How's It Goin'?

The Captain's Table Is A Solid Snapshot Of What's Goin' On With The Quirk-Pop Pros of Ham1

originally published October 24, 2007

One could see the stoked, jittery pop of Ham1's eponymous 2005 debut as the pitch-perfect extension of main man Jim Willingham's weird, effervescent essence; most anybody who's kicked around Athens' revered night-time hubbub knows what a rarified and animated presence he cuts as a conversationalist and general dude-about-town. In the sense that most great music is ultimately mimetic of its culture and creator, that first record is damn near untouchable, for any descriptor applicable to that album could also hang on a shingle around Willingham's neck: effusive, enthusiastic, arch, funny, longwinded and literate, and that's just the adjectival jumble that jumps immediately to mind.

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Ham1's newest offering, though, varies wonderfully in tone and execution, and, with a touch of insight, the reasons are plain to divine. First and foremost, perhaps, is the fact that, in the time since the release of the debut, Ham1 has behaved very much like a real working band. Indeed, this is no loose collection of songwriter-plus-band musings; a good couple years of practicing and touring have made for grand leaps in texture and instrumental dexterity. The Captain's Table is much denser, esoteric and more assured than the debut, and evinces the type of growth that can only occur in a practice room, in a van or on a stage.

The band's trip remains focused on Willingham's inherently Southern sense of time - those waltzes! - melody and narrative, however, the group's sonic palette has grown downright adventuresome. The Captain's Table is stocked with horn charts and string sections, energetic guitar-work jiving just south of Link Wray, pastoral keyboard drones, Hawaiian Slack Key guitar and a nice country-fried saunter up under the rhythm section.

With an idiosyncratic lineup that feels almost indigenously Athenian in conception, the bandmembers - featuring Jacob Morris, Chris Sugiuchi, Eric Harris, plus some intermittent ringers like Pete Erchick and Liz Durrett - have improved by simply growing together as musicians, and joyfully exposing the evidence. I mean, Jim's got some high-minded literary ideals when it comes to his tuneage, though he's no blow-hard, and this is what makes the band so likeable.

See, it's the trombone and the schoolyard backing chants and that edifying cello drone, for example, that prevent this new record from seeming in any way pompous; Ham1 isn't Athens' answer to The Alan Parsons Project at all. On one level, this is simply good coffee-in-the-morning music: blissed-out, inventive pop a la late-model Feelies. With this record, though, as with any art, you get back exactly what you give when approaching it; you can choose to skate along the crystalline surface of each song or dive full-bore into Willingham's throbbing and multidimensional lyrical world.

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Given the openhanded sincerity of Ham1's music, it would seem that such notable musical progression would correspond with substantial personal growth. Basically, Jim Willingham has been through some serious shit in the last few years. His best bud died suddenly, he went and got married, started teaching school, and, tellingly, transcended a years-long battle with the bottle. Normally, I'm reticent to approach things of this nature - I mean, I'm just writing about indie rock, right? - but I feel like it's an unavoidable subject when it comes to The Captain's Table. What separates it from the first album is its impressive unity, its wholeness.

This isn't just a collection of supercool pop songs; it's a very real statement, a monument-in-melody-and-language to a very arduous and eventful time in one man's life, which is what makes it great. The soul-searching self-consciousness prerequisite to such dramatic personal movement has suffused his new work with an ambition, a grandness and a thematic connectivity that's missing from the debut. Gone along with those mindless repetitious nights and listless hungover mornings is the clangy, naïve pop of the first record; in its place is a dense and mercurial album impressive in its unity and scope. The measured distance inherent to major self-analysis has improved Willingham's grasp of theme and craft, and The Captain's Table is the proof.

This isn't sheer writerly conjecture; his songs confront this white elephant head-on, which is the only way to do it if you're gonna be effective artistically and personally. "Hare-Lipped Bust" has one of my favorite lyrical moments: "I quit drinking and I lost my twin / Swelled up with liquor in a double chin," which I think is one of the most humble and astute testaments to the life-eradicating Jekyll and Hyde aspects of heavy boozing that I've ever come across. "How Can You Watch TV With a Dead Person?" touches on the dangers of self-medication and avoidance via the sauce: "So how come you prefer to stay gone? / And always take a nap when you get home? / You formed feet of clay / I thought you would stay / So how come you stood up and loped away?" He continues: "A cup full of lies / It's gonna make you die / Unlessin' you can fool / Your very worst vice." Heavy stuff, but ultimately delivered with enough humor and invention that you can relate, straight up: the term "unlessin'" is a key indicator; this is no AA meeting rhetoric, this is your buddy telling you how it is.

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This record, though, is no one-trick-pony. Willingham veers other places artfully, and a lot of the joy here lies in the inspired and unique interplay of the instrumentalists. In a move endemic of the bands' sharpened ambition, the title track is actually an instrumental in three parts. It's designed to evoke a shady rundown fish-house and its crazed, singing owner Rudy who was murdered by his wife. Sounds like something straight from a Mark Richard novel, but it's a place from Willingham's past: his family ate there frequently while vacationing at the Florida coast when he was a boy. The ethereality of the tune texturally evokes reminiscence: the moaning cello is a foghorn; feedback subtly clogs the corners just as mental ephemera make it difficult to reference ancient memories; the shimmering pedal-steel is the haze around the screen as the flashback commences. The final section lapses in and out of waltz-time like the sea-chanties Rudy used to drunkenly hurl toward his customers. Finally, the snare drums erupt like the shotgun that ended poor Rudy's life.

This tune could be seen as a guidepost for understanding the entire record: the song ultimately encapsulates serious things, Shakespearean things like death and the passage of time, and serious things are going on sonically that resemble musique concrète, and, yet, it's also simply a cool tune to crank when you're getting your bearings first thing in the morning.

Throughout October, the band has been touring in a configuration known as "Three on the Tree," playing Booker T. & The MG's to Vic Chesnutt's Otis Redding and Liz Durrett's Carla Thomas. The guys in Ham1 play their own thing, and then back both musicians for individual sets. Chesnutt's and Durrett's presence present Ham1 with an expanded audience and this is enlightening and appropriate: music this endearing and this lived-in just begs for a bigger stage. Maybe you caught the group at the 40 Watt last week, but if not, Ham1's back at it with a daytime show this Saturday, just begging to be heard.

Jim McHugh

WHO: Ham1
WHERE: SchoolKids Records
WHEN: Saturday, October 27, 5 p.m.
HOW MUCH: FREE!