Hammingwell… Past and Present

Picture it - 1972. Bell-bottoms are all the rage; polyester shirts and long hair dominate the scene. A few hippies meet… through their mutual love of music, a friendship began, a musical friendship. They jammed along with records of their favorite artists for several months. It was purely a basement jam band, never leaving the confines of their homes for bigger venues.

The band started working on enough cover material to fill up a few sets. At that time, underage and known as Mainstream, they played clubs on weekends and attended high school on weekdays. In the mid '70s, Mainstream jammed regularly and honed their skills, but still hadn't written anything original. Now was the time to re-focus. Realizing that to get anywhere in the music business they were going to have to write their own material, they began to do just that.

They changed the band's name to Hammingwell. Weeks were spent writing, trying to emulate their music heroes (the progressive rock groups of the era), but with their own flare and style. "If they can do it, we can too," was their philosophy at the time. The band wrote and recorded a concert's worth of music, mostly in that familiar basement and sometimes in actual recording studios, but never played it live.

Life happened…

Picture it - 2000. Bell-bottoms are all the rage; polyester shirts and long hair again dominate the scene. A few hippies meet… much to everyone's surprise, after 25 years of not playing together, playing some old Hammingwell original tunes felt good. Maybe now their music had potential! They decided to get together on a regular basis… back to the basement, to re-write some of the overly pretentious songs that youth had inspired. Two of those, Quiet Walks and Harvested, appear on the debut CD "Warm".

They set about to refine and write more material, and bought a 16-track digital recording unit to capture the material. Recording on their debut CD started in Dec '01 when the drum tracks were laid down. Through '02 and on into '03, the band worked on recording the rest of the instruments and vocals on all the songs.

They played such venues as The Republic and the Ship Inn. They hosted Hammingwell's Follies, an eclectic showcase of Newfoundland talent. Most recently they presented Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" album in its entirety, complete with videos and quadraphonic sound. The show was presented at The Basement in downtown St. John's in Feb '03 to a full house.

This was repeated a few times to raise money to get the debut CD properly mixed, mastered and manufactured. This long awaited CD was released on Thursday, July 10, 2003 at - you guessed it - The Basement!!

The band is currently working on new material for their next CD, and is arranging gigs and concerts where and when possible, re-inventing a long-ago dream to play their own music live to a welcoming audience.

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Requests for information should
be directed to:
Angry Sea Productions
709-722 - 9600
or angrysea@nl.rogers.com