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December 2005 News Archive (Older news link at bottom of page) |
 New February 2006 Tour Dates |
| A couple new tour dates are scheduled for February, one in Charlottesville, VA and one in Annapolis, MD. Check the tour page for details, including how to buy tickets now. More tour dates should surface relatively soon. |
 No Word From Tom Additional Details |
| Thanks to a number of awfully sneaky but entirely wonderful people, I have more info about No Word From Tom, Hem's upcoming album of outtakes, covers, demos, live recordings, and rarities. Here's each track on the album classified in one of those categories. The discography page includes this breakdown too, but I might remove it from there once the album's in stores and it's easy to go find these details. |
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| 1. All The Pretty Horses -- Cover (Traditional lullaby from Sally's a capella "audition" cassette) |
| 2. Rainy Night In Georgia -- Cover (Brook Benton) |
| 3. Radiation Vibe -- Cover (Fountains Of Wayne) |
| 4. The Present -- Outtake (Unfinished during the Eveningland recording sessions) |
| 5. Cincinnati Traveler -- Rarity (Eveningland's "Cincinnati Traveler" with lyrics) |
| 6. Betting On Trains -- Live |
| 7. So. Central Rain -- Cover (REM) |
| 8. Tennessee Waltz -- Cover (Traditional song) |
| 9. Sailor -- Live |
| 10. Eveningland -- Outtake (Longer version of the song on Eveningland) |
| 11. Idle -- Live |
| 12. Crazy Arms -- Cover |
| 13. Oh No -- Outtake (From the Eveningland recording sessions) |
| 14. All That I'm Good For -- Live |
| 15. The City And The Traveler -- Rarity (Eveningland's "Cincinnati Traveler" with lyrics) |
| 16. Lazy Eye -- Live (Radio sound check) |
| 17. The Beautiful Sea -- Demo |
| 18. The Golden Day Is Dying -- Cover (Traditional lullaby) |
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 Best of 2006 Article |
| No Word From Tom hasn't even been released yet, but it's already on the San Francisco Chronicle's list of CDs to watch for in 2006. |
 Album Pre-Ordering |
| In addition to the CD-signed-by-the-band bonus of pre-ordering No Word From Tom from Hem's store, now you get free shipping. More reason to order it now! |
| End of Hiatus |
| FYI, news updates will now return to their normal as-timely-as-possible basis. (People should be happy to hear that I was successful in visiting Michigan but not destroying any of my relatives' maps by tearing off half an acre so I could carry around a scrap of paper of the land I grew in.) A few bits of news did obviously crop up while I was away from this site, so sorry for the delay in reporting. |
| Holiday Hiatus |
| I probably won't be able to update All About Hem again until close to the new year. Any news that breaks between now and then will be posted here as soon as possible with appropriate fanfare and with regrets for its tardiness. I will still be checking email, so if you have any Hem news or questions, I'd love the gift of email. Hope everyone has a wonderful end to 2005! |
 No Word From Tom Meanings |
| To help tide everybody over until regular updates resume, I've updated the meanings page to include details for a number of songs on the upcoming album No Word From Tom. You can find new entries for All The Pretty Horses, The City And The Traveler, The Golden Day Is Dying, The Present, Rainy Night In Georgia, So. Central Rain, and Tennessee Waltz. There's also new information posted for Lord, Blow The Moon Out Please on Rabbit Songs and for the newly released Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. (Sorry, Eveningland, you're the wholly neglected album this time around.) Hem's MySpace blog is seriously like a Christmas present that came in July and keeps on giving. |
| Album Pre-Order Bonus |
| The word via Hem's site is that if you pre-order No Word From Tom online through Hem's Nettwerk store by January 25, 2006, you'll get a special treat. Not only will the album be mailed to you before its official February 7 release date, it will be signed by the band. It's a win-win situation! Go order it! (Keep in mind that orders from outside North America will take longer to reach you through the mail and may not beat the Feb. 7 date.) I'll post another pre-order reminder (or two) as January 25 approaches. |
| Discography Update |
| The discography page now includes full information for the promotional compilation CD Reel to Reel V2.8: Rock & Roll which made a bare bones appearance there at the end of last month. Hem has not one but two songs on the CD, "Carry Me Home" (with a hidden "Now The Day Is Over") and "Lucky." (Thank you, Coleen and Heidi!) |
| Miscellaneous News |
| In Hem's newly-updated Nettwerk bio there are a few interesting bits of information: |
| * Due next summer is the album of entirely new songs that Hem's been working on in the studio on the heels of No Word From Tom. |
