I guess you could call Budget Cuts, the first album from The Hard Pans a debut. Collectively, the members of the Austin quartet have been staples in so many local clubs and scenes throughout their long careers, that it seems ill fitting to use the term. Not many Austin bands receive the praise that is so generously bestowed upon Jimmy Smith and Claude Bernard’s better known outfit, The Gourds and after twenty years on the road and a dozen albums, it is well earned. This may have led some fans to become pretty broken up about the group’s "indefinite hiatus" announced last year. But in the wake we’ve seen Kevin Russell’s Shinyribs and now The Hard Pans have their respective time in the sun. For fans of what Smith brought to The Gourds lyrically and what Bernard’s virtuoso playing did sonically, they are joined by long time friend and sound engineer Mark Creaney, whose prowess as a songwriter serves as a kind of distorted accomplice to Jimmy Smith’s indefinable persona. On Budget Cuts, The Hard Pans deliver an eclectic mix of odd and deranged songs, tied together only by each songwriter’s uncanny ability to outdo the other through atypical vocabulary and perverse subject matter. Check out the song "Ain’t Gonna Have It" and the rest of Budget Cuts below.
