MANCHESTER, NH – When Robotic Hawks released their “New, Better Things” EP back on July 24, it became one of the best records to come out of New Hampshire in 2025. The Hudson-based trio of vocalist and bassist Tyler Pollard, guitarist Shawn Doherty and drummer Brian Sturk have a knack for crafting excellent rock & roll tunes with “Andale’,” “Heartbeat,” and “David Lee Roth” being prime examples. On January 24th, music fans around Manchester will get the chance to witness this in person. That’s because Robotic Hawks are going to be taking the stage at The Shaskeen as part of a stacked bill. The festivities start at 7 p.m. with Boston hardcore icons Tree, local garage punks Black Hatch, and Boston horror punks The Negans rounding out the lineup.
I had a talk with Pollard about the making of the EP, getting excited about the upcoming show, and hoping to make a new album later in 2026.
Rob Duguay: Back in July, Robotic Hawks released the “New, Better Things” EP, so what was the vision behind the making of it? What was the creation process like for this record?
Tyler Pollard: Well, it’s pretty much the same every time. Loosely, our writing process is strictly band related where nobody comes in with ideas and it’s done in the room as a group. It proceeds as a group or it doesn’t move at all, so we write the music first, and ultimately, that’s our starting point. The music has got to be fun and worth spending time on, and I also kind of serve as the musical director because I’m singing and I pick things that I know work with my vocal range or if I hear something. I’ll hear something that I can sing and both Shawn and Brian will give me editorial allowance, so that’s it. We’ll write the songs and get them into a condition similar to a kid making a tree fort where you give them the tools, the wood and they’ll make something.
That’s kind of how I feel our writing is, and once it starts to speak to me, that’s what decides what the content is, what the lyrics are, what it feels like, and what direction to pull me in. For this particular EP, we thought it was different for us because it felt like we were trying to slow it down a little bit. We still wanted to keep the Robotic Hawks sound, but we kind of wanted to have a little more space and a little more time with melody for the vocals, so that was pretty much it. We had this whole plan to have Paul Kolderie make it with us, so we wanted to bring it up a notch and show that we had more than we had last time around.
RD: How were you able to connect with Paul to have him do the mixing and mastering?
TP: I reached out to him just on a whim. I knew that some people in town had worked with him over the past few years, so he seemed to be clearly approachable. I sent him an email telling him that we were planning on doing some recording and I had this whole thing in line for him to come and help us because in the past, the drums had been the issue. We felt that we were chasing a drum sound to try and feel natural, and we had been happy with everything, but we wanted to try something different, we had done everything we could on our own. We were going to have him come and set up everything while we were recording drums and all that stuff, but when we decided to record with Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios in Boston, Paul said,”Oh, you don’t need me. Benny’s the best, let him track and we’ll deal with mixing it afterwards. I don’t have to come there for that and you certainly don’t need to pay me for that.”
It was a dream come true and he and I just worked back and forth over email. When I got things really close with Paul, then I would share them with the boys. I initially started sharing all of what we were doing together as a group, but there was a little too much noise with too many cooks, so I figured that when we got close, I would share things with the guys to get final approval. It was great, it was awesome.
RD: You just mentioned working with Benny Grotto at Mad Oak, so was this your first-ever time working with a producer? You talked about how Robotic Hawks have mostly functioned in a DIY fashion, but when it came to working with Benny, what was the experience like and how were you able to connect with him?
TP: He was so great. As far as producers are concerned, we pretty much don’t really deal with them. I feel like we produce our music ourselves for the most part, I did the vocals [for the EP] somewhere else with my best friend Andy King, and then we sent the tracks to Paul. I didn’t even do the vocals with Benny because I like to spend a lot of time on it while slaving over every word and I certainly can’t pay for that kind of studio time.
RD: What are your thoughts on this upcoming show at The Shaskeen with Tree and these other bands?
TP: Man, I got a million thoughts about this. The people that are the promoters are Always Forward New Hampshire and they reached out to us for this show, which is amazing. That doesn’t happen nearly enough where people reach out to us without having a prior relationship, so this is a big win for us. We’re getting somewhere, people are noticing us and I took it as a win. For somebody to call and say, “Hey, we’re putting a show together, and I don’t know you, but I want you on it,” I want more of that and it was cool.
Then when they came back and said that Tree was going to headline, it was such a cool and serendipitous thing. We’re not a punk band, I think we’re a complicated band to characterize and book, to be honest. I just tell people that we’re a rock & roll band that writes pop music, but we play it really sloppy and loud with a punk energy, even though I kind of refuse to let anyone call us “punk.” I don’t go looking for punk shows because I don’t think it’s authentic, however, we can absolutely fit on a punk show that somebody wants us on, if that makes sense.
RD: Yeah, it does.
TP: That’s the other cool thing, this is kind of fulfilling this prophecy that I have where people just listen to us rather than gravitating towards whatever label I’m trying to assert so I don’t feel like a poser. It’s working, so it’s cool. Dave [Tree] is a character and I’m so f***in’ thrilled, it was not on my bingo card to be opening for Tree this year. I saw them play at one of the [Boston] Freedom Rallies a few years ago too, so it’s just a full circle moment. Tree was the first band I ever heard about when I moved to Boston in ‘94, everybody was talking about them, and here we are, they’re still standing.
RD: Looking forward into the next few months, are there any plans for Robotic Hawks to make a new record? You guys have been pretty prolific over the past few years with your output, so what’s in store for future recordings?
TP: The truth about the band is that if I book too many shows then we don’t get to write new music because we all want to be prepared for every time we play. We’re currently booked out until the end of February, and because of this, we’re just focused on being in shape, so once March hits, I want to hit the ground running and start writing again. I’d obviously like to make a big 10-song album and make this big, grand statement, which was what we wanted to do last time but once we got three songs in, we were like “What are we doing? Let’s just do these three and a cover and move on.” The plan again is to do a big large scale recording and come up with a new batch that’s representative of our next phase, but we might get impatient and record an EP again. It’s an interesting thing because we have to clear our heads because of the way we write.
I text myself lyrics all of the time with different ideas, concepts, words and phrases so when I’m ready to start working on stuff, I have that to go from. I can’t write music ahead of time, we gotta see what we’re feeling in the next moment, which is what I like about our band.