Herman Jolly

I’ve said it before: Herman Jolly’s Mad Cowboy Disease is one of my favorite records of all time. He was living in Portland when that was recorded (note the song title “Willy Vlautin”, a nod to the novelist and Richmond Fontaine frontman), so it’s an honor to officially call him a Seattleite now. Jolly has a cracked-wood voice, which warms you in a manner not unlike waking up Saturday mornings to a drizzly rain. Lately, he’s been playing with his pop group Little Pieces, but for REVERBfest, he’ll be taking a solo turn. Something about his solo stuff has always held an intimacy and charm that his full-band efforts did not: It’s familiar and cozy, like an old rocking chair, or memories of an old apartment, or something like that. BRIAN J. BARR

(The Herman Jolly band is now called Little Pieces! Check it out.) Like Robyn Hitchcock, former Sunset Valley frontman (and current Seattle resident) Herman Jolly has a knack for writing wonderfully off-kilter yet oddly beautiful pop songs—the kind that are so distinctive they'd sound strange and slightly forced coming from anyone else, but fit his faintly cracked voice and tilted worldview to a T. He's returned to performing under his own name (although he's joined onstage by a rhythm section) and he's got a new album coming out really soon, so hopefully '07 will see this talented feller get the recognition he deserves. BARBARA MITCHELL -The Stranger __________________________________________________________ For whatever reason, some albums end up defining certain periods of your life. For me, Herman Jolly's 1999 album Mad Cowboy Disease defined my junior year of college. I had just met a girl and I was living in a house with a bunch of dudes who stayed up until 6 a.m. snorting toot off our coffee table. My bedroom was right off the living room, so if I wanted to get any sleep while they ran their mouths and ground their teeth, this girl and I would have to put on music to fall asleep. Jolly's cracked, sparse folk numbers hissed out of those speakers, drowning out the cokehead roommates better than any other record I owned. The way he sang and played made it seem like he was holed up on a dark Saturday morning in Portland, with the rain streaking his bedroom windows and his cats crying for food, exactly the distraction we needed from the endless sniffling of the roommates. BRIAN J. BARR -Seattle Weekly



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