A Hawk and a Hacksaw

A Hawk and a Hacksaw (often abbreviated to AHAAH) is a folk band from Albuquerque, New Mexico, currently signed to The Leaf Label. The band consists of percussionist Jeremy Barnes, who was previously the drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon, and violinist Heather Trost. The music is inspired by eastern European and particularly Balkan traditions, and is mostly instrumental with occasional vocals, shouts and cheers. The band has toured with The Olivia Tremor Control and Beirut. During its CMN tour of the UK in 2007 it was accompanied by the The Hun Hangár Ensemble.

The band's self-titled first album provided the soundtrack for the documentary Zizek!, which features Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek (the film's director, Astra Taylor,who is married to Barnes' former Neutral Milk Hotel bandmate Jeff Mangum).

Explaining the origins of the group's name Barnes told Splendid magazine "the reason that I use it is the book Don Quixote, by Cervantes." He added: "It's basically that someone who has gone mad can't tell the difference between a Hawk and a Hacksaw, that's what they say in Don Quixote."

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hawk_and_a_Hacksaw. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.