Hello everyone, this is KC, Hamell's little Web Ogre. Please see the important announcement below.

Hamell On Trial's Blog has moved to:: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hamellsramble

***BE SURE TO RE-SUBSCRIBE!!!*** Hamell is currently writing and posting 30 songs in 30 days.
The new site has been launched ( http://www.hamellontrial.com -or- http://www.hamelltv.com )
He's already at #6. All new songs are posted on the new site under the "30 in 30" tab.

Sorry for any lag times if you haven't been getting your subscription... We're hoping you find the new site user friendly and easy to read. Also, we'll be launching an extensive digital download store in the near future so stay tuned.

Ramble on,

kc

Getting ready to pack for a two man crew to go to the Porcupine Festival in the backwoods of Wisconsin. Those two men in question are going to be me and my son Detroit. Picking up a third man, the invaluable Ricki C in his hometown of Columbus Ohio. I've taken Detroit before, obviously, but this is about 20 hours in the car so it has the potential to be quite eye opening for the both of us. Not to mention Ricki C. Had a great weekend though. Did a little video shoot in Stoudsburg at Sarah Street, you probably read my (hopefully) humorous blogs about the training camp in Wildwood New Jersey. I had decided that I would play 3 1/2 hours straight, or as long as I didn't break any strings, which ever came first. No strings were broken, but believe me they were both caressed and tortured and I'd venture to say everything in between. I had utilized some suggestions from my Facebook page that friends and fans had sent about their favorite Hamell songs, (very flattering) and revisited my catalog, relearning songs that I hadn't done in many years. Hadn't done First Date, Confess Me, Disconnected, The Vines, Uncle Morris in many moons. Have a boatload of new stuff I've been cultivating over the last year or so, so it was no problem coming up with the 3 1/2 hours, as a matter of fact I've been kicking myself in the butt remembering material that I could have come up with since. Good crowd, I'd been talking it up as you well know, but as fate would have it the weather wasn't as cooperative in the Poconos as it could have been. There was a small tornado warning that morning with some power outages and Dave the owner had called to say there was a possibility that we would have to cancel. I was going to be playing a house concert in Maryland the next night so I was going come Hell or Highwater, luckily the weather turned out fine. We'll see how the video turns out, it's hard not to believe that I won't have 90 minutes of superior material in all my rockings, can't tell you where it'll end up, maybe one off the wall thing on You-Tube, some on my new snazzy website that's in the process of being designed, and the whole thing as some kind of bootleg for the serious fans that have to have all things Hamell. (Once again, very flattering.) Spent the evening at the owners house, a stunning abode that he has been working on over the last five years. Looks like one of those architectural wonders that you see in the magazines. We looked through some of the other videos he has shot, he had failed to mention that the camera man was a hard core Republican and member of the Christian Right. My show was certainly going to be different than the Weddings and Baptisms he was used to. If this video never sees the light of day it's probably because this guy destroys it in the hopes of escaping the fires of Hell, in light of "conspiracy" charges. Dave and I ended up talking into the wee wee hours of the morning, (5 A.M. to be exact) about the state of the union. Baby that'll depress ya. It pretty much ended up with a check mate, both of us trying to convince the other that we had to embrace the positive, be thankful for the incredible blessings we had and move forward. You know, the usual crap. Up at noon on Saturday, hop in the car and make the 4 hour trek to Maryland. Do you like Crabs? I mean eating them. Not "getting" them. I like eating them so I was headed to right place. Lots of back roads and torrential downpours resulting in floodings but I had bought the newest Stooges album while in Stroudsburg so I had the ever inspirational Iggy telling me to press forward at all costs and of course I did. Even had an extra hour to take a nap in the car. Nothing will put you to sleep like rain on the roof and exhaustion. Cool house concert. Once again a beautiful house, once again the work of the owner Matt, big old beautiful turret in the front, very close to the ocean's shore. The guests were seated initially at a picnic table in the back eating. They had bushels and bushels of freshly steamed and spiced crabs dumped on newspaper and people were digging in heartily. Shrimp, fried chicken, corn on the cob completed the feast. I got a tour of the house, helped myself to the culinary delights, put new strings on my guitar, the crowd moved out to the seating in the garage and I ripped it up acoustically. Played a darn good set if I do say so myself. Only about three of them were familiar with my material so it's always cool to see the virgins "get it" and start laughing. All in all a wonderful time, wonderful people and a job well done. Was able to get home, 30 miles above New York City in a record 4 hours and 15 minutes and that was including a lengthy gas stop in Jersey. The next day the wife, son, and I headed into Manhattan where Lincoln Center was hosting some free outdoor live music. The wife had seen Allen Toiussaint the night before and been completely blown away. We caught The Texas Tornadoes in a tribute to Doug Sahm. I lived in Texas, so it helps, but you only have to be a fan of great music to know that Doug Sahm was a genius and his son has kind of taken over for him and was pretty much leading the 8 piece band complete with the incredible Flaco Himenez and Augie Meyers. An evening of great music. That early Texas rock and roll takes in a lot of influences, R & B, gospel, 2 step, polka, country and western, just quality stuff. Well, it's back to packing for the big road trip and I'll keep you posted. For my buddies in Wisconsin: We'll see you there!

