Scene Point Blank: So, have you put out three singles now?
Stephen Hamm: In November of 2019, I did put out a full album and then the pandemic hit and I put out a single on vinyl, “Listen To The Sound Of The Sun.” Then every Sunday I went on YouTube and did a half-hour theremin meditation as people were stuck at home. It was an ambient improvisation. They are still up there on YouTube for anyone who may be interested. That got me through the pandemic. However, since I had released the album just before the pandemic I had just started to do festivals and such, yet everything got cancelled for the summer of 2020. I had the summer lined up for many shows. So I put a pause on that, but I have been playing shows for the last year or so. Yes, the single I just released was “Sagittarius A-Star” in anticipation of my new album coming out in May. Releasing new music is a good way of getting shows these days.
Scene Point Blank: It’s not just you though, right? It is you with at least another musician?
Stephen Hamm: Yes, the last couple of singles I brought my friend Sean Mrazek in. He used to play in Flash Bastard and The Evaporators. He is a great drummer. I needed some inspiration and he was someone I could count on. So I cobbled together a bunch of frameworks of songs and with Sean, we built it from there. I also brought Felix Fung, who I collaborate with in the studio. So the three of us worked on this record and then I would bring it to my home studio and build everything from there and eventually mix it. So, yes, there is a drummer on this record. I will bring him out when we play live. I actually might try and put a small band together to complement us. It was a different approach to making this album that I am used to, but I think it turned out well so far.
Scene Point Blank: I had read that krautrock and space rock looms large in your influences. Are bands like Hawkwind, Can, and Van Der Graaf Generator a direct influence on this current output?
Stephen Hamm: Oh, for sure. Especially Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. I love krautrock overall. I have been doing this for a while and, as you know, you have to explore to broaden your horizons. I am a curious person by nature, so I like to explore and turn others on to new sounds to their ears. I love the overall aesthetic of krautrock. However, one of my favourites has to be Can. They are jamming, obviously, but everything is very intentional. It’s like jazz in the sense of, “Let's start this thing up and see where it goes.” It is very much like my intention behind this release. Listeners will hear those influences.
Scene Point Blank: I found another interesting article related to theremins and wondered if you knew much about it. There was a concert for extraterrestrials. I think it was shot out to space and they used the theremin to try and make contact. Do you know if they made any contact with E.T.? [Laughs.]
Stephen Hamm: What!!!???? Let me look that up. Wow, you are right…TAM’s First Concert for Space Aliens featuring Lydia Kavina. Wow, that is cool! I am going to have to ask her about this.
Scene Point Blank: As soon as I read it, I was like, wow. I always thought the theremin was a little out there and people used it for meditation and such and then you have the rock ‘n’ roll side of it. This is a vast subject that we could probably talk about for three hours on its own. This might be a future project for you. If you make contact and they are planning on invading the earth put a good word in for me.
Stephen Hamm: Ha ha, I will for sure! but I am going to ask Lydia about this and if there was ever a second concert. I just read it was composed by Russian teens.
Scene Point Blank: Teenagers from Mars according to the Misfits. I think they edited out the Russian part!
Stephen Hamm: After I take this project out on the road I want to go out to this dome out in California not too far from the Joshua Tree. It’s called The Integratron. It was built in the 1950s. Now it is a place where they create sound baths. I have some connections out that way, so would love to go perform there.
The reason I grew up being a “space kid" was because one of my earliest memories is watching Neil Armstrong and the moon landing when I was four years old. So, I come from that era. It must be ingrained in my psyche. I have different thoughts on where we’re going as far as the exploration of space and the waste of resources; however, I still hold onto that fantasy or romanticism of space exploration. I am very much a fan of the 1960s future. Not so much the future now, haha.
Scene Point Blank: That sounds interesting. The only “Space Dome” I am aware of was in Toronto. It was called the Planetarium. Mind you the only exploring kids were doing in the ‘80s was dropping acid and exploring their inner psyche to the tune of Pink Floyd. [Lauhgs.] Psychedelic blotter explorers. Wow, look at the lights. Whoooooshhhhhhh...ahhhhhh…
Stephen Hamm: I went to some of those out in Vancouver. I was a classic rock kid and was also into jazz but got hijacked by punk rock when we put Slow together in the 1980s, just getting out of high school with Chris and Tom. Essentially that is how I launched out of high school in a punk rock band!
