All About Hem

If you want to know everything about the band Hem, you're in the right place!

November 13, 2023

Hem in the studio

As teased in the first episode of Hem's new podcast, Hem is in the studio this month recording new music. Hooray! The band posted an enigmatic photo of a microphone and (blurry) lyrics in a New York studio on Facebook and Twitter.

Articles update

The articles page has been updated with a 2017 article. There are a lot of articles about Dan Messé's work on "Amélie," but in this one he particularly talks about Hem. Its title, "Raised on his mother’s show tunes, a composer takes a shot at Broadway," also reflects the title of Hem's latest podcast episode, "Our Mother's Waltz!"

New Hem podcast, episode 2

The second episode of Hem's new podcast is here! It's Dan and Gary and a room full of kittens.

November 1, 2023

"Leave Me Here" meanings update

The song meanings page has been updated with a little tidbit about "Leave Me Here" from the Rabbit Songs album.

New Hem podcast, episode 1

Listen to the first episode of a new Hem podcast that the band has taglined Dan and Gary yakking about the music we love. They also talk about how Hem would change up versions of their songs when they played them live. Plus, burying the lede, they reveal that the band is heading to the studio soon to record new music!

October 3, 2023

Hem and All About Hem is back!

Hem is making new music for you! Right now! HOORAY! Visit the band's Facebook page for the annoucement and a photo.

Apologies for any broken links and missing images you'll find browsing the site, which will be many. My image/page hosting has undergone enough changes in recent years that the site doesn't look or work as well as it used to and as I would like. Please bear with me as I try to rebuild the site. If there is anything I can help you with in the meantime, drop me an email. (Email was broken for an extended time, but it's fixed now! So if you wrote and never heard back, that's why. I'm sorry!)

June 22, 2016

"Better Days" Song Debut!

Listen to a new Hem song! "Better Days" is actually an old Hem song from 2008, but it has not been available anywhere until today. You may remember this song from a Liberty Mutual commercial that used a short snippet of it. It's finally here in full, and you can listen for free. You can also always find it on the Better Days page. Thank you to Hem for letting the song debut at All About Hem! Here is a message from Hem to everyone about the song: We never quite got this song to where we felt it could be included in one of our official collections, but we still get a lot of requests for us to release it. So here it is for you to enjoy (we hope!)....

January 18, 2016

2016 Fun: Flashback to Lincoln Center

Continuing this year's batch of brand new Hem goodies that started last week, today brings a tour photo from Dawn Landes, Hem's backing vocalist and glockenspiel player (more about that soon!). Dawn took this backstage before Hem's wonderful February 9, 2006 show at the Allen Room at Lincoln Center. Find this photo and all the new 2016 goodies on the 2016 Fun Page, and find more about this particular concert (including full audio!) at the show's page. Also, Dawn just released a new EP last week with Piers Faccini called Desert Songs that you should totally buy (iTunes; vinyl) - I did!

January 11, 2016

All About Me + Announcement of Exclusives

Today is All About Hem's 12th birthday! As I say every year, thanks to everyone who has visited and supported the site over the years, with the biggest thanks to Hem, especially Dan, Gary, Sally, and Steve. As the site's birthday approached, I realized that there has sadly been no news updates since last January 11. So I decided to make my own news! I reached out to members of Hem to see if they had any photos, stories, songs, or anything else they could share with All About Hem. They do! Because they are awesome! In the coming days and weeks, I'll be sharing all sorts of brand new Hem goodies, including some Q&As with various band members. I'll be collecting everything from this series on what I'm calling the 2016 Fun Page. Thank you, Hem!

2005 Concert Video and Interview

Kicking off the fun with something not from the band but still new to the site, here is Hem on Episode 2 of Live at Club Cafe, featuring performances and interviews from performers at Pittsburgh's Club Cafe. Hem starts at about the 12 minute mark. This performance is from Hem's February 11, 2005 show and includes clips of Stupid Mouth Shut, All That I'm Good For, Redwing, Tennessee Waltz, Jackson, and Dance With Me, Now Darling, with band interviews between each clip. At least some of the performance is from the late show since two of these songs were not played at the early show, but some of the video may be from the early show - I don't know! Information about this video was shared at All About Hem long ago, since there's a link to information about it at Club Cafe's website in the tour archive. But the link is broken (I'm trying to fix all broken links - it's a sloooow process), and the show was only available to see on TV for select Comcast subscribers, so let's all pretend that this show is being shared now for the first time since it is new to the site. Fun in 2016!

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