Ed Hamell, the singer-songwriter who performs under the name Hamell on Trial, is lots of different things. He’s the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie, Lenny Bruce, and Warren Zevon; one wham-bam mad word-slinger six times more rhymin’ than Simon; the king of the rant, the spiel, and the tall tale that just happens to be true; the badass god of the heavily amplified acoustic guitar; a lover of life’s losers and undisputed champion of the chumps in the cellar; and like he says right on the cover of his brand new LP, the happiest man in the world.
Hamell, who has been the world’s best one man rock’n’roll band since 1989, first in his birthplace of Syracuse NY, then in Austin TX where he won an ardent following, and now back in New York, has written more great songs than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has hooves. And their range! His tunes vary from the hilarious “I Hate Your Kid” to the lovely and haunting “Hail” (about gay martyrs Teena Brandon and Matthew Shephard) to the drug nightmare “Apartment #4” to “First Date,” which relates the tale of a guy who gets completely loaded on his way to a blind date, singing, “Baby, baby/I’ll be true to you” to the oldies station, so loaded in fact he decides to strip out of his clothes on her doorstep before passing out. Ah, but there’s a happy ending, in which the two end up marrying and singing, “Baby, baby/I’ll be true to you.”
Hamell, who has lived the drug life and come out the other side, is by turns pissed-off at the powers that be, one spiritual dude, a horny bastard, a sympathetic champion of the damaged, downtrodden, and the damned, and one very kind and hopeful man, despite his intimate knowledge of the way this world has of bringing the boot down hard on the best that’s inside us.
Hamell on Trial has released numerous (I’m talking at least a dozen, and probably more) LPs on a variety of labels, including Mercury, Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and now New West Records. He’s a touring madman, playing up to 250 shows a year, and a remarkably fecund songwriter; The Happiest Man in the World was funded by a Kickstarter campaign in which he wrote a song a day, some 400 in all, the best of which ended up on the new LP. As he told me in a recent interview, he was in a bad space at the time, both heartbroken by a recent divorce and financially destitute. If the new LP sounds relatively sunny it’s because, in Hamell’s words, “I kind of waited until there were moments of hope and those moments were what became the album. If I hadn’t waited, it would have been dark.”
The result is as fine an LP as Hamell has ever released, with some of the songs featuring Hamell playing solo and others featuring some of his many friends. It opens with the wonderfully melodic “Artist in America,” a slam on America’s sorry treatment of its artists that opens with Hamell engaging in some amazingly nimble word patter referencing several dozen classic rock songs before breaking into a catchy and fast-paced tune with a great chorus that goes in part, “I’m an artist in America/I’m an artist in America/I fuck, I suck, I chuck/For this rock’n’roll.”
It demonstrates Hamell’s genius at word play, as does title track “Happiest Man in the World,” a folksy mid-tempo number about the upside of being down on your luck. It features a brilliant conversation between Hamell and an uncooperative ATM (“I almost choked when it spoke/Said you are broke/Financially depleted/Your money is deleted/Like your hairline it has receded etc.”) that finally spits out a bus taken. It’s during his bus ride that Hamell has his epiphany, as he sees friend after friend who has overcome addiction and dereliction and homelessness, “beggars that have the stature of kings,” and he goes back to the ATM and it tells him, “Ah, you ain’t really broke/You’re rich as a king/You just ain’t got no money, that’s the thing.”
“Bobby and The Russians” is the best song Warren Zevon never wrote, one mad catchy and funky strings- and drums-propelled number with a cool chorus. It’s a lovingly detailed story about a loser named Bobby in big trouble with some very bad men who decides to rip off some Russians to pay off his debt, despite the fact that watching “Old Sylvester Stallone movies on Netflix/Was the closet Bobby ever got to a gun.” Of course things go terribly awry; all the Russians are killed, and the guys Bobby’s in hock to, in a generous mood, “let him keep his thumbs/But broke both his knees.” And he’s lucky, because if things had gone differently, “admittedly he’d be here with his knees and thumbs intact/But indeed… no… fucking… head.”
“Global Tattoo” is a protest blues in which Hamell half raps, “And don’t wave that flag in my face/When you’re making this place a disgrace/Your global view needs rearranging/Cuz the times, my friends, they are a changing.” It boasts some really fancy guitar playing, a great chorus, name drops Malcolm X, Joey Ramone, Buddy Holly, and Charles Mingus, and ends with a hair-raising harmonica solo by Wammo, formerly of the Asylum Street Spankers.
“Together” is a funny and poignant little ditty about a couple growing old, and features lot of strange sound effects, some very funky horns, and a big male operatic voice at beginning and close. Hamell is joined by Kimya Dawson (Moldy Peaches, the Uncluded), and the two of them don’t sugar coat aging, but gleefully sing lines like, “All our friends are gonna be dead/New fake friends in our heads, together” and “Staring at the TV, holding hands/Going to the bathroom in our pants, together.” It should be a gigantic bummer, but somehow Hamell and Dawson turn it into a thing of joy, and touching to boot. “
Ain’t That Love” is a quiet and sad ballad featuring a plaintive guitar and some understated strings about a marriage gone south. “All the shitholes we had/Where the drinking was mad/All the mirrors we smashed/All the cars that we crashed,” sings Hamell, before asking, “Ain’t… that… love?/Ain’t… that… love?/Ain’t… that?” It’s a heartbreaking tune about a love that refuses to die no matter what, and the most poignant song about unholy matrimony since Mountain Goats’ “No Children.”
