The Frost Heaves & HaLeS. A complete sentence. A tangle of puns.
A warning. An invitation. A violent invocation. A sibilant caress.
A band name disguised as a New England road sign.
The Frost Heaves & HaLeS have been crafting confections you eat with your ears ever since erupting from the wilds of Western Massachusetts in 2005.
More than just a gig, every Heaves show is an occasion. The band’s performances have incorporated poetry readings, video projection, theater, breakdancing action figures and more. The band's songbook includes some 100 original tunes and more than three dozen covers — many of them written or selected for special occasions like movie screenings and tribute nights.
The Heaves have opened for national acts like Cotton Jones, The High Dials, and Mean Creek. Notable events and venues where the group has performed include the Green River, Upper Valley, and Hilltown music festivals, the Franklin County Fair, Iron Horse Music Hall, and One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. They've also served as the house band for Amherst Live.
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Frost Heaves songs have struck a chord with wider and wider audiences. "Vacationland" was voted one of the top 93 songs (#37) of 2009 by listeners of WRSI/93.9 The River. Two other Heaves tunes have been featured on NPR’s Car Talk.
Band leader Daniel Hales is an inventive poet, songwriter, singer, and strummer equally at home performing solo.
Daniel's lyrics have frequently been singled out for praise. Northeast Performer wrote, “Hales artfully plays with the duality of words in the English language, creating lyrics that are both smart and memorable.” Impact Press called Daniel’s lyrics “nothing short of brilliant.”
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Bassist James Lowe masterminds many of the song arrangements, layering string, horn, keyboard and drum machine textures.
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Drummer Brian Canning holds it down and kicks it with a tasty groove.
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Lead guitarist Dan Mickus lays down the riffs, licks, and leads that will stay with you long after the band's finished heaving.
Frost Heaves albums offer lush arrangements with no end of sonic mysteries to explore. They’ve released five full-length albums and 2 EPs so far, with myriads more in progress. Best keep your ear to the ground.
In 2014, the Heaves fell way, way down the rabbit hole — or were they pushed through the looking-glass? In a feverish sprint, the band wrote a soundtrack of lobster quadrilles and crocodile lullabies and performed them atop a high catwalk during of a two-week theater run of "Alice In Wonderland." After recording the songs in the studio, the band celebrated the release of “Contrariwise” with a multimedia concert in front of a packed house at the Shea Theater. Calloo! Callay!
When you were blocking the TV and your dad told you “You Make A Better Door Than A Window,” he was also prophesying one of the best albums to come out in 2012. With it the Frosties offered to open portals of perception way past your third ear, if only you'd let them. They released the disc with a two-part extravaganza: first playing the album from end to end as a seven-piece band at the Green River Festival, then hosting an art-opening/after-party at The Rendezvous. Poems by 10 different writers inspired by the album were collected into an accompanying chapbook.
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The Frost Heaves' 2009 debut album, “Frost Heaves,” is a musically promiscuous mix of lost shopping carts, questions for carjackers, wrong meters, secret weapons, vacations to the North Pole in July, and psychedelic trips down discontinued roads.
Auxiliary live/studio Frost Heaves, 2005-2019: Erik Amlee, Abbie Barrett, Matt Beers, Joe Boyle,
Emily Breines, Emily Brewster, Sue Burkhart, Lewis Carroll, Scot Coar, Charlie Conant, Norm Demoura,
Emily Dickinson, Brian DiPippo, Kurt Fedora, Carrie Ferguson, Abdallah Hage-Sleiman, Ian Heisey, Leo Hwang, Steve Koziol, Roland Lapierre, Mike Levesque, Rick Lowe, Heather Maloney, Brian Marchese, Dan Mickus, Maggie Nowinsky, Mike Pattavina, Anne Pinkerton, Kate Stephens, Ivan Ussach, Tony Vacca, Hilary Weiner, Anna Wetherby, Christopher Wilkey.
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The Looking Glass Creatures: Jed Berry, Shira Hillel, Emily Houk, Daniel Kasnitz, Kara McColgan, Jillian Morgan, and Jeff Steblea.