The War on Drugs drummer and Eagles Christmas album producer Charlie Hall is stepping into the spotlight with ‘Invisible Ink’
Jason Kelce calls him an ultimate “glue guy,” the kind who binds a team together. Hall, a longtime behind-the-scenes player on the Philly scene is finally releasing music of his own.
Charlie Hall has been a major player in the Philadelphia music scene for two decades now.
Hall is the drummer for The War On Drugs, the Adam Granduciel-led Grammy-winning Philly band who are a festival attraction around the world. They play Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park on Aug. 18, and head to Australia and New Zealand later this year.
He’s the originator of the Silver Ages, the indie-rock close harmony vocal ensemble who hold annual concerts at the Ethical Society in Rittenhouse Square.
And, oh yeah, he produced A Philly Special Christmas, last year’s surprise hit holiday album that turned Philadelphia Eagles offensive linemen Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Lane Johnson into pop stars, teaming them with Philly musicians on a project that raised $1.25 million for charity.
In making that happen, “Charlie played the biggest role,” Kelce said. “Bigger than any of the football players, that’s for sure.”
But until now, Hall has limited himself to helping others make music. He’s never made his own.
That changes with Invisible Ink, the dreamy solo debut he produced with Quinn Lamont Luke, which is out on El Triángulo Records.
Invisible Ink creates an all-instrumental, becalmed soundscape that works as a transporting travelogue, an autobiography without words.
The action ranges from “Midas Bus To Tromsø,” about a trip north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, to “St. Albans,” named for the Philly street with a garden running through it, around the corner from Hall’s house, where parts of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense were filmed.
“I’ve been playing music since I was 3 years old,” Hall said on a recent sunny morning, carrying on a conversation while drinking coffee and strolling around the Graduate Hospital neighborhood where he lives with his wife, Anne, and their two teenage sons.
Hall grew up in Connecticut, went to college in Virginia, and taught school in San Francisco before finding a welcoming music community upon moving to Philadelphia in 2003.
“I’ve always loved playing other people’s music and helping to ornament their songs,” he says. “Maybe it was laziness, or maybe it was out of fear or self-doubt. But I never had the impulse to start it myself.”
He had to be nudged. The War On Drugs bassist Dave Hartley, who plays on four Invisible Ink tracks, says that when Hall joined the band in 2014 (as part of a lineup expansion with Anthony LaMarca and Jon Natchez), he helped “supercharge the band.”
But Hartley — who has released four albums with his side project Nightlands — ”stayed on me about it for years,” says Hall.
“He’s a very talented multi-instrumentalist and has a really sensitive musical ear,” says Hartley. “And I also think he had this misconception that he could not write a song, because I also had that misconception. And it’s incredibly empowering and demystifying when you actually do it.”
Hartley credits Hall, along with newest member Eliza Hardy Jones, with keeping the otherwise introspective Drugs on an even keel. Hall “is the most social person I’ve ever known,” Hartley says. “He loves people. He could have been a politician in another life.”
Playing well with others — and boundless curiosity — leads Hall in intriguing musical directions. He assembles large bands of Philadelphia’s finest musicians, often with a focus on Miles Davis’ adventurous early 1970s fusion recordings.
The next such project is coming to the Philly Music Festival, where Hall will bring together an all-star band billed as Charlie Hall’s Vein Melter, to explore Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters on its 50th anniversary.
The sold-out Oct. 15 show at Solar Myth also features Philly guitarist Chris Forsyth and his band digging into Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin’s 1973 Love Devotion Surrender.
Kelce first met Hall when The War on Drugs played Connor Barwin’s “Make The World Better” benefit at the Dell Music Center in 2017. “And then I went to see one of his shows with the Silver Ages, and I loved it,” says the Eagles all-pro center and music lover.
When Kelce and his teammates, along with ex-Eagle Barwin, started getting serious about making music, Hall became the clear choice to bring their album to fruition.
“He’s not only a great musician who’s the drummer in one of the best bands in the world, he could also clearly arrange and orchestrate this thing,” Kelce said. “He had so many great ideas. Lane calls him ‘the Mad Scientist.’ "
Kelce calls Hall an ultimate “glue guy,” the kind of coworker who binds a team together. “He’s the kind of person that you gravitate to when you’re faced with something difficult in life,” said Kelce, who was back in the studio with Hall and his teammates in May, working on future Christmas music.
“If you’re lucky, the glue guy is not the backup right tackle,” Kelce said. “He’s a major player. That’s what makes Charlie so special. Not only does he have that quality … but he’s also really talented.”
Hall began work on Invisible Ink in 2019 with Luke, with whom he frequently toured Japan, along with backing skateboarder and alt-rocker Tommy Guerrero in the early ‘00s.
Luke had to coax Hall into the studio and convince him that Invisible Ink needed to be released. “When we got into it, he asked me what I wanted to do with it, and I said, ‘I don’t know, hand the songs out like sandwiches for my friends to hear.’ He said, ‘Are you insane? We’re putting this music out!’ ” The album is the first release on Luke’s El Triángulo label.
The altogether lovely Invisible Ink begins with the shimmering “Montcalm,” a nod to the San Francisco neighborhood where the Halls spent their 20s. It stops off at “Mystic, CT,” home of Hall’s favorite record store.
And “Meet Me At Fagan’s” evokes a bar in Sheffield, England, where he and the Drugs’ Robbie Bennett spent a memorable day off, finished off with a James Elkington guitar solo.
The album’s peaceful, ruminative quality “is a natural extension of the music I hear in my head,” says Hall. “I like harmony. I guess I’m not a big rock-the-boat kind of guy in life, and maybe that goes into my approach to music making. I like when things sound beautiful together.”
Hall — who will celebrate his 50th birthday in Mexico next April when the Drugs play My Morning Jacket’s One Big Holiday festival — says he now sees Invisible Ink as a sort of musical memoir.
“But I didn’t know that while I was making it, because I didn’t set out to make any particular kind of record.
“It was really just a process of discovery. But then when I zoomed out, I thought, this really does make sense. It’s not just nine random musings. These are the places that are important to me, and where I learned about life. This is who I am.”