It's finally come to an end. After a grueling two week stint out here at Cus's fortified training compound he thinks I might be ready to play the greatest show of my life. He never exactly comes right out and says this however. Lord knows he'd never utter a genuine word of praise. I can tell that he's proud, or at least has some satisfaction that he's turned what he calls, "A man with the spine of a smashed banana" into a lean mean fighting machine. The day started out as any other. I'm awakened at 5:30 A.M. with the sound of Deep Purple's Machine Head blasting away from giant stacks of JBL speakers powered by six 500 watt amps. Cus sprayed me with freezing cold hose water and I lunge into the pool to do 200 laps. We then hit the music room where I jump on a trampoline with my guitar slung over my shoulder and play at a deafening volume until I peel the paint off the walls and then enter the tiger's cage to fight until lunch. Cus kept pouring kerosene all over my veggie burger but he's kept me so ravaged and starved I didn't care and I ate through the flames.We popped the water blisters with needles, ran through the lyrics of a hundred of my songs while jumping rope and here's when I got my first indication that Cus might have thought I was ready. He had invited a couple of other manager and trainer types over to check out my set. He had set up this real cool theater style auditorium while I ran through my tunes. I'm not sure but when I reached mid-point I actually thought I heard Cus clap and when I looked closer to acknowledge where the sound was coming from I swear I thought I saw a tear in his eye. A genuine tear. The old bastard's getting sentimental in his twilight years. When one of his old school buddy's coughed during the quiet parts he cuffed him upside the head as if to say, "Have some respect for the boy." I played for 6 hours straight while Cus watched enraptured from the front row. In the words of the great Chuck Berry, it goes to show you never can tell. Afterward Cus blindfolded me and whispered in my ear, "I have a little surprise for you." I didn't know where I was headed and I gotta admit I got a little nervous. I had talked to one rocker who Cus had trained for a similar event and he told a story about Cus throwing him blindfolded into a pit of poisonous snakes to "teach him a lesson." I had talked to this other young woman who had aspirations to be a rocker but after one of Cus's blindfolded sessions where she swears she was made to eat the brain of a live panda she quit the music business altogether and went into interior design. Her boyfriend snuck up on her once with a blindfold in the hopes of "broadening their sex life" and she groin kicked him into a six month stay at the hospital. Cus always thought I had some Goddamn lesson to learn so my stomach started to do somersaults. I could smell sea water, old moss and tow rope. Turns out Cus had rented a party boat! He ripped the blindfold off and I couldn't believe my eyes. SURPRISE! He invited a couple hundred of his closest friends, mostly felons, retired strippers and midgets to help me celebrate. The air was thick with cigar smoke, perfumed body odor and napalm. He had raw clams, absinthe and bar-b-que and had the band Ratt playing. Not Steven Peacy's Ratt but the other one with Bobby Blotzer and Warren DiMartino. He told me later that originally he was going to have the Brett Michaels band play but after the success of the guy's TV show on VH1 he couldn't get him on the phone anymore. It really pissed Cus off too because he was the one who trained Brett Michaels for his big comeback after Poison couldn't play at a high school dance in Pennsylvania without being laughed at. Cus said that Michaels came to him crying like a little girl, very similar to the scene in The Godfather where the Sinatra guy is sobbing and trying to get the movie deal and the horse's head ends up in the bed. So Cus took pity on him and he said because he secretly always liked C.C. DeVille's guitar playing and whipped his little girl ass into shape. Of course now that he was a half-baked star again he wouldn't return Cus's calls. Cus took me into the bow of the ship and showed me some pictures of Brett Michaels without his doo-rag. It was not a pretty sight. Here's a guy whose bare cranium would made Michael Jackson look normal. He had plugs that didn't take so he had this weird chemotherapy vibe going on with splotchy dirty blond hair every 8 inches or so like a doll that's been left out in the rain and run over in your driveway and then he had tied extensions to that, but it was before he got his royalty check for "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" so it was like a bad tangled beef jerky that had caught gangrene under a cesspool. He tried tattooing the bald spots but they kept getting bigger and bigger and then his head got infected so that had to cut a third of his skull away and fit a piece of molded plastic in there with a lime green Poison logo and of course the dye ran into his brain which had to be removed just prior to the filming of his television show. All the producers admitted that he was infinitely more docile after that, and that probably contributed to the success of the show. Anyway, it was a great party, and to the sounds of Ratt doing "Round and Round" we danced and ate and sang until dawn. Then when Ratt played "Round and Round" again Cus gathered everybody around and presented me with my diploma for his training camp. I'm not gonna lie. It was a proud moment. Ratt then launched into, "Round and Round" and everybody cheered for me and threw me overboard and tried to grab my guitar but I think the steroids got all weird on me because I lept on the boat and started tearing people limb from limb. Nobody touches the guitar. I might have blacked out. All I can remember is Ratt launching into, "Round and Round" for the 7th time in a row and me coming to with Cus pouring champagne over my head and telling me it was going to be alright as soon as Dr. Nick got there with my shot. I laid back and relaxed and took in the warm feeling of a training job well done and listened to Ratt as they started "Round and Round". Tomorrow, the gig.

