Hem's Messé uses 'music as a shield'
By Chris Nixon
February 3, 2005
Dan Messé rides through the heartland of America in his tour van, holding his cell phone in one hand and looking across the West's wide-open spaces. You can hear it through the phone lines: the solitude of the plains in his voice and the hum of the Nebraska highway in the background.
"We're slowly winding our way down Interstate 80 and stopping at anything that catches our eye," says Brooklyn native Messé between tour stops in Omaha and Denver with his band Hem. "It's beautiful. It's a lot of open spaces and we're used to very closed spaces."
Despite hailing from the bustling center of commerce and consumer lifestyle, Hem comes across like a back-porch folk song sung from a creaky rocking chair in the midst of a cicada-filled night. Or maybe its brand of sweet folk sounds like a long drive across the plains. Either way, it's not the streets of Brooklyn.
"We definitely write music as a shield or a reaction against (the chaos of the city)," says Messé in a quiet voice. "I'm writing music to find comfort in life, and we hope it does that for other people too. But that's our goal: We don't have space in our real lives, so we create it sonically."
The eight-piece folk pop orchestra sculpts quiet, contemplative country tunes revolving around the beautiful simplicity of Sally Ellyson's voice. With the band's 2001 debut album, "Rabbit Songs," Hem joined a group of musicians melding earnest folk and American roots music. Along with such artists as Neko Case, the Sadies and Eastmountainsouth, Ellyson and her bandmates seem to sing in defiance of the standard glitz and glamour of the music industry.
Bandleader, composer and pianist Messé pens most of Hem's songs, including the majority of the first disc's 16 subtle tracks. On the group's follow-up album, he decided to employ a more orchestral feel.
In the beginning of 2004, Messé traveled to Eastern Europe to record with the Slovak Radio Orchestra. No one in the orchestra spoke English; no one in Hem spoke Slovak or Czech. By chance, one person in both parties happened to speak Spanish. So essentially, Messé traveled to Slovakia to converse in Spanish and record American roots music. In the face of massive lingual and technical hurdles, Hem managed to capture the classic folk pop sound they sought.
"Once we decided to do the orchestral folk pop sound, we started looking around for the studios they recorded the classic albums in: everything from Muscle Shoals to CBS Studios. They just don't exist anymore. All those rooms are closed down," says Messé, flashing back to early 2003. "We asked the guy who does our mastering, Greg Calbi, and he had just done a project that had used the Slovak Radio Orchestra.
"We somehow finagled our way over there. It was an absolute nightmare culturally, musically and technologically. A lot of sleepless nights, but it was really wonderful in the end."
The result is 2004's "Eveningland," 16 songs of sweeping strings, hushed acoustic guitars and weeping pedal steel. Despite the intricate intertwining layers, Ellyson's beautiful voice shines through and remains center stage. After creating a multifaceted album, Messé faced the dilemma of reproducing and enhancing the "Eveningland" on the road.
"We're really trying to make a living at this, but all of our decisions in our professional lives have seemingly subverted it," admits Messé. "We could tour as a four-piece I suppose and make a lot of money. But we want to create this beautiful folk orchestra on stage. Ultimately, we've never made any decisions based on money. We're really trying to stay true to that, even if it bankrupts us.
"This whole project was a reaction against irony in general and the whole stance of coolness," added Messé, who performs with Hem at Brick by Brick in Bay Park tonight. "I'd rather be emotionally honest and brave and let the cards fall where they may. I tried to write cool songs and it was not something that came naturally to me. I'm not a cool person. I just wanted to write songs that I could feel good about."
Chris Nixon is a San Diego music writer.
To listen to sound clips from Hem, log onto SignOnSanDiego.com at entertainment.signonsandiego.com
