Lost Hollow

Lost Hollow

Lost Hollow took a winding road to get to this moment.

Lorrie and Tommy Harden have been married for nearly 40 years and raised six children together. They planned to make music as a duo when they first arrived in Nashville, in the early 1990s, but agreed to put those plans on hold while Tommy established himself as a drummer.

Then, life kept getting in the way. Tommy’s career took off — he’s toured in Reba McEntire’s and Ricky Skaggs’ bands and played on thousands of sessions, including Big & Rich’s chart-topping “Lost in This Moment,” Lee Brice’s multi-platinum award winner “I Drive Your Truck,” James Otto’s #1 “Just Got Started Lovin’ You,” and songs by everyone from John Anderson and Alan Jackson to Jessica Simpson and Taylor Swift. Lorrie, meanwhile, focused on their family.

“I had all these dreams, since I was really little, of singing … and it just never happened,” Lorrie says. “I don’t regret it. I love my children; my life has been good.”

As Lost Hollow, they found time for two studio albums over the years: a self-titled release in 2013 and 2019’s Looking for Happy. Lorrie and Tommy wrote songs together, too — including two recorded by Reba McEntire on her 2007 duets album, one with Faith Hill (“Sleeping with the Telephone”) and the other with Carole King (“Everyday People”). They contributed background vocals to British artist Rumer’s 2020 album and had big plans for a tour with her … and then, COVID put the brakes on everything.

“It just kind of took the wind out of our sails for a few years,” Tommy says.

“Rose Colored Glasses,” one of 11 songs on Lost Hollow’s third album, Moving Along (out March 5), grapples with Lorrie’s worries in the wake of these delays. “Childhood was infinite summer … Dreamin’ of all that could happen / And where I would end up one day,” she sings, backed by Dan Dugmore’s plaintive steel guitar. “But life took me where it wanted / Like a road trip without a map … Like the dreams that once defined me / My rose-colored glasses turned gray.”

“A couple years ago, I just really began to think, ‘Wait, I’ve got things to say,’” Lorrie says. “‘This musical journey of Lost Hollow doesn’t look like what I earlier envisioned, but let’s just do this.’”

Lost Hollow want their music — “the love child of the Civil Wars and Fleetwood Mac,” as one fan astutely described it — to be felt as much as it’s heard. “People are hungry for real,” says Tommy, as Lorrie adds, “Our goal is to connect with our audience, to tell the story.” The husband-and-wife duo’s “soulful harmonies and masterful instrumental arrangements” draw listeners in so their “succinct, candid songwriting” (The Country Note) can hit even harder. It’s the kind of potent combination that comes with decades of intimacy, of living every bit of life together. Even before they were married or dating, Lorrie and Tommy were best friends who would spend hours side by side; even if one of them was working, they wanted the other one there. This very beginning of their relationship was the inspiration for “Stay the Day.”

“We had no interest in dating,” Tommy says, “but I just loved being around her.”

While friendship eventually blossomed into romance that’s lasted decades, on “Love Oh Love” Lost Hollow personify the emotion to question its absence. “If I stop searching / Then will you find me? … All I want is just to be / In love, oh, love,” Lorrie and Tommy sing.

“It’s that search,” says Lorrie, “that desperation, that need.” Despite the song’s downbeat subject matter, it’s reminiscent of the Everly Brothers’ hits thanks to its jaunty melody and the couple’s pitch-perfect harmonies.

Indeed, there’s no wallowing on Moving Along. Its title track, the first song on the album, clarifies that Lost Hollow are focused on seizing this moment now that it’s here.

“When we originally wrote the song with friends of ours in the UK, Rachel Warwick and Christian Yuill, it was about a relationship, but to me, it’s more internal,” Lorrie says. “It feels like an anthem: I’m moving along, I’m getting rid of all my old feelings and baggage.”

“There are no rules anymore, and we’re not gonna impose any on ourselves,” Tommy adds. “We know for a fact we can get onstage and make people laugh and make people cry, and so we’re gonna just go for it.”

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