About That Song: The Hamm Sammies
About That Song #83
In our special series, singer-songwriter Sarah Morris interviews artists about the songs that shaped them.
Hi! I’m Sarah Morris. I’m wildly in love with songs and the people who write them. There have been a few songs in my life that have been total gamechangers—songs that made me want to be a songwriter and songs I’ve written that made me feel like I am a songwriter. About That Song is a space where I can learn more about those pivotal songs in other writers’ lives.
For our 83rd installment, I talked to members of The Hamm Sammies! Made up of lead singer/rhythm guitarist Shaun Donovan, Clayton Anderson on lead guitar, bassist Drew Nelson, Fuzz Lutz on keys and baritone sax, and Dave Blomquist on drums, the Twin Cities band is set to release their debut album soon.
The Hamm Sammies. Photo credit: Halle Pelfrey.
Sarah: Hello to The Hamm Sammies!! You’re a relatively new collaboration who are, and I quote, “fueled by cheap beer and quality whiskey.” I also read that you make music that “collectively resists existential dread,” which feels to me like a solid move right now. I think music can work this magic on the listeners AND the makers. In celebration of your upcoming debut album Poor Company, I thought it would be wonderful to chat with a few of the Sammies to learn about songs that have brought you to this moment in your shared musical journey.
To kick things off, do you all remember the songs that made you want to be a songwriter? Tell us about that song.
Shaun Donovan: I have always considered myself a very diverse music lover, giving anything a chance to get my inner groove moving. I spent some time in a boys' choir when I was young and was always being trotted out to some karaoke bar with my mother, Sue.
Sarah: Whoa! I’m an instant fan of your mom.
Shaun: I didn’t always like to sing in front of people in that capacity, but to her credit, I fully appreciate the opportunity to do exactly that so many times with someone that brought so much excitement and charisma to her performances.
So, in the extremely large list of music I love, the song that inspired me to write my own songs is pretty hard to pinpoint. If I had to dive back in time to when I first started writing around age 12 or 13, I’d say Led Zeppelin’s self-titled album spent many rotations spinning round and round on my old phonograph. Specifically, their re-arrangement of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” is a solid example of how I’ve approached writing some of my songs, super moody soulful lyrics that turn into full-band raucous chaos.
Dave Blomquist: Before we got married, my wife Linnea and I paddled the length of the Mississippi River and, naturally, we put together a playlist of river songs in anticipation of our journey.
Sarah: All river expeditions must begin with an anticipatory themed playlist!
Dave: As we prepared for the trip, we were also learning so much history about the river, including the flood of 1927. The great flood puts into context how natural disasters are, in reality, made by humans: the result of decisions made by powerful people that de-prioritize the welfare and dignity of others. Randy Newman’s song “Louisiana 1927” is one of those songs from our playlist that I keep returning to. The dry wit in his storytelling combined with the emotional impact of his plaintive melody drives home the narrative that people lost their lives and livelihood not because of an unanticipated disaster but because of a predictable flood that was allowed to become a catastrophe. Randy Newman taught me that a song can be big in scope with great emotional depth while being accessible at the same time.
Fuzz Lutz: I grew up in a musical household. My mom was always playing piano, and my dad was constantly singing and reading poetry. Every time I was staying with my grandparents, my grandfather was off in the study for a solid chunk of the evening playing saxophone and clarinet along to his big band albums. So music and poetry was always around me, and it just seemed natural to be creating it.
It wasn't so much a song that inspired me to be a songwriter as much as people who I had as mentors. Shout out to Andy and Crane (The Ineffective Super Heroes), Sue Krebsbach who taught me to play piano and then realized I was trash at classical music, Laura Bohne who taught me to play jazz piano, Bob Casperson, who taught me to play saxophone, and my uncle Kevin and grandfather Calvin Ward who inspired me to play saxophone.
Sarah: What a list of right-there-next-to-you inspirations!
