.
BAND EVOLUTION, NAME ORIGINATION, ALBUMS
His first band, The Stairs, went largely unnoticed until their 2005 record On Sleep Lab started getting hot press. Later, after they became Hallelujah The Hills, clubs filled up with new fans as The Boston Phoenix (RIP) wrote them up on a weekly basis. The paper printed a cartoon sketch of a guy wearing a HTH t-shirt (which they had yet to order or design); it was clear that theirs was no weekend warrior crap shoot. These guys were in it for the long haul. And for the love of music. (Note: From the beginning, collaboration from inside and outside the band has been a hallmark of their output. They’ve always brought their fans into the mix, even folding recordings of words sent them into songs. Fan inclusion taken to the heart limit.
The name Hallelujah The Hills originated after Walsh watched the Mekas brother’s movie with that title in film class. He wrote a song of that same name for the last Stairs record and Hallelujah The Hills shot to the top of his list for the new band name. A demo got them signed to Misra Records, which released their first two albums, Collective Psychosis Begone (2007) and Colonial Drones (2009). HTH hit the road and toured the country. Misra, with a new boss, failed to re-up the contract, but that hardly slowed them down. They kickstarted the third album, No One Knows What Happens Next (2012), a cleaner, less punk follow-up to the two prior albums and pounded out new songs and records every two years.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Trashcan (2013), an emblematic nod to oblique imagery and literature in one phrase, and 2014’s Have You Ever Done Something Evil? (a philosopher’s question) got national press reviews and won them two Boston Music Awards in 2014 (Rock Artist of the Year and Video of the Year). A Band Is Something to Figure Out (2016), a nod to the band’s unwritten memoir, was produced ten years to the day of the first Stairs rehearsal. They didn’t tour the record as intensely as they had previously because Walsh had begun to write a book. (More on that later.) In 2018, the band cut Against Electricity, a collection of shuffled hooks, rock ‘n’ roll and noise rock followed by 2019’s more intimate I’m You, which Glorious Noise named its Album of the Year.
Using a variety of studios for each record has become HTH’s MO – taken to the ultimate degree with 2025’s DECK. These guys continually challenge themselves utilizing unpredictable instrumentation, guest performers and a full golf bag of engineers (sometimes including Walsh himself working at home or in their treehouse hot mess of a rehearsal space in Somerville). Walsh says he had the concept for DECK for the entire 20 years that he’s had a band. The ubiquitousness of a deck of cards was the appeal: every bar (even The Brendan Behan Pub where he hangs out, where he’s recorded gang vocals and where Irish writer’s portraits decorate the walls) and every household has a deck of cards, right? Why not a deck of songs? “These 52, I thought, could serve as a kind of audio-tarot-reading for listeners,” he says.
DECK was an opportunity to fire on all cylinders – graphic art/collage, words, videos – using a multi-colored pallet that utilized a Cecil B. DeMille cast of thousands, non-HTH instrumentation and a hopscotch around New England for full-scale vs less produced studios/engineers and even home recordings. The goal was to expand the work. To be, in effect, unlimited.
PERSONNEL, REHEARSAL STYLE, MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
For the first decade, the band was a revolving door of musicians, including more than four drummers and one who quit the band in the middle of a show, but for the last 10 the lineup has been stable. The steady six include founding member Joseph Marrett, a Kentucky native who started out on bass, wandered over to tambo, then banjo, then cuatro, then back to bass. Trumpeter-trombonist Brian Rutledge, whose sound is a signature part of HTH, joined the band for the second show ever and also plays synthesizer. Pianist Nicholas Ward, who HTH grabbed from the band Ho-Ag (who stole HTH’s original drummer a year later…fair is fair) has a more complete technical understanding of music than the other guys and acts as translator between members trying to explain musical concepts to each other; he refuses to put anyone on the guest list at their shows, which Walsh finds delightfully bewildering.
If drummer Ryan Connelly hadn’t come along when they needed their fifth new drummer, HTH would likely have dissolved in 2012. He’s an inventive, original kitman who likes to hear how every single one of their songs would sound in reggae clothes. The I’m You album begins with him laying down a heartbeat, and it set the stage perfectly for what many consider one of the best songs in their catalogue. Viola player David Michael Curry was the last to join full time, though he made cameos on recordings from the debut LP. He’s the essential rock ‘n’ roll wildcard, adding mystery to every song. Walsh explains: “What is that sound? Who’s making it? Can I hear more of it? He’s also a walking closet of helpful items. Need gaffer’s tape? A screwdriver? A comic book from the ‘50s? He’s got it all inside a pocket under layers of plaid.”
“We’ve developed an incredible shorthand and hivemind,” Walsh says. “The six of us together unlocks a shared hard drive of information and technique we can all access. It’s amazing!” Although Walsh may be the centrifugal force as principal vocalist, songwriter (changes, lyrics, vocal melody), unlike Jeff Tweedy (“every circle needs a center”), his material progresses democratically in rehearsal. The result? Surprising, happy, unpredictable, collaborative work. The rehearsals expand his writing in new directions, instrumentation and in the navigation of live vs studio vs demo. “In the past, we’ve always kept an eye on being able to play it live, which puts certain guardrails in place for how many overdubs and guests might appear on it, but that went out the window with DECK,” he says. “Since we knew we would never have to play all 52 songs live, we gave ourselves permission to create grand and strange arrangements we couldn’t reproduce, exactly, live as a six-piece band.”
ASTRAL WEEKS: A SECRET HISTORY OF 1968
Walsh – perpetually curious – loves words. His lyrics tell stories, can be oblique or surreal, other times personal. Writing the book Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 (Penguin Press, 2018) changed his life in unexpected ways and informed the album HTH recorded after it was published, 2019’s I’m You. The book was instrumental in writing about his life, Boston’s music scene and how he composed. It boosted his profile as a multigenred artist both locally and nationally. The high school kid who’d been sketching, writing and figuring himself out was now beginning to realize his ambitions in real time. And he’s unlikely to stop. Ideas percolate, inspire and are unrelenting. If one were to guess which artform wins the day, a safe bet would be on the band, the music, the songs. On the other hand, each endeavor shakes the hand of the other. “I’ll paint a picture, then I’ll write a song. It’s like crop rotation,” to quote Joni Mitchell.
All the guys in HTH have day jobs. Money earned at gigs, merch, record sales and online fundraising plows right back into band expenses: studio, rehearsal space, promotion. “Because we’ve never tried to turn the band into anyone’s living, always taking the earnings and banking them to keep the band running and funding new projects, it’s ensured that the band is a pure experience,” Walsh says. “I have no doubt that that’s led to our prolonged existence. I don’t know about forever, but I’m so pleasantly surprised and pleased we’ve lasted this long. We all work. A working-class band is something to be!”
They chase new songs on Mondays, one tune per week, which is how DECK got built. Fifty-two songs is a lot of music. Patience, perseverance and completing the concept made it come together in one 2.5-year burst, and in December 2025 HTH won their third Boston Music Award (Alt/Indie Artist of the Year). Worst gig ever? “I recall a tour gig in Chicago in ‘09 where I smoked too much pot before going on and felt terrified and could barely communicate,” Walsh says.
(by Rick Berlin)
Singer/songwriter/pianist/composer/bon vivant Rick Berlin has been a constant presence on Boston’s music scene as both a bandleader and a solo artist since moving to the city in 1970. Among the groups he’s formed and fronted over the decades are Orchestra Luna, Berlin Airlift and Rick Berlin – The Movie.
