After years of honing their harmonies in the hills of western Massachusetts, the Hilltown Ham Hocks are finally ready to capture their “old-timey” sound in time. Armed with a $1,800 grant from the Iguana Music Fund, the Shelburne Falls-based modern folk string quartet has begun recording their debut album — a 12-track “snapshot” of their career that blends original New England folklore with the driving rhythms of early bluegrass.
Though it will take a few more recording sessions and a few more months before the unnamed album is ready to be released, the band is excited to enter this next chapter of their music careers, said band member Hannah French.
“We’re super excited and thankful to have gotten this grant,” French said. “This helps us financially, but it also helps us break into this other scene (of recorded music) that we’ve had our eye on. It feels really special to be selected.”
French said the band heard about the Iguana Music Fund’s annual grant program from other bands that received it previously. The program is predominantly funded by anonymous donors; plus the help of Passim, a performance venue and music school in Cambridge; sponsorships and community donations. Since its founding in 2008, the program has awarded $630,000 in grants has funded more than 320 projects.
The Hilltown Ham Hocks were one of 23 bands, and the only one from Franklin County selected for this year’s award.
“We know other bands that have been awarded this grant. It’s been in our periphery and we felt this last year that we were ready to apply for it,” French said. “We knew that we were going to be working on this album, and we knew that we would need some funding for that, and we really respect Passim and that realm of music culture.”
Member Colleen Stanton added that Passim was an “institution” in the music world, and it was an honor to be selected.
“All of my heroes have played Club Passim, and there’s a wonderful association,” Stanton said. “They’re an institution.”
The grant is open to any New England musician, a perfect fit for the band that describes itself as “truly New England,” Stanton said.
“We consider ourselves very New England. We’re all from Massachusetts, and still live in Massachusetts,” Stanton said. “And some of our material is very New England-based.”
With songs such as “Hilltown Home,” “Round the Quabbin,” and “High Water,” the band talks about living in New England and New England folklore.
“That’s a song I wrote after all the flooding we had a few years ago,” French said. “It was just so devastating for so many farms. The song is a thesis; they told us that everything was gonna be on fire, that climate change is gonna affect us in this way, but here we are covered in these floods. The song poses big questions about that.”
French and Stanton have known each other and been playing together for years, but with the additions of Stevie Jick on guitar and Calvin Doiron on bass, Stanton said the band has honed their sound and is ready to take their next steps together.
“It just makes sense as the next step, we need to cement this,” Stanton said. “We need to take a snapshot of how we sound right now.”
French said the Hilltown Ham Hock sound has “old-timey vibes” with several of their writings serving as an homage to the imagery of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“We’re really interested in harmony arrangements and multi part arrangements,” French said. “We draw a lot on old time music traditions, early bluegrass, gospel — stuff where there’s lots of layers and rhythm.”
She added that they also write and play to their strengths. French and Stanton are both trained on the violin, but also play the fiddle, and French plays the banjo as well.
“Everything we play is very specifically arranged to maximize our four voices and different instruments,” French said. We’re always trying to do whatever we can with our instruments and voices to best serve the song.”
The album the band is working on will include 12 songs, with a mix of new songs and old ones die-hard ham fans will recognize from their shows, as well as a cover from the Carter Family. The Carter Family is a folk band that recorded and performed from 1927 to 1956, and is considered an influential voice in the bluegrass and American folk revival.
Stanton said the hams are about halfway through recording and hope to have the album complete and ready for release by late spring. They have been recording the songs themselves, and will use the grant for the final mastering of the album.
“Stevie is our sound engineer mastermind, and he’s working on getting all the pieces through the computer, and then the grant will cover mastering all these tracks, as well as pressing the CDs and hopefully some photos for the album art,” French said.
French added that finishing the album will take time, particularly as all four members of the Hilltown Ham Hocks have full-time jobs.
“This is truly a labor of love,” French said. “We’re doing this because we all really care about playing music, we enjoy playing music together and we enjoy sharing what we created with an audience.”
“It’s hard to move forward musically when you still have a lot of things that haven’t been recorded,” French said. “It’ll be nice to feel like these are the final versions of these songs, and then we can continue on; we have so many songs, it’ll be nice to move on.”
Fans and interested music lovers can hear some of the songs set to be included on the album during upcoming Hilltown Ham Hock shows. The band will perform on Sunday, Jan. 18 at Red Apple Farm in Phillipston and on Saturday, Feb. 7 at Floodwater Brewing Company in Shelburne Falls.
Stanton added that people can stay up to date with future performances and music releases on their website, hilltownhamhocks.com, as well as on the band’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
Correction, January 12, 2026 9:04 am: An earlier version of this article stated the wrong amount for the grant award and had a typo in a band members name. The band received $1,800 and the bassist is Calvin Doiron