Fuzz: If you want specific songs, "Cure For Pain" by Morphine and "Wrong Way" by TV On The Radio inspired me to play baritone saxophone after high school. I heard them both on KBEM while driving country backroads, and it made me realize that the instrument was still relevant and exciting in a modern musical context that wasn't “just” jazz. Though, I didn't seriously pick it up again until my mid twenties for the punk band Trendy Trendy Space Vegans.
Sarah: Shout out to local station KBEM then, as well!
Fuzz: As far as my inspirations on piano, the problematic Amanda Palmer is key—I distinctly remember hearing The Dresden Dolls’ “Coin Operated Boy” on the radio—as well as the oeuvre of Ben Folds. The album Ben Folds Five was a revelation about rock and roll piano for sure.
My greatest inspiration is probably Regina Spektor. Early Regina Spektor. The entirety of Soviet Kitsch and Begin to Hope live in my heart. There’s a carefree and playful nature to her lyrics and vocalizations that contrast with her more somber and melancholic pieces, which gives a permission to write songs with wildly ranging subjects and attitudes, and reminds me never to take the writing process too seriously. My partner Caroline would put them on as background noise when we went to bed in her tiny efficiency apartment back in the day, and I would wake up when the air mattress had deflated by “Apres Moi.”
As far as strictly vocals and songwriting: Frank Zappa and Tom Waits. They both have an intensely playful style that I love and try to emulate. I was weaned on the album Apostrophe, and I think I’ve ruined my voice a bit over the years trying to sing like Waits. Kind of like Elton John and glasses, I guess. I keep a tradition where I play “Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis” every Christmas for my family. Enough said.
The Hamm Sammies. Photo credit: Halle Pelfrey.
Sarah: Once you each began writing, did you feel like a writer immediately? It took me a few years of writing before I believed it—was there a song that gave you that “a-HA! I AM a songwriter!” moment? Tell us about that song.
Fuzz: I’d been singing extemporaneous lyrics into my parents’ Casio tape player/recorder since I was in third grade. I was always wildly impressed with myself in the moment. It’s probably for the best I have no idea where those tapes are these days, as I don’t think my ego could take the bloat. That being said, I didn’t really find my sound and songwriting voice until I was 18 or 19.
I started experimenting more with my work, then, and actively tried to construct an idiom of my own. I think I finally hit my stride and found my idiosyncratic voice with the song “Overheater Man.” After I had it all written down and had played it a few dozen times, it really sank in that it didn’t really sound like anything I’d written before, and it was also pretty distinct from music I was hearing at the time. It’s lyrically playful and obtuse, and combines eruptive vocals with an equally bombastic piano arrangement in swung time, featuring dense jazz chords and discordant harmonies that would come to be emblematic of what my friends would call “Fuzz Music.” It really started me down a weird, but musically satisfying, path.
Sarah: Those are some of my favorite paths…
Dave: Songwriting is still quite new for me and I’m honestly not sure I feel comfortable calling myself a songwriter… yet. I still think of myself as a drummer who happens to write tunes. Until I became a part of The Hamm Sammies, I never approached songwriting in any serious manner. Since joining, I’ve felt inspired by the camaraderie of the band and have appreciated Shaun’s openness to any member writing songs.
The song I’m most proud of having written for the album is “Burden.” It centers on someone experiencing dark thoughts that convince him he’s not living up to his friends’ expectations. It becomes a vicious cycle as he retreats from his community and becomes ever more lost. Unfortunately, I saw this play out with too much frequency during the pandemic.
Shaun Donovan: I have a similar story to Dave in that I started playing music behind a drum set and eventually moved to songwriting, albeit quite a few years before him. I welcomed the change with open arms as I needed to have more melody in my life. My first song I wrote was an angsty little two-chord acoustic ditty hilariously called “There’s Only One Of Me.” Was it any good? No. Was it profound? Absolutely not. Haven’t looked back.
Sarah: Good and profound, to me, would be lovely sometimes-bonuses to the joy of writing. The 5 Sammies share songwriting duties; I appreciate that all-in approach. Has this been a part of your band since the beginning? Was there a song that someone wrote where you realized this song requires the forming of a new band? OR did the dream of the band come first?
