Eighty-thousand miles — that’s how long it took Hammer No More the Fingers’ silver Honda Odyssey to break down. It was an expensive and apparently tragic malfunction: the band seems to love their tour van as one of their own. And in order to heal their sickened friend and mode of transportation, they’re bringing a headlining gig to Motorco’s garage.
This week, amid a particularly Q&A-heavy issue, Diversions editor Joseph Chapman talked with HNMTF bassist Duncan Webster about the band’s efforts to pay off the repairs to their “soccer mom van gone postal.”
Diversions: What happened to the Odyssey and why’re you having this show?
Duncan Webster: It’s been our tour van since 2008. Yeah, it was donated to us from my parents, so it’s pretty awesome. We’ve driven it everywhere. Pretty much any show we’ve played in the past four or five years has been with the van.
About three months ago we were driving it to a show and the transmission dropped out of it. First time anything had ever gone wrong with it. It was kind of a long time coming for sure. Got it towed and taken to the shop. Ended up costing $3,200 to get a new transmission for it.
We put everything on the credit card, and we’re just trying to pay off the credit card pretty much.
Dive: What’s the show at Motorco going to be like?
DW: It’s us and Casual Curious from Greensboro, who are awesome. It’s presented by Durty Durham, which is an art collective here in Durham.
They do some really cool stuff — they throw a lot of huge parties and stuff, and they’re always down to help the cause. So yeah, we got them to foster the event. They designed the poster for us and they’re designing the room a little bit for us to keep up with the automobile theme.
It’s also sponsored by the brewery New Belgium, who makes Fat Tire. It’s the premiere of their new beer, Shift, and even that — it’s kind of like the beer’s called ‘shift’ and the transmission dropped out of the band. A bunch of cheesy stuff like that.
It’s a fairly high ticket price for us, like $10, $12 at the door — I realize that’s a high price to pay. But we’re trying to make it a more intimate affair I guess. The whole theme of the show is like getting vans or cars repaired, anything to do with automobiles — so it’s in the garage and we have a car piñata sort of thing.
Dive: How’s the new EP coming along? How’d Pink Worm end up under the direction of BJ Burton?
DW: We worked with him a few years ago on the (Hear Here: The Triangle) compilation, that was a compilation of local bands that Terpsikhore Records put out.
We really enjoyed working with him and we asked him if he wanted to do this EP. So we ended up doing it in Jeff’s living room and did it real old-school style. Just setup a couple of mics and just banged it out in two days. BJ, he’s just the master at working really fast and efficiently.
I feel like he brings out the best in us and brings out the spontaneousness of us.
It definitely sounds different than our other stuff. It was recorded last August, so we’ve been playing these songs for a while now.
But I think it’s us at our greatest, our rockingest, our funkiest and maybe most melodic. Some songs are more ballad kind of songs, and some are just the most rocking songs.
Dive: What’s some of the local music you’ve been digging lately?
DW: Bowerbirds’ stuff — my girlfriend plays in Bowerbirds and it’s been really cool getting to know their music through her. I really like them a lot. Those guys. Lost in the Trees are amazing. I haven’t heard the new Free Electric State record, but I’m really stoked to hear it.
A record that’s not local but I’ve found is this band from the 1970s, they’re a Japanese band, and they’re one of the first techno group kind of things. They’re called Yellow Magic Orchestra, and they have changed my life.
Dive: What’s on the horizon for HNMTF?
DW: We have shows every weekend around North Carolina. Like this weekend, we’re playing Durham and Charlotte; the weekend after that, we’re playing South Carolina and Norfolk, Virginia; we’re doing Winston-Salem and Asheville, then Atlanta, Athens (Ga.); then Greensboro, Columbia, S.C. — then we do an East Coast tour up to Montreal and back down.
Then we start over again in July.
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