| * North American and UK tour dates should be coming up soon. |
| * The opening track on No Word From Tom, "All The Pretty Horses" is an acapella lullaby from Sally's pre-Hem homemade tape. That tape is also the source of "Lord, Blow The Moon Out Please" on Rabbit Songs and "Now The Day Is Over" on the US version of Eveningland. |
| * Unlike on Eveningland, "Cincinnati Traveler" on No Word From Tom has words. Dan talked about writing a lyric for that song in the All About Hem Interview and in a MySpace blog entry, and apparently he found the right words for the melody. Incidentally, that MySpace entry also talks about No Word From Tom's "The City And The Traveler." Even more incidentally, Dan's blog entry the previous day mentions "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" as a favorite song, and that probably helps explain why Hem chose to record that holiday tune. |
| Finally, it's not mentioned in the bio, but there should be a re-release of Eveningland in the UK in 2006. I don't know any more than that yet, but when I do, you'll find the news here! |
 New Song Downloads |
| The two new songs made available a couple days ago for streaming at Hem's MySpace page are now available for mp3 download at their website. Go grab "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and "The Golden Day Is Dying," set your mp3 player on repeat, and enjoy! (FYI, the two album snippets Hem refers to in the description for "The Golden Day Is Dying" are for "The Present" and "Rainy Night In Georgia," both sent via their email mailing list at the end of October.) |
| No Word From Tom Tracklist |
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The tracklist for Hem's upcoming album of covers, b-sides, outtakes, and live songs is here! Of the 18 songs, it looks like 8 are Hem songs reworked from previous albums (*), 3 are Hem original tunes (**), and 7 are covers (***). The discography page has the details, but surely CD content is exciting enough news to make the front page! Click on the very lovely cover image for a larger version. (I know it's still hard to see details, and once I have an even larger picture, I'll post it.) Also, you can preorder the album now through Nettwerk's store. |
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| 1. All The Pretty Horses *** |
| 2. Rainy Night In Georgia *** |
| 3. Radiation Vibe *** |
| 4. The Present ** |
| 5. Cincinnati Traveler * |
| 6. Betting On Trains * |
| 7. So. Central Rain *** |
| 8. Tennessee Waltz *** |
| 9. Sailor * |
| 10. Eveningland * |
| 11. Idle (The Rabbit Song) * |
| 12. Crazy Arms *** |
| 13. Oh No ** |
| 14. All That I'm Good For * |
| 15. The City And The Traveler ** |
| 16. Lazy Eye * |
| 17. The Beautiful Sea * |
| 18. The Golden Day Is Dying *** |
| February 2006 Lincoln Center Show |
| Tickets for Hem's show on Feb. 9 is sold out or close to it, and tickets are no longer available online. You can still try calling the box office for tickets. Further details are on the tour page. If you're not already happily clutching a ticket, get one now for this special show! |
| Songs at MySpace |
| If for some cosmically wrong reason you haven't been keeping up with Hem at MySpace, now is a better time than ever to start. You can stream two new songs through their page, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" (Hem's contribution to the Internet-available-only compilation album A Winter's Night) and "The Golden Day Is Dying" (a track from their upcoming album No Word From Tom). Today's happy-news blog entry reveals that these songs will also soon be available for download at their website, which itself will soon look all new and shiny. Until I SHUTUP again, go, listen, enjoy! |
| Lyrics Update |
 Still More About Hem's Merry Little Christmas |
| You can now hear Hem's version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" on A Winter's Night: The Best Of Nettwerk Christmas Albums in its entirety by visiting this Nettwerk page. It's a streaming RealAudio clip, so you'll need RealPlayer to hear it. Enjoy! |
| More About Hem's Merry Little Christmas |
| In addition to places mentioned in the last couple news updates, you can find Hem's contribution to the newly-released album A Winter's Night: The Best Of Nettwerk Christmas Albums at iTunes. Wherever you look for the song online, your best bet is probably to search for the album rather than the band's name or the song, which is "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." Not all services search individual tracks on a compilation album, so you might only be able to find it via album name. (Thanks for the help, Kevin!) |
All About Hem (c) Copyright 2004-2006
This site is fan run and is not affiliated with Hem in any way. You can visit Hem's Official Website
here. You can contact me at christina@allabouthem.com
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