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“If you wanna be somebody else and you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself…If you wanna be someone else, change your mind,” chants Sister Hazel on their uplifting single “Change Your Mind.”  The self-esteem raising song inspires listeners so that they can pick up the broken pieces and put them together again to get on the right path.

In fact, Sister Hazel has been doing a lot of seeking and finding since they blasted onto the national scene after signing with Universal Records a few years back.  Such an opportunity changed the lives of these five guys from Gainesville, Florida, but they did a bit of stumbling along the way.  Sister Hazel spent 300 days a year on the road, it finally caught up with the them, completely disorienting some band members from reality, including their family and friends back home.  After a much needed break last year, each band member was able to get back into real life and learn that fame is fleeting and fortune is not as important as family.  The result was Fortress, and the title cut summarizes those feelings.

“Fortress came at a time when I was really reeling and was just over-stimulated by it all,” says the band’s singer and acoustic guitar player Ken Block.  “I needed to regroup and put up my own fortress and my own boundaries and get back to a safe place as a writer and remember what it’s like to be human again.  It was a really easy song to write and came really quickly at a time when I was very introspective.  And it was quite therapeutic.”

Other standout songs include “Give In” and “Thank You,” which have vibes along the lines of Counting Crows or Toad the Wet Sprocket.  The band, at times, supports a harder Spin Doctors meets Gin Blossoms type sound, bringing the listener back to the early 90’s for a more rootsy rock feel.

Additional good news for Sister Hazel comes in the fact that they rose above the challenges of following up with an album even better than the previous one.  Their last disc, “Somewhere More Familiar,” released the singles “All For You” and “Happy,” and currently Fortress is in the midst of its second hit, “Champaign High.”

Andy Argyrakis 1/7/2001