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Hillstomp: Rising From The Basement BluesArticle and Photos by Greg Johnson CBA BluesNotes July 2006 |
I’m not used to starting my night by heading out to hear Blues at 11:30 pm, but that is exactly what I am doing on this balmy Saturday night in May. It will take me a good half-hour-plus to drive across town, but the band I’m planning on seeing is the headliner of a triple bill and will not even begin until 12:30.
What is even more obscure is the fact that the venue the show is being held doesn’t normally cater to a music crowd. They’re more used to showcasing a little more risqué entertainment involving women with little or no clothing whatsoever. But every now and then they turn the mirrored stage with the small sign reading “Booty Hill” over to bands. Tonight is one of those occasions.
Entering The Devil’s Point, the small room with the red and black walls is filled with a much younger crowd than you may be used to seeing at a typical Blues show. But this is not a typical Blues show or crowd. Tattoos on bared skin are abundant about the room and the beverage of choice appears to be Pabst Blue Ribbon. Hair is dyed various colors and there is a lot of leather. One young lady who must be one of the regular entertainers wanders throughout the room, but perhaps nobody told her that music was being featured tonight as she is clad in only her bra and a g-string.
The night’s second band is still on stage in full fervor. Seattle’s Sugar Farm pounds out an onslaught of heavy-chorded alternative riffs tinted with Blues. The crowd is jumping, but most are clearly anticipating the headliner. As Sugar Farm finishes their set, removing their equipment from the stage, an odd ensemble is brought up to replace it. A handful of guitars and amps do not seem out of place, but other than a kick drum and cymbals the percussion kit is made up of household items like plastic buckets and a barbecue lid. And there appears to be duct-tape stretched over everything. Including the microphones.
Henry Kammerer picks up a guitar and takes a seat, while John Johnson sits behind the make-shift drum kit directly next to him. Looking like innocent cherubs as they start to play there is no mistake that they mean business. It’s a sound that you would have thought had been birthed in the Hill Country of Northern Mississippi. It fits easily alongside patterns laid down by musicians like Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour and R.L. Burnside. They even call themselves Hillstomp. But with with these guys, that is as close to Mississippi you’re going to get. Because this band came to life in a basement in Portland. And judging from their gear, they didn’t leave the basement far behind.
Hillstomp has only been a working band for just a few short years. But they are starting to attract the type of attention that many musicians never see in a lifetime. Their latest release, “The Woman That Ended The World,” received high critical notice from XM satellite radio’s Bluesville station, garnering a “Pick-To-Click” with their song “Jackson Parole Board Blues.” They have seen constant touring as of late, including a recent trip to England and another European trip scheduled for later this fall. But what is highly unusual about the recognition that this CD has received is the fact that other than selling it from the stage and having it available on a local level, it was never officially released nationally until mid-May.
Henry and John first met one another while working for a local seafood restaurant. They had a common bond in music, but until he met Henry, John had never really paid attention to the Blues. And even Henry’s introduction to the genre was a bit out of the ordinary. Both had left their hometowns to move to Portland about eight-to-nine years ago. Looking to escape cold weather, they also had a vision to move someplace that they could break into the music scene. Seattle had a demanding scene earlier, but by the time they chose to relocate Seattle had already began to pale. Portland was a town they had heard good things about from many of their friends, and each with no knowledge of the other made their trek to The Rose City.
Henry Kammerer grew up in Salt Lake City. A town he describes as having no culture whatsoever. Feeling that his life was sheltered, he considers himself the classic example of a high school geek, who spent his time alone playing guitar rather than hanging out, dancing and drinking with friends. He had taken a guitar class taught at school, though it was pretty much basic training. Even after ten years of playing what he’d learned, he still had no idea that a guitar had more than one tuning. Upon discovering paths beyond Open Tuning, new doors opened for him as songs he’d been trying to replicate from records suddenly made sense.
It was during a trip to New York City that he first found exposure to Blues. He took in a concert in Central Park. But the concert was not a Blues show. It was actually a performance by Rock star Phil Collins, who was featuring a special guest on stage with him that day that caught Henry’s ear. Somebody that Henry claims he’d never heard of before that show: Eric Clapton. So enamored with the guitarist, he went out and bought a box-set of Clapton’s work. He enjoyed all of the phases of his career in the collection, but it was the music of Clapton’s early years he favored most. Especially the music of The Yardbirds.