Scene Point Blank: Was your first punk band Chuck and the Fucks?
Stephen Hamm: Yes, that is correct. Chuck and the Fucks were my first band when I was 14 years old. It was Terry and I (the drummer from Slow) and a couple of other friends.
Scene Point Blank: Do any recordings exist of this band?
Stephen Hamm: I think there was a recording of us playing a high school gong show. That is how I ended up playing bass. We had a singer, guitar player, and drummer so I was told, “Okay you will play bass.” That was pretty much the end of the band after that gig, haha. We went out to fuck shit up and did the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant,” although we were told we had to turn it down, haha!
Scene Point Blank: I had a similar experience playing a high school talent show in mid ‘80s. We did a song by a band called Decry. The song was “S.D.H.N.C (Stiff Dicks Have No Conscious).” [Laughs.] The plug was pulled for a portion of the song until they probably realized they couldn't understand us anyway.
Stephen Hamm: That would get you suspended back in the day.
Scene Point Blank: Never mind it will get you cancelled today.
With Slow’s reunion gigs in 2017 there was a story I read a few times on how it is perceived that Slow influenced the Seattle grunge scene. I am wondering what your take is. Was this fabricated by journalists or based on some truth?
Stephen Hamm: That was partially fabricated by Robert Dayton, my colleague in Canned Hamm, but Slow’s moms invented grunge fashion! There is a certain amount of truth in the story. Our moms would buy us cheap flannel shirts from the Army and Navy stores since we were too lazy to dress ourselves, haha. Although I think D.O.A had more of an influence on that with Joey Shithead wearing his cut-off flannel shirt. As we spoke about, we had D.O.A. and Black Flag, etc., and they would play Seattle as well.
One day we got a call from Jonathan Poman sometime around the winter of ‘85. He tells us that some bands are going on down here in Seattle and we should come down and play. We were huge Fastbacks fans as they would come to play Vancouver a lot. So, really, they were the only band at that time that we knew out of Seattle. So, we went down and played The Rainbow in the University District. Anyways Poman said there is this band, Green River, you can play with -- now I can’t remember if they opened for us or we opened for them.
Scene Point Blank: Oh, the Mudhoney guys.
Stephen Hamm: Yes, that is correct. And a couple of guys who went on to do Mother Love Bone then Pearl Jam, of course. We were like, “What, they are having us gig with a fucking Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute band?” Stuff like this happened, though, as we were paired with a band called The Powder Blues Band in Vancouver. It was a terrible idea from the onset and everything went badly for both bands, haha. Anyways, we had it in our mind that it was one of those types of fucking gigs. So we get to Seattle and it’s Mark Arm and those guys. Now they were all very cool but looking back on it, Steve Ament and Stone Gossard looked like they were in Motley Crue, haha. Jeff was wearing one of those lime green mesh shirts. It wasn’t long after that show that they stopped wearing clothes like that and moved more towards the grunge look and got heavier. They were a great band. [For] Slow’s very last show we had Green River come up and open up for us at the Town Pump. It wasn’t long after we broke up that Green River did as well and morphed into Mudhoney.
We had Mother Love Bone come up and play with us after Slow had broken up. At the time we were really into stuff like Metallica, so I was in a band called Ogre. It was a really good band. Anyways, I remember talking to Mother Love Bone backstage and saying, “This is so funny…we are taking the piss out of metal with our band and you are taking the piss out of glam and here we are playing together.” To which they replied, “We aren't taking the piss out of glam.” Uh-oh, haha.
Ogre was almost like a GWAR-type band with songs like “Caligula’s Decapitator” and “March Into The Abyss.” We ended up breaking up that band as we wanted to do something more serious, so we formed Tankhog. And the GWAR started coming around and people started telling us you should put Ogre back together.
Vancouver was always known for putting together “fuck bands” and these bands were the better bands over the serious bands…We had a very good scene back then.
Scene Point Blank: Oh, I have a Tankhog CD. I didn’t realize you played with them.
Stephen Hamm: Yes, it was Terry from Chuck and the Fucks, Slow, Ogre and then Tankhog. We were a shit-hot rhythm section. Tankhog toured a lot and worked hard but we never really seemed to be able to get it to work in the studio. Tankhog was a good dark heavy band.
