Catching Up with James Hall
March 28th, 2008 by Chad Radford in Music news
James Hall
James Hall (photo by Anya Dupree)Â
James Hall was an alternative rock fixture in Atlanta in the late 1980s, a time when the word “alternative” implied a sense of outsider pop nobility and creativity. In the Reagan era it was a guiding light for Hall’s tasteful merger of post-punk and art rock songwriting with his band Mary My Hope, which he led from 1987 to 1990.
The group’s most acclaimed release, Museum, was released in 1989 on Silvertone Records, and mixes a palette of post-punk, pop, folk and gothic nuances. The record is now an artifact of the era which surfaces in the used record stores from time to time, but is long out of print.
After parting ways with Mary My Hope, Hall embarked on a solo career that landed him in New Orleans in the early ’90s. Various configurations of solo and band efforts took shape under the guise of the Pleasure Club. Through it all he has bounded from label to label, including the Indigo Girls’ Daemon Records, Geffen and MCA.
On Saturday, April 29th Hall Returns to Atlanta to headline a solo gig at The Star Bar, fleshing out new material and preparing to take on a new chapter in his career.
Are you touring in support of a new record?
We are doing regional (Southeast) shows with an interest in solidifying new songs for a record. We have been mixing songs tracked over the last year and a half and have enlisted the help of our friend and family member, Mike Froedge (Double Drive, Open Sky Separators) to help us realize the songs’ potential. Often there are some sixty songs going into an LP, and they cannot all make it, so they are often selected for their quality based on content as well as their recorded rendering.
Are you performing as the Pleasure Club or is this a new group?
Pleasure Club broke up a few months before Katrina, but we enjoyed two great records and many live performances. This show will be billed as “James Hall” for name recognition, if nothing else. However, this band with Chris Piskun (guitar), Bruce B (bass) and Ali Warren (drums) [is] continuing to deliver performances that are as wild and compelling as anything I’ve ever been a part of. The response to our new songs is encouraging with people singing along to songs that we’ve yet to even record.
Can you give me a quick history lesson on your time in Atlanta?
I moved to Atlanta in the summer of 1987 to form the first serious band, Mary My Hope. Mary My Hope has enjoyed a status that at a local level could be described as legendary. Whether it was youth or our daring creativity that fueled the legend is anyone’s guess. Maybe it was the fact that we were able to synthesize our influences in a cohesive way. I do know that we were often at odds with the musical climate of the eighties, especially in Georgia. I count myself lucky to have been around Clint Steele (guitar), Sven Pipien (bass) and Steve Lindenbaum (drums) who had years on me in terms of songwriting ability and sheer creativity. I was 21 or 22 when I felt that the pressures of management and label were starting to stifle our ability to get along, let alone create. I left the band in 1990 to make a fresh start. I also knew that I had some growing (up) to do. I settled in New Orleans and started doing solo shows. Atlanta was often in my routing when I hit the road with my new band, and always seemed to show me regard no matter where I was living. So to end up here after so many years is fitting, if not downright prodigious.
I have heard rumors that you have worked closely with the members of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. Can you tell me more about your relationship with them?
One of Mary My Hope’s most prestigious shows was opening for Love and Rockets at The Fox Theater in 1989. Over the years since, I’ve had the great pleasure of getting to know [them]. During the recording of one of David J’s songs, he asked if I could play the trumpet. I said I wanted to, but couldn’t fly out for the session, as my son at the time was newborn. He asked if I’d mind phoning it in… So I used the home phone as the microphone and the office phone as the monitor. And it worked!! Song was called “Hoagy Carmichael Never Went to New Orleans.” I Don’t know what record it ended up on. [note: “Hoagy Carmichael…” appears on David J’s 1992 album, Urban Urbane]. There are a long list of artists and bands I’ve been able to share the stage with over the years. Some of the most memorable are Jane’s Addiction, Morphine, Satchel, Robert Roth and Rage Against the Machine. My heroes have encouraged me to follow inspired thought first, and that has had a funny way of rewarding materially as well.
James Hall plays The Star Bar on Sat., March 29 w/Run Run Run and Program the Dead. $10. 9 p.m.
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