Kill Henry Sugar Journeys Through Old New York

Photo by Wade Schuman

Hometown: New York City
Album: Hot Messiah
Band Members: Erik Della Penna (guitar, vocals) and Dean Sharenow (drums, vocals)
For Fans Of: Josh Ritter, The Black Keys, The Decemberists

Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb, a 19th-century mausoleum in upper Manhattan, stands on the frontier between once-crumbling Harlem tenements, Columbia University’s manicured campus and the Hudson River. It’s a fitting meeting ground for an interview with Erik Della Penna and Dean Sharenow, not only because their band, Kill Henry Sugar, sometimes practices here, but because it represents a point of convergence where New York’s past collides with the present, the dead with the living, the rich with the poor. The band’s dark, Northeastern roots music resides at this very junction.  

“The acoustics are pretty good here and we get to feel like we’re connected to something older,” says drummer Sharenow, a 40-year-old Sparkill, N.Y. native, of the rehearsal space. “Plus, it’s away from the microbrews, organic greens and stores selling products that contain shea butter,” adds Bronx-born Della Penna, 44, the guitarist, songwriter and singer.

As homage to their Yankee roots, the duo’s sixth and latest album—Hot Messiah, recorded aboard a turn-of-the-century Dutch barge on the Hudson—chronicles Gotham’s legacy of corruption, immigration and failed promise. The story seems familiar at first; New York inspires too many artists to count. But the city shapes this band’s work to an unprecedented degree, right down to the marrow. “You live here as long as we have,” Della Penna says, “and you start wondering, ‘What was there before that building was there? What’s underneath that cobblestone?’” Last year, the pair scored archival Thomas Edison-directed films for the New York Historical Society and wrote songs for the History Channel. Today, the words “old” and “entitled” pepper our conversation.

Kill Henry Sugar’s sound is influenced by the simple storytelling of early American composers Stephen Foster and Irving Berlin. Instead of playing chords, Della Penna may pluck his guitar like a bass. Sharenow often trades his sticks for brushes. Vocals range from jaunty, upper-scale harmonies to low, leaden chanting, “like we’re whispering directly into your ear,” Della Penna says. Though their subject is New York, the mood is rural loneliness. All that’s missing is the tumbleweed.

As we’re leaving, a Parks Department employee saunters over. “You know, this interview’s appropriate,” he says to us. “Grant hated music. He once said, ‘I only know two songs: One is ‘Yankee Doodle,’ one isn’t.’” As it turns out, the feeling’s mutual. Della Penna calls Grant “a prick and an alcoholic.”

“We come here mostly because it’s peaceful,” Sharenow adds, “like a cemetery.”