Singer-songwriter Liz Phair once said, “When it’s me in my living room, it’s pretty pure, and then what gets recorded involves more people, and it keeps escalating from there.”
Living rooms have been an inviting source of inspiration for a variety of musicians, often evoking memories of similar spaces. That includes Stevens Point, Wisconsin-based Americana band Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, who just released their aptly titled eighth album Living Room.
The album coincides this year with the group’s 15th anniversary. Singer-songwriter and guitarist Adam Greuel considers the album part of a “different era” for the group, with members recently facing life changes (including the Covid-19 pandemic) and starting families. Despite those changes, they haven’t forgotten their roots.
Greuel is joined by bandmates David C. Lynch (harmonica, accordion, vocals), Collin Mettelka (fiddle, vocals), Russell Pedersen (banjo, vocals), and Samual Odin (bass, vocals).
In September, the band decided to record an album that not only celebrated their approaching anniversary but took the grassroots approach of recording in a living room as they did during college for their 2012 debut Another Round. Greuel and his bandmates turned his Driftless Area house’s living room into a makeshift recording studio to record new and old song ideas for the album.
“We just set up recording equipment right in the living room,” Greuel tells SWT. “We did it the same way that we recorded our very first album years and years ago back in our college house.”
“We just got in a circle, we hit record, and we did it the kind of grassroots way. We could all see each other, and there wasn’t much isolation between the mics, and just an old-timey approach. And it really helped us have the vibe that we have always had together when we play live. It felt really natural.”
Greuel recalls being transported back to how he felt during their college playing days as they started workshopping songs.
“It felt a lot like it used to back in college when we all lived in the same house,” he says. “Everybody just was doing whatever they felt like doing. Dave was maybe smoking some cheap cigar, and me and Russ were maybe noodling away on our instruments and Sam was maybe walking down by the creek. It just felt real loosey goosey.”
“And then somebody’s like, ‘Well, I suppose we should start recording.’ And we kind of all laughed and went and sat down and it just felt super right, right out of the gate.”
The album adds to the group’s prolific discography output which includes the studio albums Another Round (2012), This Old Town (2013), Middle Western (2015), The Ode (2018), Miles In Blue (2020), For Old Time’s Sake (2022) as well as live album Live At 2016 Peach Music Festival (2016).
Greuel has found that “sometimes when you go to recording studios, there’s a layover period of some sort where you’re kind of getting comfortable with the space and you’re kind of getting used to maybe the engineer and you’re not quite feeling at home and maybe you eventually get there through the recording session.” However, they didn’t have those constraints this time around.
“It was really, really cool to be in one of our houses where everybody is kind of used to being and just a really relaxed vibration,” he says. “And for us, I think that meant a more honest approach to the songs that we brought to the table.”
Over the course of its 15 years together, the band has played stages big and small around the country and shared stages with the likes of Merle Haggard, Marty Stuart, Billy Strings, Greensky Bluegrass, Trampled By Turtles, The Infamous Stringdusters, Railroad Earth, Yonder Mountain String Band, The Travelin’ McCourys, and The Del McCoury Band
The band will celebrate the release and 15 years with an extensive tour around Wisconsin, the Midwest and various parts of the U.S. Tour dates can be found here.
In addition to Horseshoes, Greuel further keeps himself busy with other projects such as The High Hawks, Charlie Berens (you can read our review of their 2013 collaboration Dive Bar Dinner here), and Adam Greuel & the Space Burritos, as well as getting out in nature.
SWT caught up with Greuel to find out about the band’s new music, their legacy and what’s next for them.
Why did you feel the album’s title, Living Room, was a fitting title for this collection of songs?
So, years and years ago in 2010 when we started, it would be 15 years ago now, we lived in kind of two different college houses. And one of those we affectionately called The Nut House. And we decided on one spring day, it was like late winter, early spring, we decided that we might start to try to record an album and we just pieced together our live audio gear, literally the system that we used to perform at bars and stuff. We pieced that together with some other kind of really cheap recording equipment, and we set it all up in the living room of the Nuthouse and we hung blankets on the wall. We had no idea what we were doing, but we had fun and it was such a good memory. And it was really one of the things that laid the foundation as a band.
