New York-born and-based singer/songwriter Rebecca Haviland has deep musical roots: Her grandparents were professional musicians in Westchester’s vibrant supper club scene in the 1950s. “Their house was a musical sanctuary,” she recalls, where impromptu family jam sessions lit the spark of her passion for music.
After high school, Haviland pursued music studies and interned at Mamaroneck-based Acme Studios. There, studio owner Peter Denenberg discovered her talent and offered her the chance to record an EP. “That single experience changed the course of my life,” Haviland says. Her debut gig at The Bitter End — where Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan also started their careers — marked the start of Haviland’s career.
Over the course of her two decade career, Haviland, along with her backing band Whiskey Heart — Martin Sexton‘s Chris Anderson, Dispatch‘s Kenny Shaw, Cross, Stills & Nash‘s Todd Caldwell and Nicky Barbato have captivated audiences with their pairing of Haviland’s powerhouse vocals and introspective songwriting with an effortless blend of roots rock, soul and Americana.
Whiskey Hearts 2013 full-length debut garnered awards in the International Songwriting Competition and Unsigned Only Competition. 2018’s Don DiLego-produced Bright City Lights, which featured “Bright City Lights” and “You and I” was released to praise from Paste Magazine, who wrote that the album was “hauntingly beautiful.” The video for “Bright City Lights” also earned an International Songwriting Competition nod.
In 2019, Haviland and Whiskey Heart recorded two live albums at Memphis‘ iconic Sun Studios. The albums featured both originals and covers like John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” 2022’s holiday album, A Holiday to Remember featured both classic and original holiday tunes.
Over the past decade, Haviland has nurtured young musicians as a professor at SUNY Purchase’s Music Conservatory, where she shares her industry insights and inspires students to push their creative boundaries.
Currently Haviland and her Whiskey Heart bandmates are working on their forthcoming Paul Loren-produced album. Slated for a 2025 release, the ten-song album draws inspiration from the likes of Aretha Franklin, Linda Ronstadt, Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell. To build up buzz for the album, the band will be releasing the Late Nights EP on November 15, 2024.
The album’s first single “Monday Nights” is a gritty and soulful rocker featuring a glam rock-inspired riff, rousingly anthemic, raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-sing-a-long hooks and choruses, a strutting bass line paired with Haviland’s Ronnie Spector-like delivery. It’s the sort of song that should amp you up for a night of hijinks, carousing and rabble-rousing. But it also captures a sadly-lost sense of infinite possibilities and weirdness that you used to encounter on a random night out in New York. (I think of this one time, where I met these two British brothers. One of them was trying to score coke in the bar. I was standing by them, thinking “Should I even be here?” I wound up bar hopping with one of the brothers. He had a fistful of $20 bills and he was willing to pay for everything.)
“I really wanted to write a song with a heavy riff and an Elvis Costello meets the Stranglers vibe; old school New York with a don’t give a fuck attitude,” Rebecca Haviland says. “The lyric and production of this song really capture the vibe and inspiration behind the entire EP. It’s about the old music scene in New York, a time when you could go out on Monday nights, also known in the New York music scene as ‘Musicians Night Off,’ and bang around on Bleecker Street or in the East Village hanging at different music venues and meeting up with friends, seeing some killer music, or playing your own show that everyone in the scene would come out and support. Sometimes we would even have multiple gigs on the same night, just walking down the street to the next club and playing another set. Every club would feel so alive and inspiring. You could feel the musicians and audience feeding off each other. It was a time before social media, when you would just head out to the neighborhood to find out what was going on. This is the New York that made me who I am, and even now 20 years later, the city has changed a lot, but it’s still my favorite night to play a gig or go out and see music.”