looking at the pillow
looking at the bed
thinking about the crazy demons
resting in my head

some of us can't get to sleep
the clock just ticks away
they'd tell he was the wickedest
let's see what he has to say

I know some of you are thinking that I’ve been watching an awful lot of videos today for a guy that’s supposed to be in an isolated training camp getting toned for my video shoot. Don’t worry, old Cus, my trainer is like a mad dog drill sergeant. He hoses me down after a long sprint and then blasts these U-Tube videos for me to study. Then after a three minute rest it’s back to the grind. Today was especially grueling. For those of you that are familiar with the ins and outs of the guitar you probably figure that I use some heavier gauge strings on my instrument and you figured correct. I beef up my “A’, “D” and “G” strings from a regular heavy gauge set so they can stand up to the rigorous torment that I administer on a nightly basis. There’s a whole ritual that goes on prior to any gig where I change the strings nightly, and go over material etc. Cus strung my guitar with the same material they make chain link fences out of. This is like the scene in “Kill Bill” where she punches away at a board with her fingers. After 6 or 7 hours of playing away at this telephone cable your bloodied up to your elbows and my mop boy was passed out on cheap wine in the corner bunk so I had to hire a temp worker who seemed a little gun shy at all the red. If I whimper or drool Cus starts screaming “Squat thrusts! Squat thrusts” until he bursts blood vessels in his eyes, and as I don’t want to lose him as a trainer I bend and give him a quick 100. Maybe he throws me a bone to gnaw on and then it’s back to playing “Hamell’s Ramble” for 2 hours straight. Just the riff. No words. It’s like water torture. Cus just laughs and goes back to watching the Home Shopping Network in his office and puffing on cheap cigars. There’s a quarter mile track that he has me run around on through the oily smelling dirt. I do 15 miles a day, but he didn’t like my attitude today. He thinks I have a problem with authority and I don’t play well with others so he tied pork chops to my ankles and had me chased by a hungry Doberman. It’s true; you really do pick up the pace. We slaughtered the Doberman and ate it for dinner and then Cus started mumbling and cursing, going round and round in circles like some weird Tasmanian dervish saying, “Ballads! More Ballads”. Cus goes to bed at 9 and he wants me to sing him to sleep for 5 or 6 hours. I don’t have 5 or 6 hours worth of ballads. I barely have an hours worth of ballads. “Write more!” he screams. When he jumps up and wails like this in the middle of the night it makes all the wolves in the hills start to howl. It’s very eerie. He’s also hyper-critical of my writing, even in his sleep. He’ll start out tossing and turning in his cot, “Bad couplet!” “Cheap rhyme”, “Where’s the chorus?”, “False emotion”, “Sounds like Phil Collins”, “Sounds like Barry