Catching Up with James Hall
Friday, March 28th, 2008
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. (more…)
