Your Heart Breaks is a queer band based in Seattle, Washington. Originally founded by Clyde Petersen in Bellingham, Washington in 1999, Your Heart Breaks has toured the world for 20 years as both a solo performer and a large ensemble. Their new album, Drone Butch Blues comes out on Sofaburn Records in April 2019.
Drone Butch Blues is a queer concept album based on the writings of historic and contemporary GLBTQI authors. With a focus on stories surrounding queer community, Drone Butch Blues touches on topics of secret and forbidden love, sex with strangers, the lives of hustlers, the impact of AIDS on homosexuals, historic events and rebellion all interwoven with the personal narrative of Clyde Petersen. Striving to examine the contemporary gap between generations of queers and their elders, Petersen turns to written materials to find buried remnants of gay culture and creative vibrant humans, lost to the plague of AIDS. What emerges from this exploration is Drone Butch Blues, the 9th full-length album from a twenty-year career as Your Heart Breaks.
Produced by Karl Blau and engineered by Nicholas Wilbur at The Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, the base of the album is drone. Each track containing it's own unique drone element, and is then layered with folk instruments. You won't find any drum sets on Drone Butch Blues. Instead you will discover rhythm in the textures of the strings and pianos. Drone Butch Blues lives somewhere between a memorial service and a queer anthem, trying to encapsulate or understand such a historic loss of a vibrant generation of artists, while celebrating intimate moments shared in queer communities.
