Originating in Texas, Quaker City Night Hawks deliver a gritty, hard-edged strain of vintage Southern rock steeped in country and blues traditions. After emerging during the 2010s, the group drew notice through the 2013 release Honcho and through multiple tracks placed on the motorcycle series Sons of Anarchy. Their profile expanded markedly in 2016 with the arrival of El Astronauta.
Fort Worth natives Sam Anderson and David Matsler formed the band in 2009 after years of performing solo acoustic sets. Anderson, whose father served as a minister, sang in church during childhood and began playing guitar as a teenager. While studying art at Texas Tech in Fort Worth, he met Matsler in 2003 at open-mike events in Lubbock and Fort Worth. Matsler had learned fingerpicking from his mother and absorbed folk songwriters such as James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan; he later pursued mandolin studies at South Plains College in Levelland.
The pair maintained contact while Anderson transferred to the University of North Texas in Denton and Matsler settled in Austin. Around 2007 both returned to Fort Worth, balancing coffeehouse performances, various band projects, and joint songwriting. Eventually they assembled a full band to pursue their shared enthusiasm for raw 1970s rock, citing ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, and the Band among their touchstones. They adopted the name Quaker City Night Hawks, drawn in part from Mark Twain’s 1867 volume The Innocents Abroad, and recruited fellow Fort Worth musicians for live work. Their debut album, Torquila Torquila!, appeared in 2012 and was supported by nonstop touring.
That year several songs landed on season five of Sons of Anarchy, providing a crucial boost. By the release of their second album, Honcho, in 2013, Quaker City Night Hawks had cultivated an international cult audience. They subsequently joined the roster of Nashville’s Lightning Rod Records alongside fellow iconoclasts Joe Pug, Jason Isbell, and Ryan Culwell. Their first outing for the label, El Astronauta, came out in 2016 and included the single “Mockingbird,” which circulated widely online and earned endorsements from Jimmy Fallon, Marc Maron, and others. In 2019 the band issued its fourth studio album, QCNH, which reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums chart.
