Hamilton Yarns | pl

Hamilton Yarns formed in the winter of two thousand and two with a desire to tell tales.

Iain Paxon, Alistair Strachan and Richard Herring started the ball rolling with a series of songs woven together by a fanfare of lost horns and stubby fingered guitar picking.

The CD Homing Calls was recorded with vocal help from Jo and Sam

Hamilton Yarns played various gigs in their home town of Brighton England and sometimes places further afield like Norwich and London.

The CD As Far As You Can was recorded with vocal help from Joss. Iain bought a piano and songs started taking on a musichall flavour

Richard went on holiday

Caroline Weeks joined on flute and voice on a bunch of increasingly character based songs made up from half truths and allegories.

Hamilton Yarns performed If The Wind Is Still accompanied by silhoette slide shows to illustrate the tales.

The musical Bird Boy was written in the autumn of two thousand and three with much assistance from Blue Monsoon and vocal help from Joss, Sam, James and others. The recording will be finished one day.

The next Yarns set was called Mr Jack. This brought the creaking harmonium back into play. Mr Jack was performed on two very atmospheric occasions. The first was at CWM in Snowdonia, Wales, in an old stone barn. The second was a Halloween performance in the Permanent Gallery in Brighton, in a room surrounded by artworks depicting the tale Mr Jack.

Mr Jack was captured on tape in summer two thousand and four, and it includes outdoor recordings. Alistair serenaded the hermit crabs in a rockpool in Rottingdean by playing cornet into the water.

A new set of songs came along in the winter, and were performed at the Quaker house in Brighton, in a show supporting Ron Geesin. You can read about it in this review from The Wire.

During two thousand and five the group recorded quite a lot of songs, but were puzzled as to what to do with them. By the end of the year they had found the answer. With the money in the bank (see below)they decided to make a LP.

In the summer they played in the foyer of the Barbican as part of the Contemporary Folk Archive exhibition. People sat on the carpet and ate their lunch, listening politely.
The art world called again - this time the group were invited to Camden Art Centre to play as part of Hayley Newman's performance piece Their feet should not touch anything solid, in which they made music only when lifted off the ground by the audience. The following month they were asked back for the Summer Fair. They played in the garden. People came by in their ones and twos, nodding off in the sun.

Next minute it was Winter, and the group were playing in upstairs rooms, such as this one in the Albert pub.

The group released the LP The Show-boat, Over in two thousand and six and launched it at The Permanent Gallery in Brighton, surrounded by drawings of the instruments.

An old minesweeper on Deptford Creek welcomed the Yarns on board in Springtime for a stationary musical cruise throught the mud. By the end they were bobbing slightly.

In Cromer, Norfolk, Diane and Utrophia put on an idyllic mini-festival in a secret valley, and the group provided, amongst other things, a cautionary tale in puppet form.
If you think Deptford Creek is a rough ride, you should try Newhaven to Dieppe. Autumn was Paris time. A paired down Hamilton Yarns headed the long way round, over some treacherous waters, to a small gallery where a quiet show took place to a very polite French audience. Tres bien!

The Dexter Bently Show welcomed the group to the Resonance FM studios for a live broadcast and an over the road show at the 12 Bar in the evening. There was a good view from the balcony.

The London School Of Economics has a very nice library surrounded by portraits of interesting looking gentlemen. And 2 pianos. The group played to a painfully (in a good way) quiet crowd with August sunlight streaming in from the balcony windows. People listened, some read books.

"What is that?" was Rob's thought as he first clocked eyes on Peasenhall Village Hall. Then he put a Winter Fayre on there, as a way of finding out. Hamilton Yarns found out it was a painfully (in a BAD way)noisey place full of drunk people more interested in the Tombola than some quiet out-of-towners. Attention was grabbed for a moment as the now reurrected Bird Boy musical was presented as a Slide Show and Rhyme story, unfolding in all its gorey. The competition to write a chorus for the song 'Newhaven to Dieppe' was won by a nice lady from the village.

Hibernation and recording was halted briefly for a show at The West Hill Hall in Brighton. Blue premiered her Holiday-On-Ice-meets- Moondog-at-a-Jousting-Weekender romp,'Bronze Age Rapier' and the crowd went wild (inside)...

Recording continued into the small hours. Meanwhile, the world was slowly catching up. Remember that LP?

BPM became a new phrase in the Yarns vocab as new songs took on an insistent rhythmic quality. Bring on the dancers!

* * * * * *

The group were asked to play on Easter Sunday, and they took the chance to re-enact the last days of Christ in puppet form, with Roman badgers and a Sooty Jesus. Afterwards as a finale they were joined by a couple of singing human insects.

* * * * * *

Well, that takes us to 2007... head over to the Scrapbook to see what else the group got up to. .