Scene Point Blank: “I Woke Up in Love This Morning” -- Great cover!
Stephen Hamm: Yes, we covered that Partridge Family song. Seems to have resonated with people!
Scene Point Blank: I was thinking that Tankhog had a member of D.O.A. in the band but was mixing up The Four Horsemen in my head (with Dimwit on drums).
Stephen Hamm: Yes, they were a great band! I have to say D.O.A. and particularly Dave Gregg and Joey Shithead were particularly kind to Slow. D.O.A. was the only band that was out there and constantly touring. Joey’s thing was you hit the prairies in the winter because no one else would be touring and everyone would come out to your show. Anyway, the first time we toured was because of D.O.A., as they were highly supportive of us. We made it out to Winnipeg in fucking February. There is truth in Joey’s theory, but you have to be equipped to do this and we weren’t -- but that is a whole other story. Anyway, we did play Edmonton as well with a great band called Deja Voodoo from Montreal. Those guys were touring on a Greyhound, haha! They had it down as the Greyhound could make it through the Canadian winters. We did get stuck out in Saskatoon and snowed in for a week but did make it out to the gig with D.O.A. Joey’s still touring a version of the band today. Man, D.O.A., you have to love them!
Scene Point Blank: They were true pioneers, jumping in a van and hitting the road and going across Canada and the U.S.A.
Stephen Hamm: Yes, for sure. I saw a documentary recently where you had D.O.A., Minor Threat, and Black Flag doing their little parts of the world. Black Flag doing California, D.O.A. doing Canada, and Minor Threat doing the East Coast. So eventually they all started exchanging contacts and built this little circuit we all know today. Joey would always be like, “Here is my little black book, so call these guys up and book yourself a show or tour no questions asked.” We ended up meeting a lot of people in California because of Joe.
Scene Point Blank: In every interview I read about Slow it always mentions the Expo 86 “incident.” Do you think that was a defining moment in killing the career of Slow? I always thought Slow was ahead of the curve and maybe too much so. The stars and the moons just didn’t align. Timing is everything and you can’t predict it. Five years later Slow could have been the next Nirvana.
Stephen Hamm: Yes, right place at the right time essentially. I remember meeting Buzz from the Melvins in Calgary. We didn't play a show together at the time but we were both playing local shitholes on the same night. Anyway, I know that Buzz was into Slow and played Kurt our band at the time. Anyway, Nirvana played here all the time in Vancouver. I was small-minded in thinking, “I don’t want to go see a band called Nirvana it is such a fucking cheesy name,” just like when we thought Green River was a CCR cover band, haha. Then I heard Bleach and I went, “Oh, shit.” Nirvana was a special band and was in the right place and right time. The stars and the moons were aligned for them. Could that have happened to Slow? Maybe, but who can predict these things? Mind you I am kind of glad that it didn’t happen to us in some sense, as one of us from Slow would have been dead as well. There was way too much good heroin around at that time. I am very lucky to have stayed away from that scene. For fucks sake it was cheaper to buy heroin than go out drinking!
Scene Point Blank: Back to your release. It is coming out in May, right?
Stephen Hamm: Yes, I am just waiting on the artwork. I am not sure if it is going to be a physical release on vinyl. There is a massive wait for vinyl to be pressed, as you probably know, and it is not a cheap endeavour. I want to get out and tour this and play shows. I love the production side of it and the recording as well. I like every angle of the process. At this current time in the history of the world, you don't need $10,000 to $20,000 to put an album out. I just want to keep putting music out.
Scene Point Blank: Are you an analog or a digital type of guy?
Stephen Hamm: Simply put, I’m a digital guy as far as the recording goes. Most vinyl, released today anyway, is a digital medium pressed on vinyl but I still love the medium. I pressed “Listen to the Sound of the Sun” on 45 and I still have a lot left to sell. Anyway, I see benefits in both analog and digital. At the end of the day, I just want to get the music out there and keep creating.
Scene Point Blank: Well I hope you make it out to Toronto and tour this release this summer.
Stephen Hamm: That would be amazing and would be nice to get out on the road and expose more people to the theremin.