And so fast forward 15 years later, which 15 years for us, man, I’m 35 now. I mean, we’ve been doing it for basically our entire adult lives. So, we’re really proud of that or grateful for that longevity that we’ve had. We’ve had this ability to roll with the punches of life, and everybody’s personal lives have changed so much over those 15 years. There’s now a total of six kids in the Horseshoes band, which it’s just a trip to think about. And anyhow, we thought we’d celebrate 15 years by going back and “going back into the living room”, and doing it just at my house and just having fun with it, taking that relaxed approach. And I don’t know, it was really a special thing to see that process go full circle.
You called your home studio Good Ol’ Gnarnia. What’s the story behind that name?
I’ve always said since Horseshoe started, I love saying Good Ol’, whatever. It’s nice to be in Good Ol’ Milwaukee. And so that’s where the good old came from. Also, sometimes people say the good ol’ Grateful Dead. And so that’s where the good ol’ part came from. Narnia, of course, refers to the book Chronicles of Narnia. And the way we spell Narnia down here is Gnarnia. And that’s referencing gnarly. And part of that’s because I live down in this small coulee and it’s next to a little creek. And when me and my friend first acquired the land, it was pretty ill taken care of. It needed a lot of work. It hadn’t gotten much love for a number of years.
And so that’s where the name came from. And now you do things like record an album and a bunch of sweet people hang out down here. And I like to believe that that puts a little more love into the space and love into the valley.
I imagine that recording at the house added to the no pressure that you’re able to take your time with the songs.
Yeah. The typical way that we record these days going into studios is you’re on these timelines and sometimes you can’t control them. There’s maybe outside factors and the band might be rolling, but perhaps the studio has to close. And that can be an obstacle. You may miss a magic moment because we’ve got to go for one reason or another. And so that was one perk certainly of recording down at Gnarnia.
Another perk is just like, we all are really used to being kind of outdoors. It really, really helps us as a band, our vibe if we can go kind of play around. So, sometimes we’d be doing some takes and we’d maybe do three takes, and we couldn’t quite get it right. And we’d be like, “Okay, well, let’s go take five, 10 minutes.”
And people would go mess around outside. Davey loves metal detecting. We call it slinging coil. And he’ll go out and metal detect out across the little valley, the yard. And that was really amusing. Or maybe we just have a discussion about what our approach is to the song. But we walk outside, we kind of get some friend kind of Wisconsin nature and let that infuse the music. Another part was we have a wonderful engineer by the name of Truskowski who just lives over in Sparta, Wisconsin.
Sean is such a wonderful engineer and he’s so relaxed and knowledgeable. And he was just really a pleasure to work with, a pleasure to be around through the recording process.
What were some of your favorite moments recording at your house?
I think just probably the whole experience. Some friends would pop by occasionally, which was nice. We had a big mid-session pizza party, but really it was just like the stoke of hearing these songs come together. You have this idea for how they should come together. And we did some rehearsing for the album, but honestly, it’s not like we put hours and hours into these songs before we recorded them. We just kind of knew the rough outline. And then once we got in the studio, we just kind of followed our musical intuitions about how they should go. And that can be such a fun thing because you kind of surprise yourself. A couple of the songs we hadn’t even rehearsed at all. For instance, one of the songs, track number three, which is a song called “Let the Music Play”, I had just written that not long before the day we recorded and the guys had not heard it before we recorded it.
We just started messing around with it. And then it turned out on the third take, I think we were like, “Wow, that sounded nice.” And that’s the take that’s on the album.
With the band celebrating 15 years, it’s impressive that the band’s been able to maintain that busy studio and touring schedule pace.
Yeah. I mean, it’s been an interesting thing because when we first started, we were all going to college and it was kind of crazy and we would do school all week and usually we all had other jobs. And then the weekend would come, and we’d run off with Horseshoes and do shows. And then by the time we were graduating college, we were touring the whole country. I remember asking professors if I could have some flexibility on homework assignments. They’d be like, “Why?” We’d be like, “Well, because we’re playing four shows this week in Burlington, Baltimore, Philly and DC.” And they’d be like, “Oh, okay, it’s all right.” And then as time went on, we were doing north of 200 shows a year there for a number of years and touring with some really legendary bands. It was a wonderful journey and doing all these great festivals.
