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Listen, nobody asked Gus Englehorn to move to Wailuku, Hawaii and start hearing whales inside his guitar, but HERE WE ARE, here we all are, in 2026 or whatever year this diseased calendar has spat us into. But the man has done it, he’s gone and done the thing, he’s made another record, a year after the last one, which means either he’s cracked some cosmic code or the sun out there is doing something genuinely illegal to his brain chemistry. Frankly either explanation is fine, both are fine, we’ll take it, because The Broken Balladeer exists now and it’s got a marxophone (played by his wife Estée who also keeps the beat) on every single song and somewhere in there is a four-minute story about a governor’s son named Edrick who gets raised in a “Horsehair Purse” and ends up on an iron lung and NOBODY, including the man who wrote it, fully understands what happened…
That’s the whole songwriting game, isn’t it? Certainly is for Gus. You open your mouth, and gibberish falls out, and after two hundred hours, the gibberish has a melody and the melody has feeling. Here it is from the man himself, Gus Englehorn, The Broken Balladeer.
PAN M 360: You’re starting your tour in Montreal and then going on this crazy tour with Holy Fuck.
Gus Englehorn: Yeah, and we’re playing 15 shows in a row with Holy Fuck. I’m so scared. I’ve only ever done like five in a row. I don’t know what I’m gonna do
PAN M 360: You’re going to be roadworn for sure!
Gus Englehorn: It’s gonna be brutal, dude. I’m gonna look…, I’m gonna look 10 years older (laughs)
PAN M 360: But what a crazy opportunity to play this new album to a completely new audience.
Gus Englehorn: Yeah, I think their crowd will give me some needed energy.
PAN M 360: I have to admit, I didn’t think we would get a new album from you so soon. The Hornbook came out only a year ago, and now we have this new one The Broken Balladeer.
Gus Englehorn: Yeah! I mean, I’m usually like pretty slow, but in Hawaii, the songs just kind of, they just kind of ooze out of me. I have no friends and no distractions, and I wake up when the sun rises, and by the time noon rolls around, I’ve been playing guitar for like five hours, writing songs. I think the sun gives you energy too, it like changes your whole perspective a little bit. I feel like I’ve been way more productive since moving to Hawaii.
PAN M 360: That makes sense. Do you think Hawaii’s vibe has influeneced what you write about too?
Gus Englehorn: Yeah, for sure. I think you really have no control over it. Like you can choose where to live, but it’s one of those things that you can’t help. The other day I wrote this song about, you know, you stick your head under the water, and in Hawaii you hear the whales. So I play the whale sounds like on the slide guitar. So I wrote this song about the whales singing, and I’m kind of doing this slide thing ( he imitates whale sounds). That’s like the most direct Hawaiian thing, but I haven’t played a lot of slide guitar. I think I have the guitar in my hand so much that my left hand starts turning into a claw after a while, so slide guitar is nice because you don’t have to press it down too hard, you know?
PAN M 360: Yeah, I love slide guitar too. And there are lots of cool and sort of random instrumentation on this new album, too. An omnichord, a marxophone, which is super medieval.
Gus Englehorn: Yeah, dude, and the phone we were playing with was like from the 1800s. Like super old. Estée’s always kind of like bringing to my attention, like, weird, cool instruments. Like they use that instrument on The Smiths’ song “Please, Please, Please.” I was always like, ‘What is that thing?’ But there was one just in the studio, and we’re like, dude! So it’s like, it’s on like, every song.
PAN M 360: So did you record every song in the studio in Austin?
Gus Englehorn: Yeah, I only did one overdub this time, at home. Like one little guitar solo, if you could call it that. But we did the whole thing in like six days in Austin. We played some shows in Montreal and then were just like practicing, and then we imported a truck to the United States and drove it to Texas. Man, I was so tired when we got to Texas. I laid in bed for like three days there, and then we recorded the whole album.
PAN M 360: And you were recording with like legends, too, so you must have been super prepared.
