Astro Bug

AUSTIN, Texas - AstroBug -- By his own admission — via a Facebook post in early August — "it's been a minute" since the last time Nathan Hamilton released an album. "Like 12 years," the Austin songwriter continued. "But I suppose it happens when it happens."

Actually, it's been 13 years: Hamilton's last album, Beauty, Wit & Speed, was released in 2011. But never mind that. All that matters here is that "when it happens" part, because "it" finally is happening. Not One Among Us, Hamilton's sixth studio album, officially arrives on October 11, 2024. And as revealed from the first notes of the opening "Broken Vessels" (releasing as a single on September 1), it's an album quite unlike any he's ever made before in his three-decade recording career — which is, quite frankly, why he made it in the first place.

"Part of the reason it took me so long to make another record was, for a lot of that time, I didn't feel inspired to make one," he says. "I mean, I didn't want to make another record just for the sake of making something for the merch table." Instead, he made lots of other stuff. A skilled and experienced carpenter, he started his own millwork business and made (and still makes) cabinets. He scored an independent feature film (Fugitive Dreams), mounted a one man show of his visual art at the Center for Contemporary Arts in his hometown of Abilene, Tx and published a book of photographs and poetry (This Engineless Hour). All while continuing to gig regionally, embark on short tour runs now and then, and happily tending to the full-time responsibility of "being a dad to two young women," one soon to be fresh out of college and the other just starting.

"I was writing songs all along, too," Hamilton adds. "I never stopped writing. But I just wasn't really compelled to put anything out." That is, until he heard a song that flipped his switch — a shimmering whisper of pastoral psychedelia all the way from the Land of the Rising Sun, courtesy of an old acquaintance of his named Shotaro Miyamoto.

"I met Shotaro back in 2012, when I went to Japan to play a festival and his band, Nayuta, backed me up. They also played their own set, and I just really dug what they were doing. It was like Radiohead meets the Allman Brothers meets Flaming Lips! So right after the festival we got to talking about maybe collaborating sometime, but just never got around to it. Then, about three years ago, he and his band posted a video of this song called 'Sunshine Warp,' and I thought, 'Oh yeah — Shotaro!' I liked the song so much I reached out and asked him, out of the blue, 'Hey man, do you remember how 10 years ago, we talked about working together? Would you still be interested in that?' And he said, 'Yeah!'"

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"And that's how this whole record kind of started. I told him, 'Let me just send you one song, you do whatever you want with it, and we'll see how it goes.' I sent him this song 'Water Runs Clear,' and as soon as I listened to the track he sent back, I was all in. I was like, 'This is what I've been looking for!'"

More than half of the songs on Not One Among Us were recorded that way, with Hamilton sending Miyamoto lyrics and "very simple" guitar/vocal or piano/vocal demos and giving his collaborator (and eventual co-producer) across the ocean, free reign to do his own thing. I never told him what style or what instrumentation to use. I would just tell him things like, 'I see this as "water," or 'I see this as "silver," or whatever. It was almost childlike how simple our communication was. So it was a pretty wild experience, but I was blown away by everything he sent back and got so excited about the whole process of finding a way to sing with it, just finding my place in that sound."

Indeed, that sound — a quiet storm of spare, ghostly piano and guitar awash in ripples of synths and static crackles of rhythmic bleeps and loops — on first encounter feels worlds away from the Abilene, Texas-born troubadour's comfort zone. From his salad days playing Dallas open mics and Los Angeles coffeehouses to forming the Austin roots-rock band the Sharecroppers, winning the Kerrville Folk Festival's New Folk contest, and recording his first five critically acclaimed solo albums, Hamilton has spent most of his long career traversing the Americana landscape. And though he's successfully pulled off some thrilling hairpin turns along the way, most notably with the scorched-earth ferocity of 2007's Six Black Birds, the ambient electronica coursing through Not One Among Us is disorienting in an entirely different — but equally bracing — way.

"I didn't want to go back in and just do the same thing I've always done before," Hamilton says. "By which I mean, work out the songs, bring in the band, rehearse them together, and record. I don't have anything against any of that, but I'd done it so many times, you know? I wanted to do something completely different, where I surrendered control so I'd be thrown out of my old habits of knowing how to make a record or even knowing how to write a song. But what Shotaro did sonically really reflected everything I was feeling when I was writing the lyrics. There's beauty and chaos and dissonance, all at the same time."

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In terms of overarching theme, Hamilton describes the album as an examination of breakdowns in communication and brokenness in general — be it in a relationship, family, religion, or society as a whole. But also, crucially, it's a reflection on hope that such broken things might yet be mended, or at the very least laid to something approximating peaceful rest through resilience, faith, and empathy. As he sings in "Broken Vessels," a study in human frailty and strength as reflected through the Japanese art of kintsugi, "There's beauty in this cracked and broken vessel / its pieces held together with flowing veins of gold."

Although Hamilton and Miyamoto were never in the same room (let alone country) during the making of Not One Among Us, they will soon have the opportunity to play their songs together onstage — this time in Hamilton's native Texas. "I'm bringing Shotaro over for our album release shows here in Austin, on October 19th and then for another show the night before in Fort Worth." Both shows will also feature some of the longtime friends and bandmates (including Jeremy Menking on electric guitar and Mark Williams on cello and bass) who helped Hamilton finish the album in Austin, with his other co-producer, Britton Beisenherz (Milton Mapes, Monahans, Will Johnson). The Austin sessions (recorded at Ramble Creek Studio and Ten Roses Studio) were also graced by the harmony vocals of fellow local artists Gina Chavez, BettySoo, and Amanda Leggett — and two very special guests so close to Hamilton's heart, he candidly refers to them as the actual "Two Bright Coins" alluded to metaphorically in the album's penultimate track: His daughters Lila and Helena.

"They were both there with me in the studio at Ramble Creek back when I made Beauty, Wit & Speed, but just to watch me record and hang out," he recalls with a fond laugh. "So to have them come back there with me 12 years later to sing on this next record was pretty amazing. As far as I know, neither of them has any interest in pursuing music as a career, but they both have incredible voices. And having them both sing on 'Two Bright Coins' — that was a pretty powerful thing."

Album Release Shows:

October 18 -The Rose Chapel at Southside Preservation Hall - Fort Worth, Texas

October 19 - The Continental Gallery - Austin, Texas

November 1 - Anderson Fair - Houston, Texas

For more information please email:  irondust@aol.com
EPK: www.nathanhamilton.com/epk

For Booking please contact:  comboplatebooking@gmail.com