Fuzz: We're really more of a social club that plays music together. If it wasn’t for the band, most of us wouldn’t get out much. So the friendship and communal effervescence is more the mortar that holds the band together rather than some shared artistic vision.
The tunes that come out the other end of the Hamm Sammies Sausage Grinder for Music is really a collaborative result. Shaun was adamant that he didn’t want to be the sole songwriter, and there’s never any strict prescription for how anyone is supposed to play their instrument or perform their parts; every song is a genuine expression of the band as a whole. You can definitely tell who wrote the original in every instance, the fingerprint is there, but the finished product has only a passing resemblance to the tune that any one band member brought to the table, hopefully for the better.
Sarah: Your first single, “River Dry,” came out a few weeks ago—what can you tell us about that song?
Shaun: “River Dry” is a smooth ride with a little grit. It’s a song about not wanting to give in to the negative noise in all of our lives, plus a little of the “stay true to yourself” bit. We’re all connected through technology in such an exposed fashion, but a lot of our reality that we share doesn’t always tell the truth. So keep being you despite the noise, I like what I see. Run that river dry.
Sarah: “Keep being you despite the noise”—yeah, we probably need 100 songs reminding us (us=all humans) of that. I’m in.
You all seem to embrace the term “swampy” to describe your music. I absolutely hear that brought to life on the track “What’s a Man To Do.” Can you tell us about that song?
Dave: As I mentioned earlier, I listen to a lot of music that comes from the mud of the Mississippi, so I think the swamp comes naturally to me. On “What’s a Man to Do?” I’m channeling the music of the country-soul triangle in particular, a phrase I’ve heard talked about by music author/historian Charles L. Hughes, describing the overlapping influences of Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Nashville. Country and soul music have a shared history that’s far too often overlooked.
“What’s a Man to Do?” is an upbeat little song that muses on the tearing of our social fabric. As a society, I think we too often try to explain things politically, when we need to look at culture to better understand what’s going on. Institutions that used to connect people continue to crumble. What’s a man to do when he can’t find purpose in his community? When he can’t build a fulfilling home life? We’re in this moment where social media has become antisocial, but I do have optimism that people will find ways to reconnect more authentically. It will not necessarily look like the past, but it cannot look like the present.
Sarah: It sounds like The Hamm Sammies is one way that you all are doing the work of connecting authentically, first, with each other, and now, with the world of listeners at large. Do you have any upcoming Midwest shows where we might hear you sing those songs?
THS: We have our release show coming up on Friday, Aug. 15 at the Fraternal Order of Eagles #34 Club in South Minneapolis. We like to say it’s not just a show and more of an event: we’ll have have a fun MC/piano act, Jon Eric, serving as host throughout the night; a belly dancing troupe, Sehraya Raqs Bellydance, will be performing; doom country band Tomboyy is kicking things off; and we’ll have some other special guests, too.
Sarah: That sounds like an incredible night. Also, now I know that doom country is a genre! Thank you all so much for stopping by About That Song, and congratulations on your release!
Go see The Hamm Sammies celebrate their debut album at the Eagles 34 in Minneapolis on Friday, Aug. 15! Doors are at 7:30 p.m. and the cover is $15.
Listen to “River Dry”
Poor Country Album Credits
Shaun Donovan (lead vox and rhythm guitar),
Clayton Anderson (lead guitar),
Fuzz Lutz (bari sax and keys),
Drew Nelson (bass) and
Dave Blomquist (drums)
Recorded and mixed by Eric Blomquist at RiverRock Studios – Minneapolis, MN
“Poor Company” recorded by Shaun Donovan at Iron Studios – Roseville, MN
Mastered by Greg Reierson at Rare Form Mastering – Minneapolis, MN
Halley Pelfrey played bass on tracks 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 and acoustic guitar on 12
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Morris. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.
Sarah Morris is a superfan of songs and the people who write them, and a believer that certain songs can change your life. A singer-songwriter / mama / bread maker / coffee drinker who recently released her fifth album of original material, she’s been known to joyfully sing with people in her Big Green Bathroom.
