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About This Project: Broken Angels

A few years ago I was sitting around talking with a friend of mine, a wonderful writer of prose who called himself Edward Bear. He has published many a good book and I enourage you to surf them down on the web.

We were talking about the "broken" state of things, namely of the human condition. It was a chat about the disconnection we felt from other people, from our dreams, from Spirit, and the sometimes crazy things we seemed to do in an attempt to reconnect. Edward Bear and I had more than a few chats like that.

It was some time after that when Edward came down with throat cancer. He passed away about a year after I first learned of his condition. As he was getting ready to head for other realities than this earthly one, I was thinking back to our little chats and I wrote the song "Broken Angels", as a reflection and in some respects an honoring of our times together.

In June of 2011, during another one of Victoria's journeys back from medical disaster, when she was laid up from a surgery, I went down to my little basement studio and I setup some video cameras to play with learning the program Final Cut Pro. I cut several songs that day in video and audio programs, among them the song "Broken Angels". Late in 2011 I got a call from my friend Dana Walden, who is a virtuoso keyboardist and songwriter, and he told me he was looking for some singer songwriter stuff for a film called Abel's Field that he was helping with. I sent him all those videos of me playing live, just guitar and vocal.

In February of 2012 I was invited to attend the premiere of Abel's Field at Paramount studios in LA, as the Producers and Director had placed the song "Broken Angels" in the film. To my surprise and somewhat amazement, it turns out they had placed the song at a key point in the film, a fact that was only revealed to me as I sat in that theater watching the film for the first time. It was quite a moment, as they used the stark version, just voice and guitar, exactly as I had recorded it live.

I decided I wanted to do an acoustic project and release versions of several songs in an intimate style, very warm and unadorned. So I recorded about 30 songs. Then I decided that due to mics, acoustics in my little studio and a variety of other reasons that I was not happy with the sound of any of them, and picked 10 to re-record. Those are the tracks in this project. I used my beautiful hand made breedlove dreadought, my 50 year old guild acoustic in an open G tuning, and on one tune an inexpensive Fender resonator guitar. Victoria played all the harmonica, as I wanted to feature her unique and magical playing, and I played an old Squier Fender P Bass. I used some medicine drum samples and various shakers for the minimal percussion that is on the project. We used the "original Avantone" mics, the ones made back when Ken Avant owned the Avantone brand, for vocals and guitar.

The result is this warm, intimate set of songs. Many of them I recorded in lower keys than I would often use live, since I was able to sing more softly and create that feeling of closeness. In a band setting, or noisy live environment I would not be able to do some of these songs the same way. Certainly I plan to record versions of some of these with a different presentation, but for this project I wanted the listener within a few feet of me, so to speak. The listener is so close, in fact, that the odd creak of a house floor board in the middle of the night can be heard if you listen closely enough, and perhaps some of you can email me and explain why houses always seem to like to creak at 2 AM when all is otherwise quiet with the world, or maybe that's just when we can hear them talking to us.

The theme is broken"ness", though always with hope. It is true that we are strongest at the places we were once broken and now have mended. So each song, however bittersweet, offers a glimpse of what lies beyond the broken places. As a bonus track at the end of the project I included an 11th song, which is the version of "Broken Angels" that was used in the Abel's Field film and which is slated to appear on the soundtrack project. That film is due out in January of 2013 and is being distributed by Sony.

This is one of those "quiet time" recordings. It is meant for the off hours- in between the rush and the crush of those things we think we need to accomplish. It has been presented from a place of very specific intent, which is to provide the listener with quiet sound in a noisy world, and comfort in the knowing that there are so many "Broken Angels" walking amongst us, most assuredly including me.

Enjoy

Walk in Beauty

Wes Hamil