Hannah Wickland – War On Women; Calling All Good Men
Hannah Wicklund has today released her fourth studio album War On Women; Calling All Good Men.
It is available to purchase now on CD, vinyl and digital download via Strawberry Moon Records. As for the corporate streaming giants, they are receiving one track in track list order on each full moon over the course of one year, as Hannah puts the power back into the hands of artists and music fans.
Hannah has been a major driving force for change in the industry throughout her career, as former Live Nation President Thomas See explains, “In 2022, while leading Live Nation’s music venues, I met Hannah at the merch stand at The Capitol Theatre, NY. During that conversation, she spoke eloquently about the financial hurdles artists face while touring and raised a thoughtful question about why venues earn commission on merchandise sales. That conversation stayed with me.
A few years later we randomly crossed paths again and we picked up right where we left off, back in that same discussion. This time, she highlighted the fact she had been touring since she was 16 years old and was still struggling to pay for hotels and gas. Shortly after, we took inspired action and launched the On The Road Again program, which eliminated merchandise commissions at our clubs across the country and put gas cards and cash in the hands of artists to help with the increasing costs of touring.
Hannah’s ability to advocate for the music industry is second to none. Change only happens when someone is willing to drive the narrative, and Hannah did exactly that.”
The physical release of War On Women; Calling All Good Men is joined today by the very fitting new single release, ‘Evil Is A Corporation’. “Evil is like cocaine” drawls Hannah at the start of the groovy, bluesy hip-shaker which nods to early PJ Harvey, primetime Amy Winehouse and The Cure’s ‘Lovecats’. Hannah’s sinewy, spell-casting vocals are bewitching. Ditto her grinding guitar.
“‘Evil Is A Corporation’ was initially done as a demo for fun in Charleston,” says Hannah. “I’d met up with engineer Devin Vaughan, a fellow native South Carolinian who had engineered my first Nashville record years prior when we both lived there, and we dove into that track. As soon as we played it back, I realized the album was underway.
Crucially, I could hear that the recording was already perfect. It didn’t need tinkering with. Like the entire album, the process of creation was pure intuition. It captures lightning in a bottle. I’d been pondering producers I might want to work with, but it was obvious then that I should produce myself. This song gave me the confidence to finally claim the title of producer that I had long given away to people who had no idea what I truly was capable of.”
Devin became the album’s drummer and the pair, with bassist Scott Gould Jr., recorded the songs as soon as Hannah wrote them.
“They poured out of me,” Hannah says. “For years, I hadn’t finished one song. Every time I tried, I honestly got depressed not knowing how or when they would reach the world. Suddenly, I re-discovered the pure joy of making music. And the more I wrote, the less angry I became. The songs were a place to park my rage.”
War On Women; Calling All Good Men is a monster of an album that’s both beauty and the beast. Its 13 sublime, scorching songs are at once a warning and a winner’s lap, conjured from hell and from the heart. It is Hannah’s first album since breaking free from an industry which conspired to keep her quiet.
It follows 2024’s widely-acclaimed The Prize – named Rolling Stone Brazil’s #1 Rock Album of the Year among a wealth of further praise. It should have sent the long-established, South Carolina-born singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, supernova. Instead, it marked a years-long battle to retain her rights.
Her response is a record that’s a call-to-arms for change. A gutsy, gripping, rollercoaster ride that ratchets up the drama, shakes with rage and basks in beauty as it shimmies through rock, soul, blues, folk, gospel and pop. It takes in a tale of heartbreak in strange circumstances, lays bare the obstacles Hannah overcame to take back control of her career, and offers hope for the future.
Written, recorded and self-produced on a barely-there budget in the latter half of last year, funded completely by her paintings and artwork, War On Women; Calling All Good Men is an antidote to lean-back listening. Raw, instinctive and fuelled by passion and a sense of right and wrong, its songs are a mix of live takes and well-built studio tracks.
The Prize was written by the start of 2019, but it took five years to be recorded and released, eventually on Hannah’s own label Strawberry Moon Records, which became an imprint under another label that would skew the independent status she had worked so hard to maintain and create.
What happened in between is a torturous take of deception, collusion, broken promises and dodgy contracts, as men in the upper echelons of the industry tried to curtail her career.
In June last year, the morning of Friday the 13th and two days after the Strawberry Moon, Hannah started over. She split from her long-term partner days before they were due to move onto a private island together off the coast of South Carolina, just two weeks after uncovering full blown collusion and conspiracy between her attorney, manager and label, receiving a death threat from her own manager in the process.
For two months, she considered her future and whether music even played a part. Then she began writing again, and War On Women; Calling All Good Men sparked into life.
Hannah’s ex takes centre stage on several songs. On the ferocious ‘Whistle To Blow’, she rails against the man who “shaved his head like Britney Spears”, days after her career uncovering’s, while ‘The Token’ is a spine-tingling piano ballad which doesn’t pull its punches on the imbalance and abuse in her old relationship at the hands of him and his world. The bare strummed ‘Stockholm’ is a similarly frank depiction of a partnership that had strayed into strange territory – “I left Tennessee with the man of my dreams,” Hannah sings, “then I woke up to you”.
Hannah’s incredible guitar playing forms the backbone of War On Women; Calling All Good Men, the crowning glory displayed on ‘Cowards & Kings’ which houses what Hannah calls, “The greatest guitar solo I have ever played”. Recorded live in one take, her brave and bold track gives a glimpse into her experience in the music industry and the darkness she’s encountered.
Three of the album’s tracks hail from Hannah’s past and bring religion, the environment and women’s issues to the forefront. The funky ‘Red Gorilla’ and squally rocker ‘Marionettes’ were both written well before The Prize but continually rejected. “I thought they were two of my strongest songs, but I was told they didn’t fit,” says Hannah. “Now I have them back”.
Work started on the acapella opener ‘War On Women’ in August 2016, which sets out the album’s ambitious agenda in just under two minutes, and completed the day after she opened for Joan Jett who spoke to her soul when she told Hannah, “The men will do anything to keep a woman in rock ‘n’ roll down. They will sabotage you; they will saddle you with debt, they will call you crazy.”
The song’s counterpart is the album’s acapella closing track, ‘Calling All Good Men’.
“That was the last song I wrote and it arrived in a flash, driving home after a show that I played with my brother,” says Hannah. “I want it to be abundantly clear that I am not anti-men. These are not just women’s issues; they are society’s issues and finding a solution will involve all of us. It’s a hopeful song to go out on and serves as my olive branch to all the good men out there to use their power and their voices to not just create a safer world, but to make space for women and girls to truly shine.”
Hannah Wicklund will be touring War On Women; Calling All Good Men on an extensive headline world tour throughout 2026/2027, starting in October with the ‘Red Gorilla Tour’ of the UK, a preview of the impending ‘War On Women World Tour’ to kick off in 2027.
HANNAH WICKLUND OCTOBER 2026 HEADLINE TOUR DATES
1st – Birmingham, Institute 2
2nd – Liverpool, O2 Academy
4th – Guildford, Boiler Room
8th – Tunbridge Wells, The Forum
9th – Arlington, Arlington Arts Centre
10th – Norwich, Waterfront
11th – London, The Lexington
14th – Farsley, Old Woollen
17th – Bury, The Met
19th – Edinburgh, Speakeasy
20th – Glasgow, Rum Shack
22nd – Grimsby, Yardbirds
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