“Lappa Oo Mau Mau” is a happy metronymic lark that comes complete with lots of nonsense syllables, Wammo playing harmonica in the background, and Hamell singing with Bird of Prey and Jeneen Terrana. It’s a spiritual tune complete with a hot dog joke, and a nonsense tune with a message, to wit, “You know first I get that visualization/That’s how my spirit’s gonna ride ride ride/And I wait for that oooh!/Beautiful manifestation/That this abundant universe is gonna provide.” “Richard’s Got a Job” features Hamell playing the guitar at about a thousand mph while throwing in lots of fancy licks, and is an inspirational tune about a pal finding employment. Hamell sings, “Richard got a gig/This is big/When a cool universe gives you something you dig.” It’s a wonderful examples of Hamell’s compassion; it’s all for one and one for all in his world of down-and-outers trying desperately to get a leg up, and another man’s good luck is Hamell’s good luck too.
“Whores” is “Richard’s Got a Job” writ large, a mid-tempo number with piano, strings, and drums. “I love whores/Drunks and thieves/And whores/And what’s more/The poor I find more trustworthy/Than lawyers, politicians, and media magicians,” croons Hamell, who goes on itemizing the kind of people he loves, namely the nameless chumps of this world. He loves, “The nuts/The whacked/The cracked/The once employed now sacked,“ and knows they’re just as likely to sink as swim, but sings, “I love them/Just like Jesus/I love whores, ahhhh.” As for me, what I love is that a tune called “Whores” ends up being one of the most spiritual songs I’ve ever heard.
“Gods at Odds” is built on a classic mid-tempo rock’n’roll riff and is just Hamell on guitar singing about the two Gods, the first “an angry man… ruining this world with an iron hand” and the second “a real cool girl” with “a sense of humor.” Hamell is just finished singing, “Keep on praying with severed limbs/Is your God Her or is it Him?” when he stops the song, says, “Wait a minute, people/There’s no movement/We gotta get real gone,” and restarts the song in triple time and it’s great, like CCR on crack.
“Jennifer’s Strippin’ Again” is a sad tune that opens with some baroque guitar before segueing into a staccato guitar riff. The song’s about a woman falling back into her old ways: “She don’t wanna start drinkin’/But the days are slow/Just a little pill for the get up and go.” She’s doing what she thinks she has to do, because financial times are tough and “she’ll be damned if she’ll end up in a shelter,” but as the singer puts down his beer to leave the strip club he sings, “And I’m praying to God/She won’t be here next year.”
“Mom’s Hot” is my favorite cut on the album, an upbeat number about the singer’s lust for one flamin’ hot redhead, little Tommy’s mommy, who just happens to be disabled (“Just a tiny damaged/But she won’t go unravaged”) in about six different ways. But the singer is entranced to the point of “wood/WOOD!” He sings, “Handicapped sticker/I’d like to lick her,” then comes the great chorus, in which Hamell sings with female backups in the background, “Your mom’s hot/Your mom’s hot, etc.” But the best part comes at the end, when a crew of boys (all of them Hamell’s son, Detroit) throw out a litany of “She’s hot!” and “Dude, that’s your mom?” and “Your mom’s smokin’ hot!”
Or is my favorite cut the gospel-flavored album closer “Blessed”? It opens very slowly, then picks up some, with Hamell singing, “How the fuck I ever stumbled into this/I feel like I just received an angel’s kiss/Blessed are the humble/Blessed those that stumble” before repeating the lines of the big moving chorus: “I feel hope, hope, hope/On the horizon.” Then he sings, “I feel like I’m shootin’/Squarely from the… hip/How the fuck I ever conquered Satan’s grip/Blessed are the friends gone/Blessed those that live on,” before returning to the chorus with its moving gospel backup singers and it’s all so big and beautiful as he sings, “I feel peace, love, redemption, salvation/On the horizon” and the song comes to its glorious end. I’ve been listening to this baby 20 times a day, my unremitting cynicism wilting in the face of Hamell’s unyielding faith in the future, and it never fails to bring me to the verge of tears.
It’s the perfect note to go out on, and wonderfully encapsulates Hamell’s remarkable personality. He’s a mad mix of the sacred and profane, and I don’t believe he sees any distinction between the two. He loves whores for their spirit, the feckless for their fecklessness, and the losers, schmucks, and chumps in the world because they’re his kind of people, down but not out and never to be written off because each and every one of them is capable of redemption. He loves Bobby with his busted knee caps, wants to fuck a depressed woman with a prosthetic leg who just underwent a mastectomy because to him she’s every bit as hot as Megan Fox, and is honestly glad those pals he saw during his bus ride in “Happiest Man in the World” have miraculously managed to put their ravaged lives back together.
In short he’s one special man, and I’ll take his brand of earthy spirituality over the faux-religious bromides of bungholes like Bono any day of the week. He has discerned that life dishes out mostly pain, but despite all the amputations still believes in the soul-saving sound of a rock’n’roll station, and sees not darkness but peace, love, redemption, and salvation on the horizon. And that, my friends, is how you become the happiest man in the world.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