And now, because of there are kids in the band and there’s some other jobs involved, and we’ve rolled with one another’s life experiences. And now this album release tour will be mostly in the Midwest, but we’re going to go out to Vermont and we’re going to go out to Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. So, we’re still getting out and about and we’re still doing a lot of traveling, but we’re kind of doing it on our own terms. And I think that speaks to the respect that we have for one another as friends and band mates and frankly brothers, brothers and music. We’ve been through so much together at this point and Horseshoes & Hand Grenades as an entity, it may look like a band when you log on social media, you log on Facebook or Instagram, it just looks like a band, but in reality, there’s so much more to it.
It’s a really deep bond between the five of us that thankfully, and we’re grateful for, the fact that that has then led to so many other friendships, not just for us as we go around the country, but I know that there’s couples that have met at Horseshoes & Hand Grenades shows and married, and there’s friendships that have blossomed and people sometimes gather at the show who don’t get to see each other as much anymore. And if there’s one thing that I’m proud of about Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, it’s that it’s been a conduit for a lot of fellowship and a lot of love between people.
Many of the band’s songs have celebrated Wisconsin and the Midwest. With the new album, do you think you were able to tap into another side with that?
Yeah. I think Horseshoe’s sound has developed a lot through time. When we first started, we were much more like old-timey, sort of straightforward, old time music. And then we started getting really into the singer-songwriter type stuff. We’ve got all five of us write and then Miles in Blue, which came out during the pandemic, that was really a wide-ranging album. And it had a lot of singer-songwriter type vibes. It wasn’t maybe always the most high energy album. It had a lot of different stuff going on. And then we released this album For Old Times Sake, which was like a bunch of old-time public domain songs. That was really cool. But then this album, for whatever reason, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this is, but it feels just really authentically us. And part of that I think was not overthinking arrangements, not sitting there and scrutinizing it over and over again.
You hear people talk about the term, “Well, that album’s overproduced.” And sometimes I know what people mean and sometimes I don’t. Just because something’s heavily produced doesn’t mean it’s bad. It can often mean it’s really good. But I think in our case, in this particular situation, it’s really becoming of us and our process if we just kind of go with the flow and let the music play the band and just see where these songs take us and have fun with them and put a lot of joy into the music, it translates well.
With the songwriting, it looks like it was kind of a mix of individual band members bringing in songs, outside people coming in with songs, and also a few written by the full band. What were some of the most meaningful songs for you in writing?
Well, “Wisconsin Moon” was written years and years and years ago, right around the beginning of Horseshoes as a band. It was written with two of my college friends. And part of the reason that song is important to me, and part of the reason it was included on the album is we lost one of those friends of mine in the last year, Peter Kahn, and he was a dear friend and a wonderful soul, and he loved music. He was so connected to it. And we were sad to lose him, and we wanted to put that song “Wisconsin Moon” out there in memorium to him and his life and the good times we had. So that’s where “Wisconsin Moon” came from. And then those other songs that were written by the whole band have kind of a similar but different story. Their songs, that being “Red Bridge” and “Ribs and Taters”, those songs have been around since we can kind of remember.
They’ve gone through various iterations, but “Red Bridge” was about a place in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, north of town, where Colin and Russ and Dave and later Sam and I, we would all go there with our friends and kind of hang out and drink some beers and smoke and look at the moon and be out in nature. It’s at this place called Red Bridge. And when I met Colin Russ and Dave, which was later, they had met before, they met a year before Sam and I got to college. When I met those guys, they told me about Red Bridge, how they loved going out to Red Bridge. And I couldn’t believe it because Red Bridge is where I grew up. I grew up not even a quarter of a mile from Red Bridge, so I grew up there fishing. So, it was just this really cool serendipity type thing and just kind of, what do you call it, like an affirmation.
It just made it feel like everything was really right. So anyhow, kind of back to the 15-year thing, we decided to celebrate the band and the band’s beginning by including that song that was kind of special to us. And “Ribs & Taters” was a song that Colin and Russ had messed with since way back in college. And then Russell wrote some lyrics to it not long before this recording session, and that’s the lyrics that are on there. So yeah, just part of the progress of life and the nostalgia of being together for 15 years and just it’s been quite a beautiful ride that we’ve got to share.
With multiple songwriters, does that help you diversify the songs?
