Talking To Hammeta
Fatea writer Nic Rigby catches up with the rising singer-songwriter
With nearly 2,000 followers on Twitch singer songwriter Hammeta is quickly establishing herself in the new folk scene with her first album And Yet… I Actually Did It. Fatea writer Nic Rigby caught up with her on Zoom.
From singing on the streets for money as a homeless teenager, to singing in a rock band which had a painful break-up 27-year-old Hammeta has crammed a lot into her musical life.
The multi-instrumentalist, who regularly broadcasts through Twitch to fans around the world from her home in Norwich, started busking in her teens. "I started playing when I was 16, originally out of necessity because I ended up homeless when I was 15 - I did not have a guitar - so I was just standing in the street singing," she says. "Then I met this dude randomly on a bench. He said: 'Come here tomorrow and I'll have a present for you.' I was like 'Oh God that sounds dodgy' but he turned up and presented me with this beautiful ukulele, a big baritone ukulele. "He was like come to my house and I will teach you… that's where it all started."
And as soon as she started playing music, she started song writing.
"I pretty much started writing strong songs straight away, being in the situation I was in, I was like I need a vent to show how I am," she says.
"I instantly started writing songs. I was actively listening back to them today - some of the songs I put on the YouTube. Oh, my God, they're awful, they're so bad."
She was soon also playing guitar (after someone told her to play "a real fucking instrument".
"I started learning a few chords and found guitars can be easily heard over ukulele's for gigging. I now play keyboards and extensive collection back here of mandolins, electric basses, all that sort of shenanigans," she adds.
She then became the lead singer in hard rock band Wicked Faith which had a five year run with prestige gigs at the O2 Academy Islington and the 100 Club on Oxford Street in London.
"It was going really well until it didn't, it got complicated," she says.
Hammeta says the band got an official manager who changed the name of the band and wanted to get "rid of all the songs", including songs that meant a lot to their fans.
The story is partly chronicled in the songs Keep Moving On, which is the first song on her debut album "And Yet… I Actually Did It" and The Hope a driving anthem of new folk.
The album is full of superb lyrics and atmospheric tune.
The song Marshmallow she was inspired by a music camp that brought to together some of the early musicians using Twitch in the Netherlands.
"Basically there was a private event we went to for a whole week which was me and like 20 other streamers with twitch and we all got together in honour of Movember to raise money for a men's mental health we ended up raising 5,000 euros," she says
"It was the second to last day and we were all very drunk and around the campfire and someone was like who we have a campfire," she says.
"And I had my guitar and started singing about the marshmallows roasting on the fire and suddenly everyone starts singing it and I grabbed my notebook and then I wrote the song and played the whole song there."
One of my favourite songs on the album is Lace.
The song is finely crafted with lines like: "I will paint the silence with songs of you / Because even my darkest skies are turning blue / There are no words to describe how I feel /
I've tasted them all and none of them are close to being real."
Hammeta says the "song is based is that song is about a long distance relationship and basically your whole world is in it".
"You are so far apart and that's why the end is: 'Please don't give up on me, I will never give up on you'."
The song's chorus goes: "May our fingers entangle like lace, / May we run away and forget this place, We can travel and find new ways to play / To create our todays, our tomorrows and our yesterdays / I will paint the silence with songs of you."
She says the albums is "a collection of everything that ever happened to me in my life and it took a year - with a lot of long gaps, where I was like: 'I don't want to look at this'". Hammeta says its tells stories of her life's "ups and downs". She adds: "I have experienced more than perhaps I should have experienced as a 27-year-old."
(Nic Rigby is part of the band Nic Norton and the County Band. See nicnortonmusic.com)
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