Philly psychedelic folk rock band Henbane edges toward the spotlight after years underground

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In a music landscape increasingly shaped by algorithm-generated playlists — flattened, bland and built for clicks — Philadelphia psychedelic folk-rock band Henbane is carving out a more colorful and provocative sound.

The five-piece band filters traditional British folk music through exploratory jams, basement experimentation and years spent in the trenches of Philly’s underground music world.

Their combined decades of experience have led them to a milestone: Henbane has completed recording and mixing its debut album and hopes to release it in the coming months.

The band draws deeply from the same well as late ’60s and early ’70s British folk-rock legends Fairport Convention and Pentangle. They are not a tribute act, however. They treat those traditions as raw material and put their own stamp on them. Old ballads get stretched into mesmerizing excursions, alternating between quiet contemplative beauty and expansive, rollicking jams.

Finding the right bandmates

The band, which started in 2022 with drummer Scott Verrastro and bassist Griffin Vernor Drutchas at its core, has evolved into a tightly connected five-piece lineup featuring guitarist John Comune, violinist John Coursey and vocalist Eva Sheppard.

Verrastro said it can be hard to find the right mix of personnel for a project like Henbane because many musicians are “too sterile and risk-avoidant, or they don’t have the capacity to play really refined and beautifully.” But the right combination can hone a conventional composition just as skillfully as it can explore an esoteric improvisation, he said.

It’s been a long time coming, Verrastro said.

“I’m an obsessive with U.K. folk and things like Fairport Convention and Pentangle and that whole scene,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time.”

Henbane shines most brightly in that narrow space between strict discipline and the collapse of all barriers. It’s common for a song to begin with careful precision before morphing into feral free-form improvisation.

The chemistry within the band was built over years building relationships in Philadelphia’s underground scene. Comune has played with Verrastro for years in the heavy psych trio Bitter Wish. Sheppard’s father, Jesse, plays with Verrastro in the Heavy Lidders.

“There’s a lot of history among us, even before this band got together,” Coursey said. “Even outside of this band, we’re playing with each other in other projects. That comes through, I think, in our performances and how we play together.”

Coursey also plays with Verrastro and Drutchas in experimental psych improv band Kohoutek.

Verrastro describes Henbane as a “family band,” with plenty of collaboration and enduring friendships among the members.

“We’re basically three Gen X dudes, a millennial dude and a Gen Z lady who are all friends,” he said.

For Drutchas, the first glimpse of Henbane emerged while performing Fairport Convention’s version of the song “A Sailor’s Life” with a previous group he was in. They were consciously “trying to mix the more sludgy psych stuff with folk.”

’70s British folk music as ‘gateway drug’

Each band member cites Fairport Convention’s classic 1969 album “Liege and Lief” as a key influence.

A self-professed former metalhead, Verrastro recalled the moment he borrowed the record from his uncle.

“I put on ‘Liege and Lief,’ and I was like: ‘What is this? It’s so cool. I never heard anything like it,’” he said. “Because it was a gateway drug … one of the most absolutely influential records in my life. I didn’t know what folk music could be until I heard that record.”

His next discovery was Pentangle. His immediate takeaway: “This is dark; this is heavy.”

That head-on collision between delicacy and weight still defines Henbane’s style. Drutchas described his own musical journey as a gradual funnel toward the band’s sound, moving from “stoner Deadhead” jam bands to country rock to heavier and increasingly experimental music.

With Henbane, Drutchas said, “it all kind of clicked.”

“The thing I love,” he pointed out, “is we can go from really loud to really quiet — something really delicate to something pretty intense.”

Sheppard, the youngest band member, grew up amid Philadelphia’s underground music community through her father’s involvement in bands like Elkhorn.

She grew up studying classical singing and as a teenager, attended the School of Rock, where she performed an eclectic range, from Led Zeppelin to Frank Zappa to Aretha Franklin, before drifting toward improvised experimental basement shows in college.

“That’s what I really enjoy about singing in this band. It’s kind of an intersection of a lot of different types of genres and feelings,” Sheppard said.

She initially drew inspiration from British folk singers Shirley Collins and Sandy Denny, though her bandmates insist she has developed a unique voice of her own.

For Verrastro, the appeal of early British folk-rock was never nostalgia. It was the restless spirit that made those old records feel dangerous in the first place.

“Those bands in the early ’70s could stretch out,” he said. “They took risks. Every show was different. That’s the whole point.”

That spirit was on display earlier this spring, when the band performed a live score to experimental filmmaker Susan Kleckner’s “Desert Pieces” at the Bok Auditorium in South Philly. Henbane’s celestial backdrop to the 60-minute film wove four songs together with long stretches of improvisation, with Sheppard’s vocals floating above the din.

Reflecting on the experience, Verrastro described working with Kleckner’s “progressive and intensely personal art” as incredibly rewarding.

A breakout waiting in the wings

Denizens of the city’s underground music scene know Philadelphia as a hotbed of fearless, adventurous talent that defies mainstream classification.

Henbane’s musical curiosity spurs the band onward.

“I’ve always thought there’s been great music here, but really these days there’s so much,” Verrastro said. “There’s a great improv, experimental noise scene here. There’s a lot of heavy stuff.”

Henbane recorded its six-song debut album at Jeff Zeigler’s Uniform Recording studio in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. Comune recalled the session as unusually smooth.

“Going in the studio can be arduous, painful and long, but we just got really good takes that we could use very quickly,” he said.

Additional contributions for the record were made by early band member Jesse Sparhawk, who lent his immense talents on pedal steel, harp, mandolin and acoustic guitar.

According to Verrastro, the record reflects the full spectrum of Henbane’s sound.

“There are two traditional British folk ballads, one obscure cover and three originals, ranging in sound from delicate folk to heavy psych riffage to orchestrated Laurel Canyon country rock,” he said.

As they prepare for the album’s release, the bandmates hope that, if the record lands with the right label, it will lead to more touring.

Regardless of the band’s next steps, their guiding principle seems highly unlikely to change. Henbane isn’t trying to recreate the past, but they are striving to recover the unpredictability that made those old records feel so subversive in the first place.