Manilow”, “Sounds like Richard Marx”, (Richard fucking Marx? How old IS this fucking guy?), “Cliché chord changes”. Jesus, give me a break, I’m improvising most of them on the spot and the guy won’t shut up. Can’t be a very sound sleep. I’m still banging away at these industrial size guitar strings too by the way. Ankles all puffy from Doberman bites, although I did get the last laugh on Fido. Plus Cus wants more rockers written by morning. I beginning to have second thoughts on doing the greatest gig I’ve ever done. Maybe I set the bar too high. I look out into the steamy night of Wildwood New Jersey and see all the happy people on the Boardwalk coming and going and I envy them. Why can’t I just enjoy myself? Why must I go through this torture day after day just so I can say I’ve played to the utmost best of my ability? But then I remember an email I got the other evening through my website from a Little Timmy Caruso in Indiana. He wrote that the bank had foreclosed on his daddy’s farm and he and his parents and his 19 brothers and sisters, their grandpa and third cousin Leroy, plus his Aunt Ethel and Uncle Rick were all living in their dad’s truck. It was crowded some nights and they often didn’t have enough to eat. None of them had showered in weeks. Aunt Ethel weighed 600 pounds and despite the forced diet still seemed to be gaining weight which was putting everybody in a foul mood. Luckily the C.D. player still worked. Little Timmy went on to say the only thing that brought the whole family together, that gave them hope that there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel, that dad would get a job again, that someday they would find a public shower, Aunt Ethel would stop gaining weight and they’d get back to the farm that had been in their family for generations, was to gather around the CD player and listen to “The Pussy Song” at top volume. Over and over again in a continuous loop, laughing and square dancing, tongues out pantomiming the song's chorus, feverish with joy until they found themselves sobbing and holding each other in the hot Indiana night. Timmy implored me, “Mr. Hamell, never give up. If you ever do a video of a live show please make it the greatest gig you’ve ever done. My family’s counting on you.” And so, this Friday night, in Stroudsburg Pa, at Sarah Street, for Little Timmy Caruso, his dad, his 19 brothers and sisters, his third cousin Leroy, his uncle Rick and yes, especially for his big fat smelly Aunt Ethel, I intend to play THE GREATEST GIG OF MY LIFE. And now I must get back to training.

i put the kid to bed
slumber here he comes
he'll dream of fender stacks
and meg white on the drums

I'm looking for a dessert
after dinner time
I'm thinking about all my friends
who lived the life of crime

i sit down for dinner
my how time flies
i like this video's pyro
and the rhythm section's bow ties

Lunchtime I started to sag
Around nap time I began to drag
I needed this video to pick me up,
I drink espresso from my favorite cup.