PACKING ‘SUITCASE’ WITH MEMORIES
BEFITTING A DRUMMER, MATT HAMMON’S LIFE IN MUSIC HAS BEEN ALL ABOUT TIMING. THE HOUSTON NATIVE HAS BEEN AT IT SINCE HE WAS A TEENAGER, PLAYING GIGS AROUND TOWN. HE WAS PART OF ONE BAND REVERED YEARS AFTER ITS BREAKUP.
He’s kept time for a legend of 1980s post-punk. He’s played drums on all manner of recordings and for tours that seemed like they’d never end. He’s moved around so much that, at one point in his life, he had stuff in storage lockers in three different cities. But when he returned to Houston in 2001, he put into motion plans to take the songs he’d written over the years and make them into his own record.
“Silver Suitcase” is the resulting album, and it represents just a whisper of music he’s stockpiled while making his living as a drummer. Hammon will play some of those songs Saturday at Cactus Music. But before getting to that album, a brief history about how a decade or so can disappear in a flash.
Hammon got his start in high school playing in Houston at Zelda’s with the band Nothing in Return, which he calls “a great band, a unique band.” Hammon wrote the songs but hid behind the drum kit. That band split, and he salvaged a tour he’d booked for Nothing in Return by offering up Mineral, his new band with singerguitarist Chris Simpson and bassist Jeremy Gomez. Hammon split before Mineral made “The Power of Failing” in 1997, one of those albums more venerated 20 years later than it was in its day. He rejoined Simpson and Gomez in the Gloria Record, which formed after Mineral broke down.
But the Gloria Record was a project Hammon tended when he had time. At that point, he’d been working with David Rice, a standout performer in Houston during that era, whose ambitious path led to a deal with Columbia Records.
“He paid me a retainer that was enough to pay rent,” Hammon says. “No other job, just music full time. It was decision time: Am I a band guy? Or a blue-collar working musician? I went with working musician, and I don’t regret it at all.”
He and Rice moved to Nashville, where Hammon worked as a session drummer and also did some producing.
In the late-’90s, he hooked up with Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü and Sugar. Hammon had seen Mould play solo at Fitzgerald’s in Houston in 1991. “It changed my life more than any night other than my wedding night,” he says.
Years later he met Mould in Austin, and then got a call from Mould in late 1997 about recording. Hammon played drums on “The Last Dog and Pony Show” and was in Mould’s employ for years.
He lived in New York for a few years, where he met musician Cameron Dezen, who would become his wife. While there, he’d zip between New York and Chicago working on recordings by Verbow, an ornamental alternative rock band that seemed on the cusp of a breakthrough. It didn’t happen for Verbow, despite releasing two wellreviewed albums.
All the while, Hammon wrote songs. And more songs.
“I’m by no means an anomaly,” he says. “Music is full of guys who were sidemen who wanted to be songwriters. Go to Nashville, and within five minutes, you’ll find 1,000 people like me who make a living playing other people’s music,” he laughs, “but really wanting to do their own thing.
“But at a certain point, you just have to be honest with yourself. I viewed every second of what I was doing as an apprenticeship, and I loved it. But I’d run out of gas — emotionally, physically, spiritually.”
Hammon talks about busted relationships with all sorts of friends and acquaintances, the result of spending much of his time working nights as a session guy or on the road for months at a time.
“‘Silver Suitcase’ is me trying to put some of those pieces back together,” he says. “Having run away with the circus for so many years.”
Not surprisingly, several of the songs find him lamenting broken connections. The titles alone tell a story: “Colorful Regret,” “Promise You,” “Pictures.”
The songs are big and brash rock songs. Hammon had scores of songs spanning years stashed away. He selected 10 for “Silver Suitcase” that he felt were thematically related.
He said he made the album three times. Once was an airy Nick Draketype folk recording.
“Finally, I said screw it, I need to just make rock ’n’ roll the language I use and present the songs with a drum kit, a busy bass guitar, deep and wide electric guitar and one vocal,” he says. “Once I got out of my own way, the stuff just wanted to be rock music. It all fell into place.”