Gus Englehorn: Yeah, it was nuts. Like Paul Leary and Stuart Sullivan, the two dudes who recorded the Sublime album, and then, [Mark] Kramer, who played bass with Ween and like The Butthole Surfers, and he played bass on it, and then frickin’ Howie Weinberg, who, like, mastered Nevermind. He mastered it. And that’s all, Paul. He would like call people up who were in town. We were so not worthy. But the first day, we recorded like 11 songs. Paul was like, ‘I’m astonished, usually, I would record, and there’d be, like, some dude, passed out on the floor.’ So I guess just the fact that we just weren’t completely obliterated the whole time, the bar was already pretty low, as long as you showed up sober and well-practiced.
PAN M 360: Ha, what a different time recording was back then. I also hear way more of Estée‘s voice on this one. Did you write it more with her voice in mind, guiding some of these songs?
Gus Englehorn: I think it’s just from doing all the live shows, and I just kind of started realizing after a while, like, ‘Oh my God, every time Estée sings, it sounds so good, I don’t really even know how to sing, so it’s, like, when Estée sings, adds this Pixies thing. Like I love Frank Black [Pixies guitar/vocalist], but, you know, when Kim sings in the back, it adds this beauty to the whole thing. Which is the same as Estée. I think Paul, too, was, like, ‘Well, we should probably have Estée sing on this one, too. ‘We never regret when Estée sings.
PAN M 360: I want to talk about that one song, “Horse Hair Purse.” It’s so catchy, and like I still don’t know what the hell is going on, but what is the inspiration behind that one?
Gus Englehorn: Dude, that’s one of Estée’s favourites, too. I don’t know what it’s about, really, either. I just started seeing this, like, cartoon in my head… I don’t know quite who the mother of Edrick, the governor’s son, is, but it’s like the governor abandons his son, who’s in the courthouse bathroom in a horsehair purse. And then he becomes kind of, like, a creature. I imagine him, living in a kind of bell tower, and coming out, like, doing crazy stuff. And that’s where they try to hang him at the courthouse, and the governor shows up, shoots the rope, and saves him. But then, like, some sort of, like, supernatural force rings out from the lake and renders Edrick, like, I don’t know, brain dead, or something. That’s why he’s being kept alive by an iron lung (12:09) in the governor’s house.
PAN M 360: You see, you’re explaining the story, but I still have no idea. This is like a book, and it’s a four-minute song. Where do you come up with this stuff?
Gus Englehorn: I mean, lately, last songs, I haven’t written anything down. I’ve just been kind of singing off the top of my head, coming up with stuff. It is definitely a mystery to me. I definitely don’t set out to make, like, even stories or anything, but somehow, it just starts kind of taking shape. I remember David Byrne, I was reading a thing with him, and he said he just started, like, shouting out a bunch of gibberish until the sounds kind of started sounding good and then that turned into words. I feel like that’s kind of what I do all day. Poor Estée has to put up with me just shouting gibberish and stuff all day. And then, you know, after, like, 200 hours, it’s like ‘All right, ‘”‘Horsehair Purse” has birthed.
PAN M 360: The Broken Balladeer. I know it’s a song, but why did that title kind of piece everything together for you?
Gus Englehorn: I’ve always been kind of fascinated by those, like, down on their luck, like, aging stars. Not that I’m … I’m aging, but I’m not a star. I’ve definitely got the aging part now. But I watched that movie by Ken Russell, The Boy Friend. It’s just this big theatrical kind of, you know, thing with Twiggy in it and stuff. And it’s just an awesome movie. And I just kind of, like, I started writing that song, the first song of the record, “Hounds Are Out,” and it starts with me saying ‘My hair is turning gray, as I stare into the mirror backstage and say, good evening, ladies and gentlemen, it’s showtime.’
And I just kind of was imagining my not-so-distant future, where you’re like, you’re super dishevelled, and all haggard from the road, and you’re like, you know, you’re The Broken Balladeer.
PAN M 360: That’s going to be you after the Holy Fuck tour.
Gus Englehorn: Yes (laughs). This is what I will become. It’s like a prophecy.
Photos by Estée Preda
