I’d seen the name Hungrytown before, and always meant to follow up, as the name sounded interesting. Now I finally have, and I'm glad I did. It’s always great to hear cool folk, and this certainly is.
Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson, who are Hungrytown, were kind enough to answer a few questions for me.
Andrea Weiss: For those who don't know who you are, could you give a short history of Hungrytown?
Rebecca Hall: I started singing semi-professionally while living in New York, doing mostly old jazz and blues standards. Ken has been a drummer since he was a teenager, performing in many numerous bands, and always with a strong 1960s feel. In 1997 a mutual friend was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, gave us her nylon-stringed guitar and asked that I sing at her memorial, which I did. One Christmas, Ken gave me the Sounds of the South CD collection, which contained a wealth of folk songs collected by Alan Lomax. I started picking at that guitar and before too long started writing my own songs that reminded me of some of those old traditionals. I started performing at open mics and eventually gathered a band which we called Rebecca Hall and the Falling Stars. Ken would usually sing harmony and play a little harmonica. We did various shows around NYC and also a couple in London. As happens so often, the band became difficult to manage (I'm not a leader type) and Ken and I started performing more as a duo. Over the next few years, Ken learned bass, then guitar, then mandolin and banjo! We made a couple of early albums under my name, called Rebecca Hall Sings! (2000) and Sunday Afternoon (2002). Ken performed on those recordings, but I felt bad that only my name was credited. In 2005 we were recording our next album, mostly in the hills of Virginia, with several superb bluegrass and old-time country musicians. They have awesome place and road names down there and one that we noticed was Hungrytown Road. I wrote a song with that name, and after a while we thought that it would make a good band name. We Googled it and saw that it hadn't yet been used, so that became the eponymous name of the first Hungrytown album--plus it saved on typesetting fees!
Ken Anderson: Yeah--what Rebecca said.
AW: Who are your influences?
Rebecca: Way too many to list here. The first handful that come to mind are Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Tia Blake, Anne Briggs, Syd Barrett, Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle, Gene Clark, Karen Carpenter, the Kinks, Bridget St. John, Emitt Rhodes, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Cat Stevens, Heron, and the entire Fading Yellow compilation series.
Ken: All of the above plus Phil Spector, the Pebbles collection, the Nuggets collection, Jackson C. Frank, the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, Honeybus, the Zombies, and everything on early Motown and Stax Records.
AW: I hear folk, folk/rock, and baroque pop in your music, and I like the combination. Which one would you say there is more of in your music?
Ken: It's all there, and the combination depends on the song, our mood and the time of day.
AW: Which genre do you feel your band fits into best?
Rebecca: All of the above!
Ken: None of the above!
AW: These songs seem suited for mornings, like "Morning Brings Peace Of Mind," or even twilight. Would you say your songs have more morning or evening moods?
Rebecca: I tend to get up late, so I'm going with evening.
Ken: I tend to get up early, so I'm going with morning.
AW: I know some of these songs, like "Feel Like Falling," deal with the pandemic. How did the pandemic affect you, and did that experience make it into the songs?
Rebecca: Definitely! It was a very scary time for us. We were hearing reports of old people dying from COVID from being in senior living centers, so we rushed to get Ken's elderly mom from Boston, and we took care of her at our rural home in Vermont for about a year. Of course, nearly all of our shows were canceled for two years. So this was an abrupt and wholly different way of life for us, and generally stressful. But we had the backhanded gift of time, which I used for walking through the hills and meadows, and just sitting and observing nature and the beauty around me. I think that period comes out most obviously in "Feel Like Falling," "Trillium and Columbine," and "Late New England (Afternoon in June)," but I think you can detect the sense of foreboding of that time in every song.
AW: Some of these songs seem so sad. Would you say it's easier to write sad songs or something happier?
Rebecca: As I mentioned above, it was a sad time, but I never set out to write sad songs. That said, I don't really trust happy songs--they often don't feel honest to me. Maybe that's a reason we seem to get on pretty well in the British Isles--I would say that a sense of melancholy permeates your music more than it does ours.
AW: Is there any chance of a tour, or just shows here and there?
Rebecca: We book shows here and there, and at some point we call it a tour!
Here is a link to upcoming Hungrytown shows dates.