I remember watching Aidan at age 15 at band practice. It was between sets and the others were outside smoking or fucking around and Aidan was perched on his amp, his head bent down and his long hair draped over his guitar as he quietly picked out some new melody. I was kind of hushed. I saw that when this guy was left alone to write, without the mire that was our unfocused noise around him, he was dropping jewels.Aidan's songwriting, even then, was instinctual, magnetic and way beyond our hapless high school mess. (Even if he did manage to carry our ragamuffin band C.F.B. to back Jesse Michael of Operation Ivy and to appear on record alongside the likes of Sublime and No Doubt.
) There was a bittersweetness in Aidan\'s songs that belied his age -- an uncanny ability to sound plaintive or melancholy and make you swoon and ache and smile, sometimes all within the confines of one killer pop song.
As C.F.B. eventually withered and flaked around 1993, Aidan shot past the pitch-challenged lead singer and the flashy lead guitar player to take the reins and step up to the microphone himself. There was no need for him to wait and meet some guys who he could teach to follow his lead; Aidan just learned all the instruments and played them himself. Then he learned the tape machine and recorded it too. By 17 or 18 there was his next band, a reggae-drenched affair named for a C.F.B. song called Mango Season, but it was still basically just Aidan temporarily stopping off to have some fun letting good friends sit in with him on drums. As he begin to soak in the likes of Bob Marley and Van Morrison, Marvin Gaye and Peter Gabriel, his textures and his scope widened, and we began to hear songs that had the flavor we now know as Aidan's.
It was the next band that would really see Mr. Hawken stretch out his vocal style and come to the fore as a lyricist. It would also see Aidan start to gain the following and the acclaim. Again taking its name from a song title from his previous band, Highwater Rising rose up in San Francisco around 1995 and began to sell out favorite local venues like Cafe Du Nord and Sweetwater. HR\'s music reflected Aidan's voracious aural appetite and showed flashes of some the great modern music of the 80s and 90s, such as Peter Gabriel, Daniel Lanois, or Coldplay. Even in his sometimes scathing parables of relationships, Aid never succumbs to polemics or cynicism. We respond to Aidan\'s words and music because they fall on the ear with the smack and ring of felt experience. It was in the context of Highwater Rising that Aidan began to spread his certain take on the world that showed songwriting could be perceptive and funny, not unlike a hipper Paul Simon or a warmer Bob Dylan. Film and television started to notice and Highwater Rising's songs were featured on everything from 'Sex and The City' to 'Boston Public' to 'One Tree Hill.
\" The press started to perk up. A&R Online effused, 'Once in a while a band comes along that makes you smile. Very often it\'s ...
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