The New Old Sound

[May 14th, 2008]

You almost expect to hear a faint trace of static dusting Run On Sentence’s songs. The band’s music—a mixture of swing, blues and folk often embellished with Spanish trumpets, subtly Latin rhythms, even yodeling—sounds like something coming out of a phonograph horn a century ago. Even the lyrical sadness and confusion smack of Depression-era laments, if you ignore the mentions of bling and Southeast Portland’s Red & Black Cafe. But don’t be distracted by its timeless antiquity—Run On Sentence is very much a product of modern Portland.

The group is singer-songwriter/guitarist Dustin Hamman, upright bassist William Joersz and a modular cast of local musicians—members of bands like Shoeshine Blue, Loch Lomond and Nick Jaina Band, among others. As Hamman puts it, “Most of the band isn’t always in the band.” It’s one of Portland’s many revolving-door projects, where the greater scene joins in to flesh out a gifted songwriter’s vision.

In this case, that vision is distilled while Hamman works his summer job at Klickitat Canyon Winery in the Columbia Gorge. “I just sort of lucked into this position where the people that run [the winery] have become like family, and they sort of let me stay there,” says Hamman. “I work for them, but most of the summer I just camp. They have 35 acres, and it’s mostly just empty land. Beautiful empty land.” Hamman’s about to spend his third summer there, at the birthplace of most of his songs: “I have a deeper sense of relationship with the universe when I’m spending a lot of time outside,” he explains.

Based on the project’s vintage sound (and Hamman’s emotional, jazzy singing style), you’d imagine he listens to, well, old music. That’s not the case—Hamman isn’t just drawing members from Portland’s talent pool, he’s drawing inspiration from it, too. Seeing parlor pop outfit Heroes and Villains pushed him to play in odd time signatures on songs like “8th St. Music Co.” (from last year’s Oh When the Wind Comes Down, which is being re-released on Hush Records this fall); he started belting out his vocals after listening to Rex Marshall (one-man band Mattress); even the “pretty heavy” old-school blues kick he went on in college was instigated by Shoeshine Blue frontman Mike Apinyakul when they were both at school in Columbia, Mo. Hamman’s always been influenced by the musicians where he lives (back home in Omaha, Neb., he was more interested in “local folk hero” Simon Joyner than the nationally significant Saddle Creek Records scene), in part because of the potential for interaction. “It’s been really rewarding to be able to look at people and appreciate the music they’re making, and just know them,” Hamman says.

Here in Portland, Hamman and his band are part of a growing wave of dark acoustic music spearheaded by many of his collaborators and bill-sharers (including Nick Jaina, Loch Lomond and the Builders and the Butchers, all top-10 placers on WW’s 2008 Best New Band list). To Hamman, the vivid forlornity spreading through our folk scene—which, for him, comes out in character studies of the lost and floundering, somber instrumentation and bursts of mocking laughter—isn’t just because Portland doesn’t see the sun for much of the year (though he thinks that’s part of it). It’s more global: “There doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of hope in the world,” Hamman says. “Scientists are deciding we’re just kind of doomed. What else are you going to do than write about it?”

To Hamman, writing lyrics like “The people outside have umbrellas and faces/ That look like they’re wondering, ‘Will I be dead soon?’” gets that hopeless sensation out in the open, attesting to the fact that we’re all feeling it together. “The darkness that exists needs to be painted, so that there can be hope within it,” explains the 30-year-old.

In the end, that sense of connection, that in-it-togetherness, is what Run On Sentence is all about—and it’s a message that sounds much the same coming out of your iPod earbuds as it would’ve from a phonograph horn a century ago.