Hoots and Hellmouth going strong, going green

If you want to know what it’s like to be a rock duo on tour, all you have to do is tune into the Tweets posted by Sean Hoots, Andrew “Hellmouth” Gray and their band, better known as Hoots and Hellmouth. As the Philadelphia-based group continues to tour behind its sophomore release, “The Holy Open Secret,” the band members remark not just about the music and the mundane, but post weekly blogs about green initiatives.

“It was this tour that made me realize that this blog and the idea of Hoots and Hellmouth being a farm band are not just gimmicks to sell music,” the band’s sustainability writer posted last month. “By using their music to progress their message and provide people like me a forum to articulate change, I truly believe that Hoots and Hellmouth is doing more for sustainability than many of the nonprofits, advocates and policy people that I encounter everyday.”

Those who know Hoots and Hellmouth likely aren’t surprised by its members’ passion for sustainability. After all, the music on “The Holy Open Secret” is musically “natural.”

“When Andrew and I first started writing together, we didn’t see the songs we were writing [as] traditional rock band presentations,” Hoots said. “We each had been in a rock band previously, and we want to make songs that felt a little more visceral, had more resonance. … [This album] shows what we had become.”

Of course that’s a folk, alt, country and rock sound that is punctuated by shouts, claps and other spontaneous sounds that keeps listeners’ feet tapping. During live shows, the duo uses stomp boards and hand percussion to keep the beat thumping.

“Each show, the audience and venue has much to do with it,” he said. “Everything weighs on the final product. … Songwise we aren’t like a jam band — we aren’t improvising all over the place, but we don’t repeat set lists all that often. We call songs as we go along, getting people dancing and getting into it.”

That sort of spontaneous abandon is just what Hoots and Gray want in their music and to inspire in their audiences.

Although the band’s self-titled 2007 album won awards and kudos, Hoots, Gray and band members Rob Berliner and John Branigan weren’t ecstatic about the finished product, deeming it too “studio” sounding. Staying on the road for long stretches of time helped the band develop an easy — what some would call organic — signature sound.

Like the green initiative it supports, Hoots and Hellmouth intend to keep its music natural.

“We don’t want a factory process,” Hoots said of the music. “This is what we’ve become.”