Noëlle Hampton

Noëlle Hampton - Thin Line - 2009 - T-REX

"Fat, gorgeous melodies; lyrics you can read like poetry, or that sound like whispered confidences. Understated,elegant arrangements & playing. Lovely vocals from Noëlle Hampton. A near-perfect package of words and music, soul and inspiration." - Ben Fong-Torres (former editor/Rolling Stone)

Lush and divine roots/rock that fills your soul just like wine fills the belly and leaves you warm and fuzzy and wanting to play it all over again. © 2004 - 2009 Tradebit Inc

California native Noëlle Hampton is based in Austin these days, but you can still hear the Pacific Ocean breeze blowing through Thinline. But there are whispers on that wind, dark secrets about the heart that Noëlle captures in artfully elliptical lyrics and sweetly stinging melodies alike. Late-’90s Sheryl Crow is the most obvious reference point for Noëlle’s voice and producer Mark Hallman’s alternately silky-smooth and strategically jagged production, but a cover of U2’s “Love Is Blindness” is more to the point—its meditative lyric walks the thin line between doubt and faith just as do her originals. © 2000-2009 American Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Noëlle has opened for artists lihe Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, John Hiatt, Joan Armatrading, and Graham Parker. She writes beautiful, emotive songs relating to her own personal life experiences, and all performed with her own terrific blend of roots rock. "Thin Line" is a great album, with great lyrics, great musicians, and great songs which are full of soul, but also good old fashioned rock 'n' roll. Promote this great lady's music, and buy her "Under These Skies" album

TRACKS

1 Thin Line
2 Always the Same
3 Cold Strings
4 Blackwing Butterfly
5 Helpless Again
6 Safe from Love
7 Waiting Game
8 Firecracker
9 Danny
10 Love Is Blindness

All songs composed by Noëlle Hampton, except Track 10, by Adam Clayton/Dave Evans/Paul Hewson/Larry Mullen, Jr.

MUSICIANS

Noelle Hampton - Acoustic Guitar, Piano, Vocals
Mark Hallman - Synthesizer, Bass, Keyboards, Hammond Organ, Background Vocals
Pete "The Beat" Langhans , Rick Richards - Drums
Michael Ramos - Accordion
Brian Standefer - Cello
Larkin Gayl, Teal Collins - Background Vocals

SHORT BIO

Winner of the highly competitive Levi's/Lilith Fair Talent Search, and 2001 California Music Awards nominee, Bay Area singer/songwriter/musician Noëlle Hampton is a talent on the rise. She released her self-produced CD, "Under These Skies" in 2000 which has sold thousands of copies and received raving reviews from critics.(Available on cdbaby.com, see above.) Andre Moran is an amazing guitarist and studio engineer who brings a lush and always appropriate artistry to everything he touches. He plays guitar with Noëlle Hampton and has engineered, co-produced and mixed all of her music, including the Christmas CD. There is one exception, Noëlle's first CD release, simply called Noëlle Hampton, was produced by Adam 'bagel' Berkowitz and Cole Tate in 1999. Nils Erickson ( who plays on the Christmas album ) and Andre met at Berklee School of Music in Boston and were roommates there and then in San Francisco when they moved out the Bay Area. Nils is a fantastic musician who's never afraid to try something new. Right now he plays bass in a S.F. band, 20 Minute Loop, but he has played guitar in many projects as well. He even broke out the pedal steel for that project. © 2001 to 2004, Decklin's Domain, All Rights Reserved



