Album Notes

Sally Ellyson - Vocals
Dan Messé - Piano, Accordion, Celeste, Glockenspiel
Gary Maurer - Guitar, Mandolin
Steve Curtis - Guitar, Mandolin, Banjo, Backing Vocals
George Rush - Upright Bass, Backing Vocals
Mark Brotter - Drums
Bob Hoffnar - Pedal Steel Guitar
Heather Zimmerman - Violin


The New York collective of musicians that make up Hem have, in two albums and only a few years, mapped out one of the most alluring soundscapes in all of contemporary American music.

Rustic and raw in one moment, sweeping and cinematic the next, Hem’s debut album Rabbit Songs set a standard for new Americana among listeners and critics: “American music doesn’t get any better than this” (Magnet); “Hem has defined a sound - dreamy and detailed, intimate and horizon-eyed” (Washington Post). Following a feature on NPR, the then-virtually-unknown record climbed to #1 on Amazon.com, as listeners who knew they had stumbled on a rare thing spread the word.

Hem’s music combines strains of traditional Americana with everything from chamber music to Tin Pan Alley to Rock, and all of these elements are drawn into more fine focus on their second album, Eveningland. With the support of Dreamworks Records, the company of an entire symphony orchestra, and a year in the studio, the band brought forth a set of songs that were just as sparkly and hushed as their debut, but that benefited from the confidence and musical understanding that was forged in the time the band spent on the road.

“If Rabbit Songs suggested Hem was one of the most promising new acts of the decade, then Eveningland, quite simply, delivers on that promise” wrote No Depression. The New York Times proclaimed their “allusive, haunting songs” to be a resurgence of the great “Countrypolitan” innovations of George Jones and Ray Charles.

After a recent stint on the road with Elvis Costello in the summer of 2005, Hem returned to the studio to work on the first of two new records they will release on their own imprint label, Waveland Records, in the coming year. No Word From Tom is a collection of “Covers, Rarities, Outtakes, Demos and Live Recordings” that features highlights from their musical journey over the past five years. It begins with an a acapella lullaby (taken from the same homemade tape that originally introduced Sally Ellyson to the band), and then proceeds into a spine-tingling take on Tony Jo White’s classic “A Rainy Night in Georgia.” From there, Hem proceeds to re-interpret their entire songbook, while also offering up covers of everything from archetypal American music like “Crazy Arms” and “Tennessee Waltz” to modern favorites by R.E.M. and Fountains of Wayne.

No Word From Tom is about how music can change and grow over time; how a song like “Idle” (from Rabbit Songs) can evolve from the hushed chamber-folk arrangement on the album into a rousing live track, how a purely instrumental track like “Cincinnati Traveler” (from Eveningland) can have a lyric written for it, and how that song, in turn, can become a new song altogether called “The City and the Traveler.”

Hem began as a low-budget but passionate collaboration among a few friends and has grown over time into the nine-piece collective it is today. Their dedication to exploring the American Songbook and their resolve to add to it has led Hem to this exciting new album.

Following this album’s release in February 2006, the band’s anticipated next original record will arrive in the summer of 2006. Look for North American and UK tour dates in the upcoming months.