Getting to know Annie Hamilton
The excellent Annie Hamilton has recently released her second single. We asked her to tell us about herself:
I am… currently sitting in a little french cafe in Adelaide with a hot black coffee and my laptop. We’re playing Groovin’ The Moo in Wayville today with Jack River who I play guitar for. It’s cold and overcast, perfect coffee-and-writing weather.
My New Tattooed Chameleon is… a song about transformation and adaptation. I stumbled across it one night late last year and when that line came out I laughed to myself and thought “there’s no way I can let that line stay”. Turns out it did stay and the song would not be itself without it. A lot of people have asked me what it means – Do you have a tattoo of a chameleon? Do you have a pet chameleon which has a tattoo? Are YOU the chameleon? Is the chameleon someone else? Do you have some strange obsession with reptiles? – All valid questions but I’m going to leave it open to interpretation.
Home is… sitting around the dinner table with my family late at night, eating dark chocolate, with my dog on my lap and my sister and my dad playing out-of-tune Bob Dylan duets on the old guitar. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it is magic.
I’ve never… known that much about Joan Of Arc but this morning there was a reference to her in my book and it occurred to me that I didn’t know that much about her, so I ended up in a deep wikipedia-hole researching her and have since learnt that she was a really fucking cool woman. Despite being an illiterate peasant from a tiny French village, at 16 she led battle against the English, becoming a key figure in a bunch of battles in the Hundred Years’ War. She ended up being convicted of heresy and cross-dressing (she wore men’s armour while in battle and also in prison to deter rapists) after an incredibly unfair trial, and was burnt at the stake in 1431. Maybe I’m going on a bit of a tangent here but it’s fascinating and I want to read more about her.
I spend too much time… I was going to say daydreaming, but after some deliberation I’ve decided that daydreaming is valuable and therefore I don’t think there is such thing as ‘too much’ daydreaming. I think I come up with my best ideas while daydreaming. I should daydream more often.
It might surprise people to learn that… as well as music, I run my own fashion label, Equinox by Annie Hamilton. It’s all locally-made in Sydney and features my illustrations printed onto silk and made into shirts and pants and things. I wear all of my own clothing in my music videos, photos and gigs.
In the future… I will have my own robot trained in remedial massage to come on tour with me for pre-gig band massages.
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You can catch Annie at The Lansdowne, Sydney on Thursday 9th May – supporting Sloan Peterson. Keep up to date with Annie on Facebook.
Interview by Bobby Townsend.