MORE ABOUT NOELLE HAMPTON

Mill Valley singer Noelle Hampton relights her fire in Austin: - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO Noelle Hampton? I'd wondered about that for years. She had been one of the rising stars on the Marin music scene, and then just disappeared. I'd been one of her biggest boosters. In a 2000 column, I wrote, "It's refreshing to find a young woman who isn't just trying to be a pop star for the sake of money and ego. Noelle Hampton actually has something to say." Nine years later, after seeming to slip off the musical map, she has reappeared with a new album of luscious indie rock, "Thin Line" ($13, CD Baby), produced in Austin, Texas, by Mark Hallman, who also records Eliza Gilkyson and Ani DiFranco. I was dying to know where she's been all this time, and to tell her how impressed I am by her new CD, her first a half dozen years ago, before she dropped out of sight. I remember Noelle as a talented Marin kid with a charismatic personality and an infectious laugh. She grew up in Mill Valley, graduating from Tam High in 1990. A gifted singer/songwriter, she made her debut at Sweetwater and later won a spot on the Lilith Fair, performing at Shoreline Amphitheater in 1998 with Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant and the other stars of the all-female tour. She was featured in the first iTunes commercial, and showed she belongs with the big boys as well as the girls when she opened for Bob Dylan, Wilco, Chris Isaak and Richard Thompson. At the same time her self-produced debut album, "Under These Skies," was nominated for a California Music Award, Noelle was up for outstanding female singer against Gwen Stefani. She was clearly on the verge. Then, as Mill Valley became more of an affluent family town and less the artists' enclave, she and her rock guitarist husband, Andr Moran, moved to Austin, "The Live Music Capital of the World." "It just felt like home to me, kind of like the way Marin used to feel when there were a bunch of artistic, cool, intellectual people looking to make a difference, to create an environment where people stop and talk to each other on the street," Noelle said by phone from Austin. "Mill Valley is a completely different place now," she said. "It's young moms with baby carriages. Everywhere you looked there were parents and kids, which is fine, but that wasn't the way Andr and I were headed. We wanted to play some rock 'n' roll, tour, have fun." Plus Mill Valley is expensive. She knew that they'd never be able to afford a house in Marin. Austin was affordable. Within a year of moving there, they bought their first home from a friendly neighbor. "We're right in the heart of South Austin. It's funky, cool and there's music blaring out of everybody's houses," she said brightly. "We open our front door on Sunday mornings and we can hear the gospel brunch coming from Maria's Taco Express. This is a music town. It seeps into your soul every day." Sounds perfect for a couple of young rockers, but there's a dark side to the story. "We're happy we made the move, but it was a big adjustment to have to start all over again," Noelle explained. "I think I was exhausted from working really hard in music for 10 years in the Bay Area. It took its toll on me, but I didn't realize how exhausted I was." To pay the bills, she got a "soul-sucking" day job selling high-end furniture. Andr gave guitar lessons, engineered in local studios and taught recording engineering at a community college. But they weren't playing music. They were letting their careers dry up in the Austin sun. "I wasn't doing anything musically for a long time," Noelle lamented. "The thought of putting a band together and having to book our shows was overwhelming. We didn't have a new CD, and it was daunting to start to record again. It became a lot easier to just not do it. I started to forget I'd been a musician." The longer she stayed away, the more unhappy she became. "I don't usually get depressed," she said. "I'm usually quite a level-headed person. So it was really hard for me to be that sad. Then I went into the crisis every woman in her 30s goes through. Should I be having a baby? I thought a baby might fill the void, but I realized very quickly that I didn't really want that. But what did I want?" What she wanted, but couldn't bring herself to admit, was to make music again. Then she met a life coach at a party who began to set her straight, showing her how we're all responsible for our own happiness. At the same time, like a bolt from the blue, ABC-TV contacted her, wanting to use one of her songs, "Here On the Ground," for its drama series "Men in Trees." "I thought, 'Wow, someone remembers me,'" Noelle recalled, beaming. "It was this lovely feeling of, 'I am still here.' It was a miracle." She got tremendously positive response from the show, which ran her song at full blast for six minutes at the end of the episode. "I was starting to feel like I was coming back," she remembered. "I could feel myself beginning to climb out of the hole. I could just feel it." It wasn't long before she was back in the studio, recording "Thin Line," which showcases nine personally revealing original songs, including one called "Firecracker." "'Firecracker' is me explosively singing my frustrations out about how I'd felt I'd failed," she said. "I was really pissed off at myself, and that song expressed that. The last line goes: 'In these darkest times one light will glow/From that firecracker burning slow.' I knew I was like that light, and that I'd glow again." Paul Liberatore, Posted: 07/30/2009 11:26:09 PM PDT, www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_12958385 [ Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at liberatoreATmarinij.com; follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LibLarge ] © 2008 - Marin Independent Journal