New Hawks listeners will be struck by this latest phase of the Hawks journey—mixing serious country cred (members have played with Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, John Denver, Hazel and Alice, and every honky-tonk from Riverside to Malibu) with wild lyricism and surreal story telling. Audra Schroeder of the Austin Chronicle calls it: "Americana, traversing the landscape of the Golden State like Didion on horseback. It's a divine fusion of humor and twang that's definitely high, but not that lonesome."

Throughout their career, the Hawks have mixed traditional bar room musings with other tales: mating dances of agnostic whales; the life Senator Byrd from West Virginia; a Humboldt pot grower's flight to Tibet; a muted lament of a working stiff; boom and bust in guitarist Lacques's Mojave desert homeland; wandering hippie caravans; existential epiphany in Disney World; the imminent collapse of suburban Houston. In 2002 the Hawks were decidedly ahead of the curve in directly critiquing the Bush administration's drums of war.