"Honey, I'm Using Again": Sassparilla Strip It Back in the Basement
Kevin Blackwell returns with a banjo-led album about aging, addiction, and survival, built on simple arrangements and trusted gear.
After years split between the barrooms of Portland and the quieter foothills of Golden, Sassparilla return today with Honey, I'm Using Again, their eighth full-length and arguably their most personal.
At the center of the band is Kevin Blackwell: songwriter, frontman, and, this time around, producer and engineer. Long associated with an electrified strain of Americana that pulls as much from punk clubs as from old-time string bands, Sassparilla have always walked a line between grit and tradition. On this record, Blackwell narrows the frame.
A Basement Record with Weight
Written and produced in Blackwell's basement in Golden, Honey, I'm Using Again is a fifteen-song collection shaped by addiction, aging, homelessness, suicide, and the strange reckoning that comes with surviving long enough to look back.
The title track sets the tone. "I imagined what it would be like if we could be that honest with someone about our ‘thing,'" Blackwell says of the phrase "Honey, I’m using again." The line is stark, but he intends it as a metaphor for any cycle we fall into and struggle to escape.
There's a lived-in quality to the album's themes. Blackwell reflects openly on outlasting friends, on the shock of getting older, and on feeling as though he has "cheated to make it this far." Yet the record isn't built on spectacle. It's restrained, deliberate, and grounded in arrangement choices that serve the songs rather than decorate them.
Banjo at the Core
Unlike earlier releases, this one leans heavily on banjo, with sparse percussion and minimal chord movement. Blackwell has spoken about intentionally simplifying his harmonic approach, an idea that traces back to conversations with John Johnson of Hillstomp, who once told him he was using "too many chords." On Honey, that advice lingers.
The result is a Southern-leaning palette that nods to blues, gospel, and folk traditions. Listeners who gravitate toward The Devil Makes Three or The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir will recognize the terrain; string-driven, rhythm-focused, story-forward, but Sassparilla's latest trades volume for focus.
The album was recorded with longtime collaborators Dan Power and Doug Ebert, both key to bringing the sessions to life. One of the most meaningful additions, though, is Blackwell's 13-year-old son Emmett on drums, a generational thread running through a record so preoccupied with time.
The Gear Behind the Songs
For readers who care about how records are actually made, Blackwell's setup is refreshingly straightforward:
Guitars & Strings
National Reso-Phonic Estralita Deluxe
National Delphi
Gotthardt fiddle
1998 Romanian Upright Bass (Grand Panormo model)
Drums
Gretsch Drums Catalina Club kit
Triggered Abbey Road Vintage Collection samples
Recording Chain
Bock 195
Joe Meek Pro Channel VC3 compressor
Focusrite Scarlett 2 interface
Mac mini
Logic (DAW)
"Not super sexy," Blackwell joked in his gear rundown, but that's precisely the point. This isn't a record built on excess. It's built on familiarity: instruments he knows well, recorded in a space he understands, using lessons learned over years of working alongside producer Chet Lyster.
There's something fitting about an album so concerned with honesty being tracked in a basement, with a Scarlett interface and a couple of trusted microphones. No spectacle, no elaborate studio mythology, just songs, played as they'll be performed live.
Blackwell himself is unsure where the album sits in today's landscape. After years immersed in Oregon's roots scene and now living in Colorado, "still the land of the jam band," as he puts it, he's focused less on categorization and more on simply getting back out to play.
What's clear is that Honey, I'm Using Again marks a renewed creative stretch. The sessions sparked a wave of new material, with additional songs already waiting in the wings. More importantly, it rekindled Blackwell's desire to move again; to tour, to connect, to put these stripped-down arrangements in front of rooms full of people.
For a band eight records deep, that's no small thing.
Connect with Sassparilla
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About Chris Roditis
Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.
Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com
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