The music also brought an interest in slide guitar and he decided to teach himself how to play. It is something that many Hillstomp fans have taken notice of due to the odd manner he uses the slide on his index finger. Henry tells most interviewers that it made more sense to him, as it left his fingers below the slide to easier maneuver chords and to dampen the strings. But John Johnson urges him to tell the true story; that when he went out and bought his slide, his forefinger was the only one it’d fit on.
John Johnson himself had spent twenty-three winters in frigid Minneapolis when he decided that he’d had enough and wanted a change of scenary. Playing music since he was in the second grade, he had worked as a Jazz saxophonist through his college years. Originally he thought that this was something that he’d do for a living, but after a while he just couldn’t stand it anymore and quit cold turkey. Taking up the bass guitar, John started working in a number of Hard Rock bands first in Minnesota and then in Portland. And though it was something that he had always wanted to do, he had never played drums.
In Minneapolis, Blues was not a music John really thought about. He relates this more to the period in time than anything else. Most of the Blues he heard was from second-or-third generation Chicago artists or guitarists who emulated Stevie Ray Vaughan. It just didn’t appeal to him. Even to this day he prefers more basic forms with a simpler, dirtier and raw flavor. In fact, John cites that his two favorite artists of any genre are Miles Davis and Neil Young. “Both could take a single note and milk it for all that it’s worth,” he states. “They could say more within that single note than many can say in a whole set running up and down a guitar neck as fast as they can.”
It wasn’t until he became friends with Henry that John first started listening to the Blues in a different perspective. Henry took him to a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion concert; not really a Blues show, but the opening set was an artist named Bob Log III. Truly an enigma, Log performs his shows wearing a motorcycle helmet with a microphone inside of it, while playing a kick-drum and slide guitar as a solo act. He keeps his real identity secret, but he enchanted the two young men and brought their focus to the Fat Possum label where he has released a trio of recordings. Delving into the Fat Possum catalog, the pair soon discovered Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside and something about this basic Hill Country music possessed the young men.
The music inspired them to start gathering in their basement, where Henry would work at capturing these sounds on guitar. John, who had never tried his hand at playing drums before, began to pull out objects from around the basement to accompany Henry percussively. A cardboard box, some old plastic buckets and the lid from the barbecue he found under the stairs. It had a odd sound, but it seemed to work in their mind and for the next three weeks they continued creating this musical mixture.
.It is uncertain what impelled them to head down to The Green Room for an open mike night. In retrospect they now feel as if it might’ve been too soon. Up until they took the stage that night, the show had been the typical songwriter with an acoustic guitar; eliciting the usual courteous applause from the audience, mostly made up of family and friends. For their first number, Hillstomp chose the Delta classic “Rollin’ And Tumblin’,” knowing full well that their rendition was not the best out there, so they played it as fast as they could. Within seconds, the crowd took notice and half stepped up toward the stage with an expression of “What the hell is this?” They had definitely illicited a reaction.
The Green Room led to other open mike nights around town, which continued to have the same effect with those in attendance. Feeling there may be something happening with their efforts, Hillstomp decided to make a demo in their basement and shopped it around Portland in search of potential work. To their surprise, the demo garnered a steady Tuesday night gig at The Twilight Room. And then The Laurelthirst took them on regularly, too. It was quite exciting for Henry who was playing in his first band and John who had only been playing drums for a few months.
Opportunities for other venues continued to become available and the next step up for the band was a booking as an opening act at Duff’s Garage. The bill was headlined by a combination of renowned local guitarists Mark Lemhouse, Dylan Thomas Vance and Joe McMurrian, a trio that Hillstomp has great admiration for and Henry jokingly refers to as “Dylan-Joe-Mc-Lemhouse.”
“I was pretty much scared to death playing on the same stage as those guys,” admits Henry. But the band held up strongly alongside the veteran musicians and each were very complimentary of the young band. “It gave us a feeling that we were a legitimate act,” Henry continues. “We just didn’t get blown off the stage by those guys. I don’t know of many musicians who wouldn’t.”
Hillstomp began making more friends throughout the Portland music scene; especially amongst other younger bands favoring Roots and Alternative sounds such as Moonshine Hangover, Spigot and I Can Lick Any Son Of A Bitch In The House. And it was through such associations they found their first chance to create a full-length CD. Recorded at It’s Cold, It Stinks And I Don’t Like The Way It Sounds Studios in Portland, the debut album was titled “One Word.” A collection of a handful of original material and longtime favorites from the North Mississippi Hill Country such as “Long Haired Doney” and “Shake ‘Em On Down.”