Yeah. It’s always kind of been the case for Horseshoes because everybody sort of listens to different types of music. Sure, we’ve got stuff that we all collectively enjoy. But as far as what people listen to on a day-to-day basis [is concerned], it’s probably all over the spectrum. Sam Odin, our bass player, has written some really cool, unique songs lately, “Won’t Be Long” and “(Pre)occupied”, which are really apt songs for the current time period we’re in and the political and social climate. And he’s a conscientious songwriter. He’s a conscientious person and really cool to see that. And Davey’s personality is often a little bit more lighthearted and goofy. So, he wrote this song that’s kind of based around the accordion called “The Crustation Invasion”. And that’s about this idea that shrimp and other crustaceans are going to come invade and take us all over, which is just hilarious, especially in this day and age where everything feels so serious because lighthearted songs are fun.
And then Colin, at the beginning of this recording process, he was worried that he didn’t have songs to put on the record. And I was like, both Russ and I were like, “Come on, man, you’ve got half written songs. Let’s hear some. ” So, he starts playing these half-written songs and they’re like awesome, awesome tunes. And one of them ended up being the first single that we released and arguably my favorite song on the record called “Fleeting Time”, which is just a beautiful, beautiful song with a great sentiment that we all experience. So, Colin’s such a magical songwriter. And then Russ and I have always written quite a few songs for the band. And Russ, as he matures and has different experiences, his songwriting has shifted in terms of the content and the themes and whatnot. And that case is certainly the same for me. The way that we all look at the world changes and that becomes reflected in our songwriting as well.
It sounds like the band will have another eventful year ahead. What are you most looking forward to?
I try to not think too far ahead. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s the things that you put too much expectation on something, you’re going to be let down. But if you just go in every moment and just experience it for exactly what it is, so much beauty can come out of that. And I’m looking forward to the year, not for particular places or particular … It’s not like, oh, I’m so excited to play this room. It’s that I’m so excited to be out there with my best friends moving around. And it gives us the opportunity to get into some mischief and get into some merriment and have some really, really good times. And in times like we’re living in right now, we really need music to help us get through it all. And we need things that bring us together and we need some kind of healthy escape. And if Horseshoes can be that for people, I would be really, really, really, really happy.
Looks like you’ll get to a lot of different places around the country that should be a fun time.
It should be. It should be, man. I always love being in the Midwest and always love being out in Colorado, Pacific Northwest. Vermont should be beautiful. Yeah, that’ll be rad for sure. And to just get to play some new songs is really important to me. Get to play some new material and get to share that with people. Give a little of our heart and soul out there.
Do you have any other projects that you’re currently working on?
Well, I’m still out on the road occasionally with Charlie Berens. And then Sarah Voss and I are actually going to record an album coming up in a week or two at Good Ol’ Gnarnia. So, we’ll be releasing an album in late August, I think, of this year. I love making music with her.
You can find the songwriting credits for Living Room below:
“Fleeting Time”, “Farther Down I Go,” and “Skipping Stones” were written by Collin Mettelka. “Titans” and “Come To Pieces” were written by Russell Pedersen. “Let The Music Play” and “Run Run Run” were written by Adam Greuel. “Won’t Be Long” and “(Pre)occupied” written by Samual Odin. “Crustacean Invasion” written by Davey Lynch. “Wisconsin Moon” was written by Adam Greuel, Peter Kahn, and Scott Halperin. “Ribs & Taters” and “Red Bridge” were written by Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
Recorded September 26th-28th, 2025, at Good Ol’ Gnarnia by Sean Truskowski
Produced by Horseshoes & Hand Grenades
Mixed at Lunar Lava by Jeff Petersen
Mastered at Mystery Room Mastering by Justin Perkins
Recording Consultation at Alchematic Studios by Mark Richardson
Artwork by Ryan Lynch
You can follow and listen to Horseshoes & Hand Grenades at the following links:
The band’s website: Hhgmusic.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/horseshoeshandgrenades
Instagram: Instagram.com/horseshoeshandgrenades
YouTube: Youtube.com/@horseshoeshandgrenades2648
Spotify: Horseshoes & Hand Grenades on Spotify
Bandcamp: Horseshoesandhandgrenades.bandcamp.com
Apple Music: Horseshoes & Hand Grenades on Apple Music
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
