Hats off to Hats Local band in national NPR Tiny Desk Contest

By Kelley Andrade

kandrade@tnonline.com

From its historic opera house to restaurants hosting open-mic nights to street corner performers, Jim Thorpe is alive with the sounds of music.

So it's no surprise for a seedling to take root and grow there.

Eric Szollosy of Jim Thorpe had been booked as a one-man bass player to play weekend lunch gigs at the Broadway Grille over a year ago, when he asked his musician friends to join him.

"I said to Matt (Filer), 'Bring down your guitar and back me up.' Having a regular weekly gig pushed us into creating something more," Szollosy said.

Longtime college friend and mandolin player Josh Metz was folded into the weekend afternoons along with Szollosy's wife, Dee Dasher, on flute.

"The four of us just started playing all the time," Szollosy said.

The band Hats was formed from those afternoons. Over a year and a half later the haberdashery has grown to the six-person bluegrass/folk lineup with Dasher on flute, Metz on mandolin, Filer on guitar and harmonica, Chris Holland on guitar and Jimmy Metz on banjo and dobro, while all lend their voices to create a full vocal sound.

"We want to make a new innovative sound," said Szollosy.

Playing a plethora of instruments, Hats can be heard covering everything from John Prine to Tom Waits and Prince at a local watering hole, or performing an original composition for NPR's Tiny Desk Contest.

"We decided what song we were going to do and had our neighbor Dan Becker build a tiny desk for us," Szollosy said.

"We did a bunch of takes. It was a lot of people that had to get it right."

The song submitted for the national contest is titled "Falling Leaves," a number written by founding members Metz and Szollosy.

The tune is a folk/country hybrid rounded out with slide guitar and vocals tinted with a nostalgic longing of lost love and whiskey drinking.

"I had lyrics in my head but no music," said Metz. "We figured out what key we were going to do it in and it just works."

The tall Szollosy is the man behind the 6 foot 4 inch, 20 pound string instrument creating the deeply resonating chords.

"It's a beautiful tone that I could never get with an acoustic or electric," he said of the 3/4 upright fretless bass.

"You have to build up muscle to play it. It took me a year to be able to play it comfortably."

According to younger Metz, the newest member is his father, Jimmy, a Winfield, Kansas, National Bluegrass Banjo Championship player who has performed with many acts, including Vince Gill.

"Everyone in my family is musically inclined," Josh Metz said. "My dad is a bluegrass player and said I'd have a great hand for mandolin, so I tried it and didn't go back."

The half-dozen musicians may strum, pluck or play a different instrument on any given day depending on the gig or recording opportunity.

"That's why we're called Hats," said Dasher. "We all wear so many different hats in the band."

"Yeah you just wear the hat you need to on that day. We try to consider ourselves Renaissance people. We play a little of everything," said Josh Metz, who writes most of his songs on Blueridge acoustic guitar.

According to Metz, the group's songwriting style is very inclusive for its members.

"Not one person comes to us with a song completely done," he said.

"We all compose for our own instruments," said Dasher. "You don't hear flute in bluegrass very often."

Hats is working on recording an album of six originals and a handful of re-imagined, non-bluegrass cover songs from artists like Lefty Frizzell.

"When we started over a year ago, we had just an hour and a half of music, now we know so many songs, we can't fit them all in one gig," said Szollosy.

You can catch Hats live at the Earth Day celebration in Jim Thorpe on April 22.

To vote for Hats in the Tiny Desk contest, visit NPR's at site: http://n.pr/2kqxCdH.

For more information on how to book the group visit Hats' Facebook band page.