To promote the new CD, a release party was scheduled at The White Eagle. Nobody was prepared for what occurred that night. The band had posted flyers for the show and received a little bit of press as well. Expectations were that if a hundred people would show up they would be pleased. At 8:00 pm the pair were hoping that somebody would show up. But by 10:00 the venue was packed with many more waiting outside the door to get in as the room had reached its capacity. John remembers thinking, “Oh my God, who are all of these people? And what are we going to do?”
The patrons were eating up Hillstomp’s ferocious performance completely. Dancing in room barely enough to stand in. People stood on chairs and tables trying to see the band and avoid being crushed in the crowd. There was even clothes being removed in front of the stage. I mentioned later in my review of the album, a comment from KBOO Blues DJ Tom Wendt, “Don’t tell these kids that they’re listening to Blues, otherwise they may not like it.” It was a frightening and stressful night for Hillstomp, but it helped pave the way for other larger venues around town such as Dante’s and the Doug Fir Lounge, both who tend to cater to the younger, alternative audience. It was a sign that Hillstomp was in store for much larger things to come.
That summer Hillstomp saw an opportunity to expose themselves to a huge, already-made audience by busking on the streets near the Waterfront Blues Festival. They had worked several locations along Naito Drive and Tom McCall Waterfront Park, being moved away from each. Then they decided to set up outside the main gate at Second and Columbia while Steve Miller performed in the park. People walking in and out of the park were taken by the sounds they heard and a crowd began to form. And it grew and grew, causing a good portion of SW Second to be consumed by blocked traffic and the gates to the park were backed up. They were lucky not to be arrested, but it gained the attention of festival booking agent Peter Dammann who enlisted the pair to perform at the following year’s event. It was one of those moments that live fondly in their memory; what they refer to as “the day they cut Steve Miller’s head.”
Thanks again to their friends from I Can Lick Any Son Of A Bitch In The House, Hillstomp began to receive bookings from locations outside of the Portland area. Some of the venues were set up directly by the other band and until they arrived it was unknown exactly what type of crowd they would be playing before. Often it was quite scary and they could only hope for the best.
One such venue was The Double Down in Las Vegas. Upon arrival they both thought that they’d made a terrible mistake taking the gig. The room, described by John as “gnarly, seedy and dark,” catered to a very hard-core Punk crowd. “It wasn’t the type of place you’d want to wear open toed shoes,” John continues. They were to play third on a five-band bill. Used to setting up on stage sitting side-by-side, they found there wasn’t enough room to do so. So instead, they just set up their gear on the floor in front of the stage. Scared to death of what may come, they closed their eyes and started to play. Halfway through the second song, John opened his eyes and discovered forty dollars had been placed on his kick drum. Looking out into the crowd, the place was jumping about having a great time, many doing the Chicken Dance. It was totally unexpected and another of their favorite memories of performances. The Double Down has since become a regular stop on all Hillstomp tours.
And the tours keep coming. The success behind their second CD, “The Woman That Ended The World” has made the demand for Hillstomp even greater. Venues throughout the West, Southwest, Midwest and Midsouth regularly call to book the band. One tour of England has already occurred, but they will be returning to the United Kingdom this fall as the new CD’s popularity raised the interest of a festival in Belfast, where they have been booked for several days of performances. Something they hope they can extend to a short blitz of the main continent with shows in Holland, Belgium and Germany.
The CD has seen local acclaim also. It was selected by Willamette Week newspaper as the best release in Portland in 2005; something that took the pair completely by surprise.
In appearance Hillstomp may not seem like your everyday Blues band. Driving to gigs in an SUV, it almost looks like parents showing up for their kids’ soccer practice. They also receive odd expressions from parties they’re invited to on the road with barbecues. It isn’t every Blues band that might ask if the meat they’re being served is free range. Hillstomp is definitely a band of a new generation. And though they may still be booked in clubs that attract the alternative audience more than Blues venues, they always make a point to let everybody know who they are and what they are. Every show opens with, “Hey everybody, we’re the Hillstomp Blues Band. We’re from Portland, Oregon!” It is a name that more people will become familiar with for certain.