Issac Namias.
“I have this theory that if New York wants you in the city, it’s going to keep you,” Hank Heaven says with a knowing smile while reclining on a couch in The FADER office.
The Hudson Valley-born, New York City-based songwriter is talking about being a working musician in the City they've called home for the past decade. “I'd be pretty broke, but something would just save me, last minute.”
Stories about the pitfalls and saving graces of New York City gleam in acoustic and electric color on their new EP Welterweight (out tomorrow, August 14) — six songs which pair plainly told stories with Hank’s deceptively complex songcraft.
They tell tale of one key incident on EP standout “I Wanna Be Your Man” from their new EP: a friend was moving to Paris and let them stay in their apartment for free. “The landlord was in prison,” they remember. Other caveats included “a small gas leak,” sharing a bathroom with a neighbor (“a character”), and having to take care of “two blind cats.” “You’re going through the emotional roller coasters of life, heartbreak, and then there’s this really hilarious backdrop of a living situation."
Hank came up as a prodigious jazz guitarist — “swing music from the '30s, like Django Reinhardt stuff” — studying the craft in high school and even going abroad to play. After graduating, they came to the city as an old-school gig musician. "A lot of weddings,” they recall.
Over time, they connected with a musical peer group that included then-rising, now-established indie musicians like Samia, Claud, and Del Water Gap. “I was like, ‘Wait, I just want to play in a band … The thing that's moving me is songs and songwriters.” The relative technical simplicity of indie rock was also a boon: “I wanted to chill,” they laugh, remembering the skittering fingerpicking that defines so much jazz guitar.
On the new project, they write with a gripping straightforwardness like on the rising rock track “Thread,” a song about heartache that's packed with everyday devastation: “When the guy at the bodega asks me if I want a large coffee with milk / Cause I get that for you.” Those last two words, for you, are yelped like a villain’s cry into the sky. Other songs, like “Daddy’s Gonna Buy You A Car,” spiritually could have been written at any point in the long history of the Blues-tradition, except this one is about a very 2026 story of a “struggling” NYC musician with a cushy familial allowance.
There’s something charmingly quaint about Hank’s lyrical tales. It’s not their first project — they already released projects like 2022’s Call Me Hank and 2024’s Loaded Dice. Welterweight, though, trades those projects’ chuckling irony and Auto-Tune for something more bare bones and earnest, but still grimly comic, like on track “Hank Heaven’s 113th Wet Dream” — a stream of consciousness ramble about being on the cusp of consummating your crush. “Faking confidence is helpful until you have to show and tell,” they sing meekly.
After years on the road, Hank is doubling down on their own project, meaning they're slowing down their touring with other artists. It’s been an adjustment; their touring career has taken them to massive venues where the pains of musician life are softened by the benefits of scale and resources. Nowadays, however, they’re finding more satisfaction in the wins for their own music.
“It’s a slow moving process,” they say. “But every little part is so juicy.”
Issac Namias.